The Saturday night toast in the Navy, "Sweethearts and Wives
"—without its cynical addition, "and may they never meet "—would be drunk all the more heartily in ships last week by men who had just learned that their womeakind had now been placed on a better financial footing. The Admiralty has improved Navy pay with a paternal liberality, adopting the lerram Report almost as it stood, and persuading the War Cabinet to do so. Increased pay dates back to February lat. On a wide view pay is doubled, in somc oases more than doubled. The baste rate of pensions, one halfpenny per day, is trebled ; age pension at fifty-five goes up by fivepence a day, and at sixty-five by ninepence ; and there is to be no longer any limitation of pensions "to funds available." These and other increases will account for six millions a year, before we come to improve the pay of officers. The country will not grudge this sum ; nor will it deny the obligation, at further increased annual charges, to make the Navy a profession in which the officer can live by his work.
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