The war has not been without influence on the naval personnel. British Jack had, in his own social system, a place of his own. He is not looked down upon, for the British bluejacket has been, is, and forever ought to be the best loved of national figures. Sons of "gentlemen," however, I use the word here in its British sense, did not join the Royal Navy as enlisted men. Such a thing would have been regarded as "queer" (no mild word, in Britain), and the crew certainly would have looked upon any such arrival as an intruder. But just as the war has placed University men side by side in the ranks with troopers like Kipling's Ortheris, so has it placed among the enlisted personnel of the Royal Navy a large number of men from the educated and wealthier class. There hung in the Royal Academy this spring a portrait of a British bluejacket, a pleasant-looking lad some nineteen or twenty years of age with blond hair, a long face and honest eyes of English grey. It was entitled "My Son." Almost invariably the older visitors to the exhibition, when looking at this picture, would fall to talking of the change in the social system which the portrait symbolized. There are always a number of boys on British ships, for the British hold that to be a good sailor, one should early become familiar with the sea. The status of "boy" is a kind of distinct rating, and these youngsters are addressed by their last names, viz., Boy Bumblechook or Boy Stiggins. They have shown up wonderfully well. One has but to recall little Cornell of Jutland to see of what stuff these lads are made. The British sailor's uniform is picturesque and characteristic, but certainly less attractive than ours. It is cut not of broadcloth or of serge, but of heavy blue worsted, and a detachable collar of blue linen falls back upon the blouse. Our sailors are forever washing the blouses to keep the white stripes of the collar clean; the Briton has only his collar to care for. And there is a difference between the national builds as marked as the difference twixt the uniforms. Our Jack is rangy, lean and quick-moving, the Briton heavier, shorter, and more deliberate. In hours of leisure, the Briton busies himself with knitting, wood-carving or weaving rag rugs; the American, driven by the mechanical genius of the nation, hurries to the ship's machine shop to pound a half-crown into a ring.