[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Lieutenant Canyon Bellaire writes against the Admiralty scheme with great ingenuity in the Spectator of April 28th, but his letter teems with half-truths and with statements drawn from imagination. As an example of the latter may be cited the discovery of the mare's-nest that the three years' training of three thousand stokers "is calculated to cost the country B1,800,000." In matters relating to the technical and practical questions of a naval officer's profession landsmen are properly dumb, but arithmetic is no monopoly of the naval "expert." The fiction that the Admiralty pro- poses to spend £200 a year for three years on the training of a stoker is a balloon to be deflated only by puncture.—I am, [We will endeavour to find room for any answer which Lieutenant Bellairs may desire to give in regard to the points on which he is challenged, but we must ask him not to open new ground, as we cannot continue this correspondence. The title of the letter was not given by Lieutenant Bellaire, but by ourselves.—ED. Spectator.]
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