On Monday afternoon Mr. Robertson, the Secretary to the Admiralty,
read to the House the Admiralty Minute on the disturbances in the Naval Barracks at Portsmouth. The sentence of five years passed on Stoker Moody has been reduced to three years' penal servitude, and that of eighteen months' imprisonment on Stoker Day to twelve months. The reasons given by the Admiralty for the revision of Stoker Moody's sentence are that the officers in charge of the barracks were, by their want of judgment and consideration, largely responsible for the outbreak on November 4th, and by their failure to take precautionary measures rendered the more serious outbreak of November 5th possible. This decision of the Admiralty carries with it logical consequences from which they have not shrunk. Commodore Stopford has been relieved of his appointment as senior officer of the barracks ; Commodore Drury-Lowe, the second-in-command, has been superseded ; and Commander Mitchell, the com- mander for gunnery duties, is also relieved of his command. Lieutenant Collard has already been reprimanded by Court- Martial, and the Admiralty " note " this fact. The severity of the punishments now meted out to his superiors, who were not tried by Court-Martial, has been commented on as a guarantee of the rigorous impartiality of naval discipline. But it may also be contended that the ultimate responsibility for the disorders rests in a measure with the originators of a Policy which has involved a development of the barrack system in such a way as to render the maintenance of dis- cipline more than ordinarily difficult.
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