A FLEET IN BEING.* "THE King's Navy exceeds all others

in the world for three things, viz., beauty, strength, and safety. For beauty they are so many Royal Palaces; for strength (no part of the world having such iron and timber as England hath), so many moving castles and barbicans ; and for safety they are the most defensive walls of the realm. Amongst the ships of other nations, they are like lions among silly beasts or falcons among fearful fowle." So bravely, if somewhat irrelevantly, speaks the grand old lawyer of the Elizabethans, Lord Chief Justice Coke,—a pedant, no doubt, but with a heart that was right English beating under the law-calf. It is the same

spirit of love and admiration for our ships that informs Mr. Kipling's enchanting little book, A Fleet in Being, and makes

him speak of battleships and cruisers like "a lover or a child." We say " enchanting " advisedly, for it has cast a spell of power upon the present writer. He sat down to read it with the most virtuous determination not to notice it at length. With the shelves groaning with rows of grave and serious tomes—works which have cost their authors years of bard labour and their publishers heaven knows what in the way of print and paper—it was clearly im- possible to give full notice to a shilling pamphlet containing the reprint of a series of newspaper articles. After the present writer had read the shilling pamphlet, it was clearly im- possible to do anything but notice it as fully as possible, and to do his beat to make every man, woman, and child within hail read it also. A more vivid picture of a fleet at sea it would be impossible to present, and yet Mr. Kipling per- forms his miracle in half-a-dozen words. Apparently he is describing a third-class cruiser and its officers and men and the guns and the engines, but at the same time he makes you realise what a fleet of warships is. As far as we know, no

one has ever done this before. Herman Melville showed us a warship in White Jacket ,—but his ship is seen in isolation, and we get no picture of that strangest of the works of man, —a fleet at sea. In truth it is "the flock of war," with the flagship for sheep-dog,—but then the sheep are as brave and agile as hounds and as ready to fight.

When one wants to quote the whole of a book it is difficult to know where to begin, but perhaps one of the most appro- priate passages for our purpose is that in which Mr. Kipling describes the feeling of the ordinary Englishman towards the Navy, — the feeling that warmed the leathern heart of Coke, and made even the clammy-souled Bacon (growing lyric in his fervour) call England "the lady of the sea," and describe the tragedy of the 'Revenge' with a passion that is to be found nowhere else in his writings. These are the reflections that came to Mr. Kipling (as they might and ought to come to any and every Englishman, Scotchman, and Irishman) as he steamed up Channel :—

"That was a Royal progress. No blind man's buff off the Lizard or dreary game of hunt-the-Needles such as the liners play, but through the heavenly clear night the leisurely, rolling slow-march of the overlords of all the seas.

OURS BY RIGHT OF BIRTH.

And the whole thing was my very own (that is to say yours) ; mine to me by right of birth. Mine were the speed and power of the hulls, not here only but the world over; the hearts and brains and lives of the trained men ; such strength and such power as we and the World dare hardly guess at. And holding this power in the hollow of my hand; able at the word to exploit the earth to my own advantage; to gather me treasure and honour, as men reckon honour, I (and a few million friends of mine) forbore be- cause we were white men. Any other breed with this engine at their disposal would have used it savagely long ago. In our hands it lay as harmless as the levin-rods of the Vril-Ya. Thus I stood, astounded at my own moderation, and counted up my pos- sessions with most sinful pride. The wind, and the smell of it off the coasts, was mine, and it was telling me things it would never dream of confiding to a foreigner. The short, hollow Channel sea was mine—bought for me drop by drop, every salt drop of it, in the last eight hundred years—as short a time as it takes to make a perfect lawn in a cathedral close. The speech on the deck below was mine, for the men were free white men, same as me, only considerably better. Their notions of things were my notions of things, and the bulk of those notions we could convey one to the other without opening our heads.

THINGS ONE TAKES FOR GRANTED.

We had a common tradition, one thousand years old, of the things one takes for grarted. A warrant officer said something, and the groups melted quietly about some job or other. That same caste of man—that same type of voice—was speaking in the

• A Fleet in Being: Notes of Two Trips with the Channel Squadron. By Endrird Kipling. London : Idaermill-tn and Co. Rs. net commissariat in Burma ; in barracks in Rangoon ; under double awnings in the Persian Gulf; on the Rock at Gibraltar—wherever else you please—and the same instant obedience, I knew, would follow on that voice. And a foreigner would never have under- stood—will never understand! But I understood, as you would have understood had you been there. I went round, to make sure of my rights as a taxpayer under Schedule D; saw my men in my hammocks sleeping, without shading their eyes, four inches from the white glare of my electric ; heard my stokers chaffing each other at my ash shoot; and fetched up by a petty officer who was murmuring fragments of the Riot Act into my subordinate's attentive ear. When he had entirely finished the task in hand he was at liberty to attend to me. Hope you've enjoyed your trip, sir. You see' (I knew what was coming) 'we haven't quite shaken down yet. In another three months we shall be something like.' No ship is ever at her best till you leave her. Then you hold her up as a shining example to your present craft. For that is England. My Marine—the skirmisher in South American Suburbs—stood under the shadow of the poop looking like a staffed man with an automatic arm for saluting purposes ; but I knew him on the human side. Goin' off to-morrow, ain't you, sir P Well, there are only twenty of us 'ere, but V you ever want to see the Marines, a lot of 'em, it might perhaps be worth your while to '—and he gave me the address of a place where I would find plenty of Marines. He spoke as though his nineteen friends were no-class animals ; and a foreigner would have taken him at his word."

That is the sort of writing which brings the blood to the cheek, and yet there is not a single boastful or overweening word. It is patriotism at its best,—not the last refuge of a

rhetorician, nor the beery bluster of the music-hall, but the patriotism that builds up and sustains.

We have put up our signpost to Mr. Kipling's wonderful little book, and bid the English-speaking world read and not miss a real delight, and can do little more without antici- pating, and so perhaps spoiling may be, our readers' pleasures. On one point, however, we must speak a word of commenda- tion, and the strongest of which we are capable. We must give Mr. Kipling unstinted praise for the consummate tact he shows here, and indeed has always shown, as regards all "Service" disputes, problems, and controversies. If he once joined in controversies or took sides in disputes his books on the Army and Navy would lose half their value in that great task of interpreting the "Services" to the nation in which Mr. Kipling consciously or unconsciously, is engaged. He never says a word that can make mischief or do harm, either between sailors and officers, or between the different grades of officers. For example, be leaves the complaints and grumblings of warrant officers and engineer officers alone. He treats them as they ought to be treated, i.e., as family quarrels, which the public had much better not see. In giving true and vivid pictures of life in the Navy, and yet refusing to deal with current controversies, Mr. Kipling has indeed done a notable public

service. There is no man, officer or sailor, who will not be able to read his book with satisfaction ; but the grievance- monger will not find a line, a word, or a letter of encourage-

ment.

We have not been able, we fear, to give an adequate idea of the charm of Mr. Kipling's book, but we will pledge our word that our readers will find the charm of which we have written,—and upon every page. And they will find, as we have hinted, a great deal more than charm. They will find, for instance, well enforced, the great national lesson which is written large in the preamble of the Naval Discipline Act.

That Act (29 and 30 Vic. cap. cix.), when it speaks of the Navy, adds : "whereon, under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety, and strength of the kingdom chiefly

depend." That is the lesson which Mr. Kipling's whole book teaches. Unless we maintain our Navy we are nothing. But our Navy cannot be maintained unless its spirit is as bold and high as in former days. Mr. Kipling's book helps to maintain

the spirit of the Navy. Therefore in writing it he has done a piece of true work for his country, and therefore the praise that belongs to those who do, and not merely delight the ear is his by right.