DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP AFLOAT AND ON SHORE.
[To TEE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In a letter to the Times, May 13th, Sir Thomas Lipton proposes that each steward on board the various liners should in times of emergency be hel d responsible for bringing his own passengers to the particular lifeboat station to which they belong, and in order to carry out this effectively that the stewards must be organized and made to practise under fair- weather conditions, and that a system of stewards' drills with passengers should be made compulsory on every voyage of the larger liners. This is admirable, so far as it goes, but it still leaves the steward a feckless landsman, unable (or assumed to be unable) to do his duty as a man on the water.
Surely, as a seafaring nation, our aim and object should be that every man on board ship, no matter what his occupation may be, should be effective for work on the water, and should be qualified to assist in saving life on emergency; that is to say, every man permanently employed should know something about boats and be able to handle an oar. If this were carried out the steward would not only hand his own passengers into the lifeboat, but would also, as a duty, accompany them and take an oar in the boat. The effect of thus making the steward into an efficient at sea would be threefold : (1) The dull monotony of his life would vanish, for he would always have in front of him the feeling that he must be prepared to take up his duties in saving life on emergency, and he would be raised in his own esteem and in that of others. (2) The passengers' prospects of being saved would be enhanced, as they would be able to ascertain from the stewards what to do on emergency. (3) The ships' com- panies would effect a great saving in the present prospective additional expenditure due to the increased number of boats they now carry, for the stewards, being efficient, would about double their number of boatmen.
I do not propose to suggest the manner in which the stewards may be made efficient beyond pointing out that many of the stewards have ten to twenty days' interval between leaving one liner and joining another of the same lino, and certainly the younger ones would welcome a few days' training in boats in the docks during this period. It would well serve to fill up the time that hangs heavy on the bands of those un- married. It may be said that this boat exercise would drive out of the ships' service some of the stewards. Very likely it would do so; but those driven out would not be the better class of steward, and their place, I think, would be at once taken by men who will not at present join the service because there is so little scope for the spirit of adventure in the steward's life.
May I conclude this letter by pointing out that in spite of the softness of our present elementary school system, in spite of the efforts of societies which go in for softness in education, in spite of the influence of our clubs in which the principal feature is a billiard-table, the yearning and desire for a life of adventure is strongly embedded in our youth ; and that instead of driving our best men to Canada and Australia or the Cape we ought to afford them facilities for taking on themselves their duties as citizens in this country, with all the interests in life attached to those duties P At the present moment the nation is distracted because the ranks of the Territorial Force are depleted. Yet we shall find that where a corps has plenty of interesting work to carry out the ranks are full. It is not sufficient merely to try for numbers in the Territorial Force. There will be numbers if they are not only taught their military duties, but are also trained in their duties as citizens in saving life from accident, fire, and water, and when they are expert in manly exercises and can take a lead amongst the citizens of the places where they dwell. It is the softness of present-day life which deters the young man from coming forward; it is this everlasting and never-ending billiard-table, stretching from Newcastle to Land's End, so absolutely unsuited to the wants of young men, which stands in the way of all our efforts to bring up our lads as citizens.
It is only when some terrible catastrophe occurs, similar to the loss of the ' Titanic,' that the dormant heroism of our race forces itself out, and we realize the amount of true grit that remains ; but we may feel assured that acts of heroism would be of daily occurrence all around us if our people were only permitted to take on themselves the duties of citizens and if facilities were only afforded us for training ourselves in these duties.—I am, Sir, &c., 011A.RLES WARREN. Ramagate.
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