they require first and what defects and repairs in those vessels are most material, and they give orders accordingly. It is _not_ the responsibility of the local authorities at all to say that this vessel or that vessel must be completed at once, for, as before-mentioned, it may be that in the Admiralty scheme of fighting those vessels are not required at all. The Controller has great difficulties to contend with because he has not the free hand of a private employer who can discharge or enter men just as he requires. To get rid of a Dockyard workman involves agitation in every direction--in Parliament, at the Treasury and locally, and even Bishops throw themselves into the fray, like the Bishop of Winchester at Portsmouth, instead of looking after his own disorganised and mutinous Established Church. There is now a plethora of shipwrights at Chatham, because the Treasury will not allow their transfer to other yards, and a paucity of boilermakers because unwanted men occupy their places, and the scandal exists of men being entered at Devonport with men having no work at Chatham. But, of course, this is one of the blessings of Parliamentary Government, Treasury Control, and a Free Press! Where the special influence of the Commander-in-Chief is desired by the Admiralty is to bring before them cases where defects have not been dealt with in the initial stages by the ship’s artificers and so allowed to increase as to necessitate Dockyard intervention. Such cases would be drastically dealt with by the Admiralty if only they could be informed of them, but there is an amiable desire to avoid severe punishments, and the dire result is that the zealous and efficient are on the same footing as the incompetent and the careless who get more leave and time with their friends because their vessels are longer in Dockyard hands. It is desired to give prominence to the following facts:--It is a matter of everyday occurrence that vessels come home from Foreign stations, often immense distances, as from China or Australia, and are inspected by the Commander-in-Chief on arrival home and reported thoroughly efficient, and praise is given by the Admiralty accordingly, and the full-power steam trial is conducted with great care, and the mere fact of the vessel having steamed home those thousands of miles is itself a manifest evidence of her propelling machinery being efficient, and yet instantly after paying off we are asked to believe that such a vessel instantly drops down to a totally incapable condition of either seagoing or fighting efficiency, by our being presented with a bill of thousands upon thousands of pounds.