THE REORGANISATION OF THE SEA SERVICE NATE congratulate Lord Selborne
most heartily on his scheme for "dealing with the entry, training, and employment of officers and men of the Royal Navy and of the Marines." That in certain minor details the scheme may be open to criticism we do not wish to deny ; but taken as a whole, it is an adequate attempt to grapple with a most momentous problem, or, rather, series of problems. Lord Selborne since he has been at the Admiralty has made few or no sensational changes, but now that he comes before the country with a scheme, it is one which has been fully thought out, and one in which he does not flinch from facing the difficulties of the case. The problems presented for solution to the Board of Admiralty may be easily expressed. To begin with, there is the problem of the engineers and their status and education. Originally theengineer officers— like their engines—were in the position of appliances brought in from outside merely to give mobility to the ship. Their business was considered to begin and end in doing for the ship at all times what the wind had hitherto done when it blew strongly and in a convenient direction. They supplied power, and the power thus laid on in the ship was utilise i by the navigating and fighting officers. Naturally, such a state of things could not last. Gradually it became evident that the steam-engines were much more than a mere source of power, and that they were, in fact, the heart of the ship,—its vital spark. The realisation of this fact made it necessary to regard the engineer officers in a very different light. From being the young man who looked after the coals and the steam-kettle, the engineer became the man who gave the ship half its fighting power, —a man whose inability to do his work turned, the ship into a mere cumbersome floating-battery at the best, and at the worst into a hopeless derelict. But though these are the facts, they have hitherto been only very hazily recog- nised in the Admiralty Regulations. At last, however, Lord Selborne has had the courage to tackle the question in earnest, and to recognise that the engineer officer must be placed on an equality with the other officers of the Service. The next problem, and one almost as pressing, is that of the Marines. The Marine officer, owing to a variety of causes, has been, as it were, shut up in a kind of water- tight compartment. His schedule duties, so to speak, are very small, especially in peace-time, and yet he has not been able to step outside them, partly owing to red-tape, but still more to the fact that he was never trained when young to sea service. This was an inconvenience when the Marines were a comparatively small body of men. It is a crying evil now that the body of officers is so large. Hence the utilisation of the Marine—i.e. the getting him out of water-tight compartments—has become one of the chief problems of the Navy. A third naval problem is to be found in the general training of naval officers, and the bestowal on them through education of that combination of scientific knowledge with character and. self-reliance which it is universally admitted is needed in an engineer officer.
Lord Selborne has met these problems in a manner at once liberal and comprehensive. His main proposal is that henceforth all officers for the executive and engineer branches of the Navy and for the Marines "shall enter the Service as naval cadets under exactly the same conditions." That is, in future boys who want to go into the Navy, in whatever branch, will all enter together, and will receive exactly the same training. This common training will last till they have reached the age of nineteen or twenty. At that age the Sub-Lieutenants, as they will have become, will be distributed between the three branches of the Service,—i.e., the executive, the engineer, and the Marines. This will be an excellent arrangement, in that it will tend to produce a feeling of comradeship and of social equality throughout the Service. Even more important is the fact that it will give a thorough technical, and also a thorough sea, training to the engineers and Marines, as well as to the executive officers. This will be secured by the fact that the boys will only remain for their first four years on shore at the Royal Naval College,—i.e., the 'Britannia' When these four years are completed and the boys are seventeen, they will go to sea as Midship- men for three years. At the end of the three years every Midshipman who passes a, qualifying examination will become an acting Sub-Lieutenant, and will return to England. These acting Sub-Lieutenants will then go to the College at Greenwich for a three months' course in mathematics, navigation, and pilotage; and after that to Portsmouth for a six months' course in gunnery, torpedo work, and engineering. After passing a further examina- tion, and receiving first, second, or third classes in each subject, they will pass out and be confirmed as Sub- Lieutenants. Then, and not till then, will it be finally and officially decided to which branch of the Service the Sub- Lieutenant will be drafted. They will all up to that point have received an identical training. The result will be that when they are drafted off to their different branches and begin to specialise all of them will be well grounded in seamanship. The Marine officer will not because he is a Marine be considered to know nothing about machinery ; and while the engineer will have a competent knowledge of seamanship, the executive officer will also have expert knowledge as to engines and boilers. In the words of Lord Selborne's very clear and well-written Memorandum, "up to this point the young officers' characters have been formed in one school, and all these Sub-Lieutenants have received as the foundation of their professional education that common knowledge which all alike require. Hence- forward their education must be differentiated to make them fit to perform those specialized duties which are the product of modern science.' But it may be said,—How will the supply be regulated ? Suppose, for example, that all the Sub-Lieutenants in one year want to be executive officers, how will the other branches be supplied ? The i answer s that though the Admiralty will not force a lad into any branch against his will if he has begun by earmarking himself, so to speak, they will offer special inducements to parents who do not at the beginning declare for a special branch of the Service, but leave it to the Admiralty to draft the boy into whichever branch at the moment most requires Lieutenants. This plan will, we trust, get over the difficulty of the executive branch proving too attractive.
We need not follow the scheme in its references to the training and organisation of the separate branches, except to remark that the engineer officers will in future wear the same uniform and bear the same titles of rank as the executive, though at the same time receiving additional pay. The engineer officers will also be able to rise to flag-rank- i.e., that of Rear-Admiral—and everyeffort will be made to secure them opportunities for promotion equal to those of the executive branch. For example, the Chief Inspectors of Machinery will become Engineer Rear-Admirals ; and the Board, we are told, reserve power to promote the Engineer- in-Chief to the rank of Engineer Vice-Admiral if thought advisable. We may also note in regard to the Marine officers that it is intended that those officers, after their training has ceased to be purely military, as it now is, shall be given important duties connected with gunnery and torpedo work, and generally in taking a more active part in the duties of the ship. The possibility of the amalgama- tion of the Marine Artillery and Marine Light Infantry is also discussed, but the final settlement of that question is left over.
.We have given the scheme in outline. It remains to make one or two criticisms as to the details. A proposal which is sure to be very closely scrutinised is that to make the age of entry to the Service twelve or thirteen. That the advantages of an early dedication to sea service are very great will be readily admitted, but it is also clear that it would be a great mistake to submit children of twelve to the pressure of competitive examination. One shrinks from the idea of " Bobby " or " Willie " beginning to be crammed at nine or ten for the Navy Examination. It must be pointed out, however, that the Board of Admiralty are fully aware of this objection, and have made proposals which largely minimise its force. "The entrance examination for the Royal Naval College, commonly known as the 'Britannia' examination, will," says the Memorandum, "be of an elementary kind, and confined to those subjects in which a carefully-educated boy has usually been instructed up to the age of thirteen. No change will be made in the present system of entering boys for the competition, but the medical evidence is con- clusive that at this early age the examination must not be severe, and indeed that no examination of boys at this age or at the later age now obtaining can be considered. an accurate test of what their comparative faculties will be when they have attained manhood. It consequently follows that, during their period of training at the Royal Naval College, Cadets who fail to attain a minimum standard or to show promise of sufficient development of intellect must be requested to withdraw." In .other words, the examination will be easy, and qualifying rather than competitive, and a larger number of boys will be taken than are actually required. This will provide an opportunity for weeding out unsuitable boys, and will also mitigate the rigour of examination. And if these safeguards should prove ineffectual to shield the boys from overpressure, the Admiralty can devise other means to prevent injurious competition. The main thing is that the Admiralty fully realise the danger and do not mean to incur it. That being so, the chief objection to the twelve-year-old rule disappears. Undoubtedly in other respects it is well to take the boys young and make them, as it were, seamen from the beginning,—i.e., men who feel that they were dedicated to a sea life from childhood. Such were our naval officers in old days, and such they ought to be in the future. No doubt from the parent's point of view the necessity for an early choice seems a hardship, but, after all, the national is the paramount consideration. Again, if parents find a boy unsuited to a sea life, they can take him away from the 'Britannia' at fourteen or fifteen without any harm being done. It will not be too late to think of another profession, and the boy -will have received a first-class modern education. Another criticism which we desire to make is concerned with the engineer part of the scheme. The Memorandum declares that after the rank of Sub-Lieutenant has been reached the division into the branches "will be definite and final." That this ought to be the general practice we do not doubt, and that good. reasons for breaking it will very seldom occur also seems highly probable. At the same time, we dislike the idea of slamming and double-locking any door. We would, that is, make no absolute division, and impose no absolute veto on the choice of the Board of Admiralty. If they think it is for the good of the Service to take a Captain (E) out of the engineers and give him a ship, they ought not to be prevented by a printed rule. That they would ever want to do so seems most unlikely, but still, why limit their choice by a hard-and-fast regulation ? The abstract arguments for declaring in the Army "once a sapper always a sapper" seem equally strong. Yet if such a rule had existed we should have had no Lord Kitchener.
Taken as a whole, however, the scheme is a thoroughly sound one, and Lord. Selborne deserves the thanks of the nation for so good a piece of work.
Previous page
