The system of signalling by holding two flags at various angles is fairly familiar since a number of organizations began to teach it, and the semaphore system is the same system carried into action by two mechanical arms. The method called "Blinker" has a Morse alphabet, and is sent by exposing and shutting off a light, the shorter exposures being the dots, the longer exposures, the dashes. Sometimes "blinker" is sent by the ship's search light, a number of horizontal shutters attached to one perpendicular rod serving to open and close the light aperture. One used to see the same scheme on the lower halves of old-fashioned window blinds. The international flag code is perhaps the hardest signal system to remember. It requires not only what a naval friend calls a good "brute" memory, but also a good visual memory. Many have seen the flags, gay pieces of various striped, patched, chequered, and dotted bunting reminiscent of a Tokio street fair. The signalman must learn the flag alphabet, committing to memory the colours and their geometric arrangement; he must also learn the special signification of each particular letter. For instance, one letter of the alphabet stands for "I wish to communicate"; there are also numbers to remember, phrases, and sentences. If a signalman cares to specialize, he can study certain minor systems, for instance the one in which a dot and a dash are symbolized by different coloured lights. A signalman must have a good eye, a quick brain, and a good memory. It is a feat in itself to remember what one has already received while continuing to receive a long, perhaps complicated message. Because of these intellectual requirements, you will find among the signalmen some of the cleverest lads in the Navy. "Giles" such a lad, "Idaho," another, and "Pop" was always "on the job." The Guard has its barracks in a great American port. One saw there the men being sorted out, equipped for their special service, and assigned to their posts. A fine lot of real seafaring youngsters, tanned almost black. The Navy looked after them in a splendid fashion. Said one of the boys to me, "If I had only known what a wonderful place the Navy was, I'd been in it long ago." The boys were sent over in the merchant ships, were cleanly lodged in excellent hotels once they got to land, and were then sent back on various liners. The Armed Guard was a real seafaring service, and its men one and all were touched by the romance and mystery of the sea. They fell in with strange old tramps hurried from the East, they broke bread with strange crews, they beheld the sea in the sullen wrath it cherishes beneath the winter skies. One and all they have stood by their guns, one and all stood by their tasks, good, sturdy, American lads, gentlemen unafraid. XXX GOING ABOARD