Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERT EVENING. GISBORNE, TUESDAY FEBRUARY 10, 1903. A GREAT NAVAL REFORM.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9662, 10 February 1903, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERT EVENING. GISBORNE, TUESDAY FEBRUARY 10, 1903. A GREAT NAVAL REFORM.

The scheme of naval reform embodied in j Lord Selbourne's memorandum on the . "Entry, Training and Employment of ! Officers and Men" in- the Roj'al Navy is , a matter of great moment that as creat- j ing intense interest at Home. For a long ' tame past there have been, great com- < plaints as to the staffing of the Navy, particularly from the engineering biunch, j members of which have chafed under tile disabilities they endured through lack of status and difficulties of promotion. - Lord cJelbourite has boldly guippled with the problem aud announces a pulicy fully determined upon which is to take effect in June next. The necessity for a radical change in the training of the diffe-rent-'classes of naval officers and for some such bold and comprehensive scheme as is hei-a set out is fully proved ini the. first part of the memorandum. During" the last century steam and iron, •engineering urnd guimery, have completely revalutioiutsed the Navy. In the last fifteen years the number of officers and men in the- service has risen from 60,000 to over 120,000. "There are several foreign Navies moix> powerful to-day than ttie British Navy was fifteen years ago, and yet the relative standard has been maintained. Of the ships which formed the effective fighting ships of the Navy fifteen years ago but few remain on the- effective list now." The old education and teaming are out of date. Seamanship in the old sense- is a thing of the past. Seamansliip in any sense is a term that can no longer cover the qualifications required Nowadays a naval officer "must be a seaman, a gunner, a soldier, an engineer, and a man. of science as well." No ordinary, and certainly no haphazard, course of training can produce the inau we want. Now there are three classes of officers, executive officere, engineers, and marines. AH are equally necessary ; they "serve side by side throughout their career; their unity of sentiment is essential to the* welfare of the Navy ; yet tliey all enter the 'Wvice under different regulations, and they have nothing in. common, in tlieir early training." The executive officer may know little of engineering, although his ship is "one huge box of engines'"; the engineer knows nothing of executive duties; the marine officer, from lack of early sea training, "is compelled, sorely against his will, to remain comparatively idle on board ship when everyone eilse is full of work." The object of the new scheme is to unify and to specialise. AH officers—executive, engineering and marine — are to have a common taainingr for seven, years, to give thein unity of sentiment and a sufficient amount of common knowledge and capacity ; then to specialise for the different branches. The sclteme is briefly this— that all must enter the service as naval cadets between the ages of twelve and thirteen:, and undergo the same course of training for four years at the Royal Naval College.; they will tlien go to sea as midshipmen and' undergo a further identical course of training for three years. Their- characters will thus be. formed in one school, and their attainments and qualifications will be exactly similar. Then differentiation will begin. Tiiey will all hold the rank of sub-lieuten-ants, and in their future careers there will be as far as possible an equal system of rank, promotion and reward ; but tliey will now diverge into their respective branches, as executive officers, engineers and Royal Marines. The ohief objection to the scheme lies in the age limit. It is questioned whether it will be possible to get the right sort of boys at the age of twelve, and whether it is expedient to attempt at .that age to fix a cliild's destiny for life. Will parents' be willing, or is it right to ask them, to dedicate their boys to the sea at twelve and send them to the Royal Naval College? Another objection is this, after the scheme has been established the career of an officer of the Royal Navy will be closed to all the youths of the country whose parents did not send them to the Royal Naval College when they were twelve years old. It is not usually at that age that a boy silnnvs the bent of his mind and his aptitude for a can er. But at a later age — at fourteen, fifteen or sixteen I—dt1 — dt will be useless for any boy to dream of the Navy as a profession and a career. It will present to him a door closed, boiled and barred. Ls it not at the least highly probable that in tliis way the naval service will be deprived of much of the best manhood that the country could and wotffd supply? Excepting for the age . restriction, the scheme is a bold and promising attempt to meet new conditions and to provide for the efficiency of England's first line of defence.