The Progress of the World. 



397 



able as to ensure that in the very near 

 future horse transport will practically 

 disappear. This means in itself a 

 tremendous saving in transport, as 

 fodder for the horses must at present 

 always accompany the army. The 

 only drawback is that it may be more 

 difficult to find emergency battery 

 horses to replace those killed in battle. 

 The success of motors at the manoeuvres 

 has still further strengthened the War 

 Office in its Motor-Lorry Subsidy 

 Scheme, which wUl very soon see a very 

 wide de\'elopment. It is an interesting 

 item that the Government has made an 

 arrangement with the principal motor- 

 omnibus companies of London to have 

 a call upon their chassis in time of war 

 or national emergency. At the present 

 moment there are some 2,500 omni- 

 buses running in London, so that the 

 motor reserve of the Army is already 

 available for Army purposes. A striking 

 illustration of the peril of the air from 

 Germany was afforded by the voyage 

 of the Zeppelin dirigible Hansa to Copen- 

 hagen at the moment when a special 

 British fleet was anchored before the 

 city. 



Mr. Winston Churchill 

 Rcoritanisine procceds on his task of 

 Mai^ilmcn.. making the Navy ever 

 more and more fit. Last 

 montli he issued announcements of the 

 redistribution of the business of the 

 Admiralty Board. The changes seem 

 all in the direction of grouping duties 

 of the same kind in the hands of one 

 responsible official, instead of employing 

 several to dissipate their energies over 

 a variety ot heterogeneous functions. 

 The miscellaneous duties of the Con- 

 troller have been thus allotted, and his 



office abolished. The First Sea Lord 

 will henceforth concentrate on organisa- 

 tion for war and distribution of the 

 Fleet, and will pass over the care of 

 naval ordnance and torpedoes to the 

 Third Sea Lord, who will generally be 

 relieved of all functions save those 

 of looking after the matiriel and design. 

 The Second Sea Lord will see to the 

 personnel. An additional Civil Lord will 

 be appointed to take charge of contracts 

 and dockyard business. This applica- 

 tion of business methods to our chief 

 line of defence should be all to the good. 

 But the greatest triumph of Mr. Winston 

 Churchill has been in his prompt recog- 

 nition that the men of the British 

 Navy are no longer recruited by the 

 press-gang, and can no longer be treated 

 either as abnormal beings or as naughty 

 children. His revision of the scale of 

 punishments, as well as his determina- 

 tion that promotion from the lower ranks 

 to officers shall be made more and more 

 possible, show clearly that, whatever 

 may be his disadvantages as a pohtician, 

 he is going the right way to make him- 

 self the most popular and the most 

 efficient First Lord of the Admiralty 

 we have ever had. Reforms such as 

 these enormously increase the strength 

 of the British Navy, and it is no exagge- 

 ration to say that they have a value 

 above that of Dreadnoughts. 



Even the very mild 



The Cry of the ^ud circumscribcd regu- 



shipowner. latious with regard 



to boat accommodation 



and life-saving appliances issued by the 



Board of Trade have called forth 



a protest from the masters of the 



Board of Trade— the shipowners. They 



are not apparently abashed by the 



