NA TURE 



289 



THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 1903. 



SCIENCE AND THE NAVY. 

 T^HE Board of Admiralty are to be entirely congratu- 

 -L lated upon their new scheme of entry, education 

 and training of officers, which has recently been printed 

 in t-xtenso in the Times, and already given rise to much 

 comment on the part both of naval officers and school- 

 masters. 



The most important parts of it, from our point of 

 view, are that it shows that, in the opinion of the 

 Admiralty, for the naval service the education obtained 

 by studying things instead of books is essential, and that 

 the scheme set forth is sound and broad in its educational 

 details. The mere existence of it for the purpose in- 

 tended is certain in time, we believe, to have a profound 

 effect, not only upon the entrance examinations to the 

 Army and the Civil Service, but upon secondary and 

 university education generally. We may go further and 

 say that if the Council of Defence were anything more 

 than a name, the naval scheme would have formed part 

 of a more general one embracing the whole armed 

 service of the country. 



Let us see what improvements are proposed upon the 

 present system. First of all, a battleship is to be made 

 more of a fighting unit than it is at present by having 

 all the officers, whether navigating, gunnery, torpedo, 

 engineer, and those more numerous lieutenants whose 

 duties are not specially devoted to any particular branch, 

 but excepting medical officers and the accountant branch, 

 educated alike up to a certain point. The Army is a 

 non-scientific body with scientific corps ; the Navy is to 

 be a scientific body all round. 



At present, the marine officers enter late after the often 

 soul-destroying training of the ordinary schools which 

 provide the officers of the Army. The engineer officers 

 enter earlier at a special naval engineering establishment. 

 The executive officers enter the Britannia at the age of 

 14). to 1 5i for four terms, and we believe the instruction 

 given in the first three is something like this : — 



Mathematics, including Navigation ) , , , . . 



and Chart Work . ... ... | 3"i hours a fortnight. 



French ... ... ... ... ... 6 ,, ,, 



Steam ... ... ... ... ... 4 ,, ,, 



Mechanical Drawing ... ... ... 3J ,, ,, 



Instruments ... ... ... ... 3 ,, ,, 



Physics ... ... ... ... ... 1 ,, , , 



Naval History ... ... ... ... i^ ,, ,, 



Seamanship ... ... ... ... 64 „ ,, 



In the fourth term, the cadets are sent for a cruise, 

 and are further instructed in practical navigation, instru- 

 ments and chart work, steam and seamanship. 



It will readily be gathered, then, that on the present 

 system, in the schools which furnish the cadets, not much 

 attention need be paid to physical science and the 

 mental training that it brings, if one hour a fortnight is 

 all that is provided for it on the Britannia. 



Under the new scheme, all the officers to whom refer- 

 ence has been made will enter the Britannia between the 

 ages of twelve and thirteen, thus saving some two years 

 of ordinary school training. As the age is so low, nomin- 

 ation and a limited competitive examination are preferred 

 NO. 1735, VOL. 67] 



to an open examination. This, we consider, is justified, 

 but some alterations seem desirable with regard to the 

 nominations. 



The scheme, in the first place, provides that these 

 nominations are to be limited generally to the First Lord, 

 with certain privileges, elaborately set out, conferred 

 upon individual members of the Board, secretaries, flag 

 officers, commodores and captains. This looks too much 

 as if the Navy were looked upon as an Admiralty pre- 

 serve. We can imagine, although Sir Michael Hicks- 

 Beach has so far made no revelations with regard to the 

 Navy, that the officers who have to look after promotions 

 may think, as we think, that the nominations should be 

 exclusively in the hands of the First Lord and of the 

 Prime Minister, for it is a question of the whole country 

 with all its interests. The principle of heredity may 

 be pushed too far, for captains will be admirals when 

 their nominees come up for promotion as commanders, 

 and this fact is quite enough, human nature being what it 

 is, to suggest how undesirable the so-called privileges are. 

 Then comes another point. The payment for each 

 cadet entered is 75/. per annum, but the Lords of the 

 Admiralty reserve the power of reducing this to 40/. in 

 the case of sons of naval, army, or marine officers, or of 

 the civilian staff at the Admiralty. 



If the whole Navy and Army, why not the whole Civil 

 Service ? and, indeed, why limit the concession to the 

 public services when good cause can be shown for an 

 extension ? The more rigid the limitation the less certain 

 the capture of future Nelsons, and the more justification 

 will be given to a possible outcry that the Navy is being 

 made a close preserve for the well to do. 



Were the limit extended, a natural sequel would be to 

 enter originally for the Britannia a larger number of 

 boys— say some 30 per cent.— than would be wanted 

 for the service, admitting the required number of these 

 to the service by strict open competition at the end of 

 the Britannia period and rejecting the rest. In this 

 way, some objections to the nomination system at entry 

 will be met. If only a few are rejected as under the 

 proposed scheme it would be a stigma, whereas if the 

 number is larger it would only be considered a mis- 

 fortune, and the rejected would have had the best 

 education in England, one fitting them for any walk in 

 life, as we shall show. 



We can have nothing but praise for the subjects 

 chosen for the examination for entrance to the Britannia, 

 which are as follows : — 



Part I. 



(1) English (including writing from dictation, simple 

 composition, and reproduction of the gist of a 

 short passage twice read aloud to the candidates). 

 (2) — {a) History and (A) Geography — 



(a) History (simple questions in English History 



and growth of the British Empire). 

 (&) Geography (simple questions, with special 

 reference to the British Empire). 

 (3) French or German (importance will be attached to 



the oral examination). 

 (4) — (a) Arithmetic, and {b) Algebra — 



(a) Arithmetic (elementary, including vulgar and 



decimal fractions). 

 (£) Algebra to simple equations, with easy 

 problems. 



