The Coast Guard being treated as an Active Service force in the Estimates, the numbers are included in the number of men voted for the Fleet, and help to make up the total of 129,000; but as the 4,000 Coast Guard men are appropriated for duties away from the chief Naval ports, they are not available for the ordinary work of the Fleet, and the peace resources are correspondingly reduced, while the extra charges for the Coast Guard tend largely to increase the expense of maintaining the Active Service force. If, on the other hand, the Coast Guard be treated as a Reserve only, the expense is still more disproportionate, as, in comparison with the small retainers, charges for a week’s annual drill and small prospective pension, which make up the whole expense entailed in the maintenance of the Royal Fleet Reserve, there are the Full Pay, Victualling, Housing, and numerous miscellaneous allowances and charges of a permanent force maintained in small units under the most expensive conditions. Therefore, the maintenance of the Coast Guard by the Admiralty not only entails a reduction of the number of highly-trained active service ratings in the Fleet at sea, but also an unnecessarily large expenditure on a Reserve. As regards the use of the Coast Guard for the protection of the Revenue, the arrangements made when the Coast Guard was transferred to the control of the Admiralty might now be considerably modified. A large proportion of the coast of the United Kingdom is still patrolled nightly by the Coast Guard as a precaution against smuggling, but looking to the increase in population and the number of towns and villages round the coasts, the development of telegraphic communication, and the great reduction in the inducements to smuggling, this service seems to be no longer required; and some other adequate arrangement for the protection of the Revenue might be made by a small addition to the present Customs Force, assisted by the local Police, in addition to the watch still kept at those Coast Guard Stations which would be maintained as Naval Signal Stations. Even in the cases in which the existing Coast Guard may be considered to afford valuable protection to the Revenue, it must be remembered that in case of War or for Great Manœuvres, the men would be withdrawn to the Fleet from all stations except the Naval War Signal Stations. In any case the employment of highly-trained seamen to perform simple police duties on shore cannot be justified, and the expense is much greater than it would be were a civilian force to be employed.