We note with interest that the Times, in a leading
article on "Problems of Admiralty" in the issue of Friday week, returns to the question of the expense to parents of the new system of naval training. While strongly demurring to the charge of inefficiency levelled against it more than once by Mr. Barnes in the House of Commons, the writer is unable to deny that it is undemocratic and costly, and holds that Parliament, if the Board of Admiralty will not move, will sooner or later compel them to remedy these defects. Under the present system, of a common entry by which the expenses are levelled up to the old Britannia ' standard, parents of naval cadets must be prepared to spend at least £100 a year for seven years on the training of their eons, and the class from which engineer officers were formerly recruited is ruled out altogether. The true remedy, be continues, is that, as in the United States, the whole cost of the education of junior officers should be borne by the Admiralty until the pay of such officers enables them to support themselves. It would cost £100,000 a year, but it would end once and for all the anomaly that all commissioned officers of the Navy must henceforth be drawn entirely from less than one- twentieth of the total population of these islands. We are glad to see the Times, not for the first time, lending its powerful support to views that have been repeatedly expressed in these columns in the last ten years.
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