WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 323 



made for the better training of officers and men. The 

 embryo officer was to be caught young at the age of 

 twelve, and from the beginning trained for his arduous 

 duties instead of wasting three or four of his most 

 valuable years in public schools, this in most cases 

 only unfitting him for his life's work. The men, too, 

 were given to understand that only those who really 

 took an interest in their work, and were not merely 

 content to mark time, were to be allowed to remain, 

 the inefficients were to be weeded out. And a new 

 spirit was developed by judicious appreciation of 

 straight shooting with big guns, the most necessary 

 of all accomplishments for the naval artillerists, and 

 one that should need no explanation whatever. Of 

 course, there have been many other alterations and 

 rearrangements carried out with a bold hand and a 

 far-reaching policy that should excite our utmost 

 admiration, if we were given to considering how in- 

 tensely essential it is that we should be masters of the 

 sea. But it will not, I fear, cause nearly as much 

 thought in the mind of the ordinary reader as the 

 chances of a bridge tournament, a golf match, or a 

 football contest, to so great a depth of criminal care- 

 lessness have we descended. And it cannot be said 

 that these vast reforms, the evolution of the forward 

 naval policy, involving many millions of money, and 

 the greatest interests of the race, have excited anything 

 like the interest to which they are most justly entitled. 

 And now we must return to the Mercantile Marine, 

 which we left the consideration of some time back, after 

 having followed up its development to the beginning 

 of the last twenty years. This period marks the 

 greatest industrial development of shipping that the 



