The orders dividing the fleet into two "forces" and despatching a representation of our greatest fighters to the North Sea was preceded by a period of preparation the like of which this country--perhaps the world--never saw. The Atlantic Fleet was, indeed, converted into a huge workshop of war, turning out its finished products--fighting men. A visitor to the fleet, writing under date of May 14, expressed amazement at the amount of well-ordered activity which characterized a day on every one of the battleships. Here were men being trained for armed-guard service on merchantmen, groups of neophytes on the after deck undergoing instruction on the loading-machines; farther along a group of qualified gunners were shattering a target with their 5-inch gun. Other groups were hidden in the turrets with their long 14 and 12 inch guns, three or two to a turret. Signal-flags were whipping the air aloft--classes in signalling; while from engine-room and fighting-tops each battleship hummed with the activities of masters and pupils teaching and learning every phase of the complicated calling of the modern navy man. And there were days when the great fleet put to sea for target practice and for battle manoeuvres, the turrets and broadsides belching forth their tons upon tons of steel and the observers aloft sending down their messages of commendation for shots well aimed. It is the statement of those in a position to know that never were jackies so quick to learn as those of our war-time personnel. Whether the fact of war is an incentive or whether American boys are adapted, through a life of competitive sport, quickly to grasp the sailorman's trade, the truth remains that in a very short space the boy who has never seen a ship develops swiftly into a bluejacket, rolling, swaggering, but none the less deft, precise, and indomitable. "They come into the navy to fight," said one of the officers of the fleet, "and they want to get into the thick of it. We turn out qualified gun crews in three months--and that is going some." A large majority of the new men of the fleet come from farms, especially from the Middle West. More than 90 per cent of the seamen are native-born, and on any ship may be heard the Southern drawl, the picturesque vernacular of the lower East or West side of New York City, the twang of New England, the rising intonation of the Western Pennsylvanian, and that indescribable vocal cadence that comes only from west of Chicago. Not only gunners were developed, but engineers, electricians, cooks, bakers--what-not? They are still being developed on our home ships, but in the meantime the fruits of what was done in the time dating from our entrance into the war to the present summer are to be noted chiefly in the North Sea, where our vessels lie waiting with their sisters of the British Fleet for the appearance of the German armada.