The new scale of pay so long awaited by the
officers of the Navy was published on Friday week. The men's pay was sub- stantially increased some months ago, and the officers are to be paid on the new scale from the same date, February 1st last. The Admiralty has at last agreed to pay the senior officers a living wage. A Captain, commanding a battleship with a thousand men on board, received before the war from an un- grateful country the munificent salary of £428, but he Is now to reoeive £1,095, with certain allowances. The junior officers, however, seem to fare badly under the new scale. A Lieutenant's pay,. for example, is nominally increased by sixpence a day, but the abolition of the messing allowance and "grog money" and the "hard lying money" in a destroyer, together with the cessation of the "service rates" at which Income Tax was charged, will, so far as we can see, leave the Lieutenant worse off by at least tenpence a day—or one shilling and tenpence if he. is serving in a destroyer. The Lieutenant was not overpaid at sixteen shillings and sixpence a day, and it seems rather ungracious to cut down his modest income by a subterfuge which the publie may not detect. Yet the total additional cost of the new scheme for the pay and allowances of permanent officers is estimated at. no more than £1,400,000, or half the coat of one Dreadnought.
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