To-day, the enlisted personnel of the Navy is a cross section of the Nation's youth. There are many college men, particularly among the engineers. There are young men who have abandoned professions to enter the Navy to do their bit. For instance, the yeoman who ran the little office on board Destroyer 66 was a young lawyer who had attained real distinction. On board the same destroyer was a lad who had been for a year or two a reporter on one of the New York papers, and a chubby earnest lad whose father is a distinguished leader of the Massachusetts bar. Of my four best friends, "Pop" had worked in some shop or other, "Giles" was a student from an agricultural college somewhere in western New York, "Idaho" was a high school boy fresh from a great ranch, and "Robie" was the son of a physician in a small southern city. The Napoleonic veterans of the new navy are the professional "gobs" of old; sailors with second enlistment stripes go down the deck the very _vieux de la veille_. The sailor suffers from the fact that many people have fixed in their minds an imaginary sailor whom they have created from light literature and the stage. Just as the soldier must always be a dashing fellow, so must the sailor be a rollicking soul, fond of the bottle and with a wife in every port. Is not the "comic sailor" a recognized literary figure? Yet whoever heard of the "comic soldier"? This silly phantom blinds us to the genuine charm of character with which the sea endows her adventurous children; we turn into a frolic a career that is really one of endurance, heroism, and downright hard work. Not that I am trying to make Jack a sobersides or a saint. He is full of fun and spirit. But the world ought to cease imagining him either as a mannerless "rough-houser" or a low comedian. Our sailors have no special partiality for the bottle; indeed, I feel quite certain that a majority of every crew "keep away from booze" entirely. As for having a wife in every port, the Chaplain says that a sailor is the most faithful husband in the world. As a lot, sailors are unusually good-hearted. This last Christmas the men of our American battleships now included in the Grand Fleet requested permission to invite aboard the orphan children of a great neighbouring city, and give them an "American good time." So the kiddies were brought aboard; Jack rigged up a Christmas tree, and distributed presents and sweets in a royal style. Said a witness of the scene to me, "I never saw children so happy."