The second article deals with the new scheme of officers'
training, the distribution of fleets and nucleus crews, the scrapping" of ships, and Dreadnoughta.' It is pointed out, in illustration of the secret, hasty, and ill-considered procedure of the Admiralty, that all the Committees appointed since 1904. have been departmental, that Sir John Fisher has been chairman of all the most important, and that approval by the Board of the Reports submitted has been a foregone conclusion. The endless shuffling and reshuffling of the fleets is condemned as the result of mere feverish vacillation, not of a sound, con- uous, or intelligible policy, while the good points in the nucleus crew" system have been neutralised by constant changes of officers and men. The " scrapping " policy is criticised as in great measure failing to justify what it set out tO perform, and, in so far as it was genuine, thoroughly unsound, in that it aggravated our dangerous weakness in nnarmoured cruisers. We look forward with interest to the reply from another correspondent in defence of the Admiralty Which the Times undertakes to insert.
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