COLONIALS IN THE NAVY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 14191, 13 October 1906, Page 4

COLONIALS IN THE NAVY.

It is encouraging to have such' good accounts of the young New Zealanders who have taken service in the Royal Navy under the special conditions ar- ‘

ranged a few yeans ago. There is no doubt that 30 the conditions of service become more widely known the numbers of applicants for enrolment will steadily increase, and we may hope N that in the course of a decade New Zealand will have sept a very fair proportion of her young men to bo trained. According to current accounts the lads find the life anything but irksome. Some of them did indeed, encounter a ship of which the officers had less than no sympathy with the colonial contingent, hut the unpleasant experience seems to have been- a very brief one, and we hear of no complaints now. The suggestion that colonial youths would find the strict discipline galling has not been, justified, and apparently the great majority of the colonial seamen have good reason to bo satisfied with themselves. The lads may enlist at sixteen if they choose and spend seven, years in the service, or at any ago up to twenty, and .spend five years at sea, and at ’the end of that period they may easily have saved £2OO to help them in their next employment. The colonial seaman receives a special allowance over and above Imperial pay, and there is nothing to prevent him saving the whole of it, because the Imperial pay covers all ordinary expenses. But there is no need to enlarge here on the attractions that the service is able to offer to patriotic lads. It could bo so managed, we believe, as to render it still more attractive, especially to younger The educational side of the., training, we think, is rather neglected. Tire ract that a young man has served five years in the Royal Navy is a recommendation at , any time, but the experience would bo more valuable still if the blighter and more ambitious youths had the opportunity of pushing ahead in the professidn. After five years’ training, especially if the elements of navigation were taught, a young map .should be able to obtain a mate’s cerficato in the merchant service, and though the Admiralty might hotel up its hands in horror at the idea of training men for the merchant service, it would be all to the advantage of the State to have Royal Navy men in command of merchant ships. Of course, the idea is mentioned merely as a sugand may perhaps he impracticable,' but it should be the aim of the authorities to attract as many boys as possible. The moral tone of the service, which used to he criticised adversely, has greatly improved, we are assured, during the last two decades, and drunkenness is now a comparatively rare offence, so that the objections which, parents used to raise when urged to send their hoys to sea have now disappeared.