We seamen, naval or mercantile, are a stout unmovable breed. Tenacity to our convictions is deeply rooted. The narrow trends of shipboard life give licence to a conservatism that out-Herods Herod in intensity, unreason--in utter sophistry. We extend this atmosphere to our relationships, to the associations with the beach, with other sea-services, with other ships--to the absurd pretensions of the other watch. "A sailorman afore a landsman, an' a shipmate afore all," may be a useful creed, but it engenders a contentious outlook, an intolerance difficult to reconcile. In the fo'c'sle, the upholding of a 'last ship' may lead to a broken nose; aft, the officers may quarrel, wordily, over the grades of their service; ashore, the captain may only reserve his confidences for a peer of his tonnage; over all, the distance between the Naval and Merchants' Services was immeasurable and complete. If it was so to this date, it was perhaps more intense in the old days when common seafaring had not set as broad a distinction, as widely divergent a sea-practice, as our modern services shew. That such a contentious atmosphere existed we have ample witness. After experience as a merchants' man, Nelson wrote of his re-entry. "I returned a practical seaman with a horror of the Royal Navy. . . . It was many weeks before I got the least reconciled to a man-o'-war, so deep was the prejudice rooted!" We have no such noted record of a merchant seaman re-entering from the Navy. Doubtless the laxity and indiscipline he might observe would produce a not dissimilar revulsion. In the years that have elapsed since Nelson wrote, we have had few opportunities to compose our differences, to get on better terms with one another. The course of naval development took the great war fleets hull down on our commercial horizon, beyond casual intercommunication. On rare and widely separated occasions we fell into an expedition together, but the unchallenged power of the naval forces only served to heighten the barriers that stood between us. At the Crimea, in India, on the Chinese and Egyptian expeditions, during the Boer War, we were important links in the venture, but no more important than the cargoes we ferried. There was no call for any service other than our usual sea-work. The Navy saw to it that our comings and goings were unmolested. We were sea-civilians, purely and simply; there was nothing more to be said about it. If little was said, it was with no good grace we took such a station. There were those who saw that seafaring could not thus arbitrarily be divided. Other nations were stirring and striving to a naval strength and power, drawing aid and personnel from their mercantile services. Sea-strength and paramountcy might not wholly come to be measured in terms of thickness of the armour-plating--in calibre of the great guns. Auxiliary services would be required. The Navy could no more work without us than the Army without a Service Corps.