Naval Officers, as a class, are conservative and dislike change, and as a rule are prepared to resist it. The manner in which the recent changes have been received, root and branch and sweeping as they were, shows, as nothing else can, the necessity for reforms. Compare the insignificant agitation (which has, however, now entirely collapsed), in the Navy over the vast and drastic reforms of the last two years with the agitation in the Army over the trifling matter of getting rid of two battalions of Guards! So let us be grateful--adequately grateful--to the officers and men of the Navy for their splendid loyalty during the introduction of reforms, some of which have hit them very hard, notably the sudden bringing home and paying off of the large number of vessels that were wiped out of the Navy as not being up to the required standard of fighting efficiency. And there was also the redistribution of the Fleet, which deprived many officers of advantageous appointments and seriously disturbed domestic arrangements. But the fact is that the Navy sees the fighting advantages we have gained, and so has loyally responded to the demands on its sense of duty. As an excellent writer in the “North American Review” for June so aptly expresses it, the Navy saw that it was steam-manship that was wanted, and so, as a body, they welcomed the new scheme of training both of officers and men. They saw also that to have every vessel of the Navy, large and small, mobilised and efficient to fight within three hours in the dead of night, as practically exemplified in the recent Grand Manœuvres, is a result which justifies all the drastic measures of the Board of Admiralty. The Navy also recognises the incomparable fighting advantages of the new era in giving us an unparalleled gunnery efficiency, as exemplified in the fact that before that new era there were 2,000 more misses than hits in the annual gunlayers’ competition, while in the year after there were 2,000 more hits than misses! In the new order the best ship is the one that can catch the enemy soonest, and hit him hardest and oftenest; under the old system these considerations were certainly not the primary ones. The Navy sees also that, while the fighting efficiency of the British Fleet and its instant readiness for war has become a household word amongst the Admiralties of the world, at the same time vast economies--to be reckoned in many millions--have been effected; for instance, our harbours, docks, and basins are ridded of obsolete vessels and thus made adequate for the accommodation of our fighting fleet, for which there was no room previously, and no less a sum than 13 millions sterling was at one time contemplated as necessary to give the required accommodation. The whole of that 13 millions in proposed works has been cancelled.