"Since you do not appear likely to be troubled with anything worse than a rush of congratulations to-day, sir," I said, after extending my own felicitations, "perhaps you'll have time to tell me how you've done it. I've heard fine tributes paid the R.N.M.S. by French, American, and Italian doctors who know something of it, but I was hardly prepared to find you starting a sort of Ponce de Leon 'Fountain of Perpetual Youth,' in the British Fleet." The P.M.O. laughed. "Making a health resort of a battleship, with your dressing stations under casemates and your sick bay all but under a turret, does seem a bit like reversing the saying about 'in the midst of life we are in death,'" he replied. "But the fact remains that this ship--the whole of the Grand Fleet indeed--is one of the most remarkable 'health resorts' the world has ever known. Not since the dawn of history has there been a large body of men with so small a percentage of bodily ills and ailments as that which mans the ships of the Grand Fleet at this moment. This is due to the absolutely unique conditions which prevail here, and our success in maintaining and improving the standard of health is principally due to making the most of those conditions. "The health of any community--of any body or collection of human beings--depends primarily upon the natural salubrity of the region in which it is located and the extent to which it is isolated from those living under less favourable conditions. A city may be very healthy naturally, but if its inhabitants are subject to a constant influx of more or less infected transients from less healthy places its own standard must inevitably be lowered. Under normal conditions, a modern warship--either in port or at sea--is one of the healthiest places in the world, and such sickness as prevails there is almost always contracted ashore and carried--and often spread--aboard. "With a Fleet that has its base near a large city, so that the men are in more or less constant contact with those ashore, the health of the former will very largely depend upon the extent to which that contact can be controlled. Between dock-hands, etc., coming aboard and the sailors going ashore, it is difficult under such circumstances to keep the men afloat much healthier than those on the land. It is only when there is comparatively complete isolation from large cities that it is possible to take full advantage of the ideal conditions for maintaining physical healthfulness at sea, and such conditions exist at the Northern Base to a degree never before equalled in Naval history. Our success here is merely the consequence of making the most of those unique conditions.