Just sixty-one years ago an Ordinary Seaman, H.M.S. _Queen_, was one of a detachment of a Petty Officer and six Bluejackets who had left our advanced trenches carrying a heavy scaling ladder, 18 feet long, to enable the soldiers to cross the ditch of the Great Redan at Sevastopol. When the only surviving ladder-party was close up to the abatis, three of the men under the Rear part of the ladder were shot down, and a young midshipman then put his shoulder under it. The boy was young, had already been wounded, and was moreover weak, being officially on the sick list, so doubtless was an inefficient carrier. The Bluejacket in front was unaffected by the storm of missiles of all sorts through which he had passed in crossing the 500 yards between our trenches and the Redan, although in his company of sixty men, nineteen sailors had been killed and twenty-nine wounded within twenty minutes. The fire was vividly described by Field-Marshal Lord Raglan, who was looking on. He, with the experience of the Peninsular War, and having witnessed the assaults of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, thus portrayed it: "I never before witnessed such a continuous and heavy fire of grape and musketry"; and again: "I had no conception of such a shower of grape." The Bluejacket had remained apparently unconcerned by the carnage, but he realised that the now one-surviving carrier at the Rear end of the ladder was not doing much to help, and thinking that he was addressing a messmate, exclaimed encouragingly, as he half turned his head: "Come on, Bill, let's get our ladder up first," being shot dead as he finished the sentence. I was often asked in the early days of the War whether I thought that the men in the ranks were of the same fighting value as those of two generations ago, and invariably answered confidently as follows: "Yes, just the same at heart, but with better furnished heads." The contents of this Booklet clearly attest the accuracy of that opinion. Education has done much to improve the "Fighting Services," but the most potent magnet for bringing out the best of the Anglo-Saxon Nation is the fuller appreciation of Democracy. The officers, not content with leading their men gallantly, which they have always done, now feel for them and with them as staunch comrades. All ranks are now nearer, geographically, mentally and morally, than they have ever been before to the heart of England. Sixty years ago a brave officer could think of no better prize for the reward of gallantry than money, and a General about to assault Sevastopol on September 8, 1855, offered £5 for the first man inside the Great Redan.