To take matters in the same order as they are taken in Chapter VIII, Vol. I., uniform has, of course, long established itself. It has done so with a formality which, in the view of many, has “established the régime of the tailor rather than the sailor.” Within the last few years a slight change for the better has occurred; but of the greater part of the period so far as concerns purposes for which uniform was first introduced--the sailor and tailor exchanged places. Much has been written about admirals and captains whose ideas of naval efficiency were limited by “spit and polish,”[43] but “spit and polish” at its worst was never so bad as that tailoring idea which was the ultimate result of George II admiring the costume of the Duchess of Bedford.[44] [Illustration: _Photo_] [_Stuart, Southampton._ ADMIRAL FISHER.] The mischief is popularly supposed to lie with naval officers. Actually its roots lie with officials, who have piled regulation upon regulation, and the Vanity of Vanities is to be found so far back as the days of the great St. Vincent and his recorded orders about officers shoe-laces. Lesser lights than he, being in authority, blindly imitated. And so the uniform fetish grew and prospered. This is not to be taken wholly as a condemnation--for all that a system which made one of the most important duties of a lieutenant to be the carrying round of a tape measure with a view to ascertaining whether every man was “uniform” within a fraction of an inch may seem more suggestive of comic opera than of naval efficiency. Within reasonable limits, conformity has many virtues; and a man slovenly in observing uniform regulations is likely enough to be slovenly in things of greater moment. Like most bad things in the Navy, the principle was ideal: only the carrying of it too far was at fault. There is not the remotest reason to believe that a Navy not in uniform would be as efficient as one in uniform--all the probabilities are that it would be less so. The man who invented the saying that “a pigmy in uniform is more impressive than a giant in plain clothes” was making no idle statement, but stating a general verity. The trouble is solely in the difficulty that has ever been experienced in striking a common-sense mean--a difficulty created by the first mediocrity who tried to stand in St. Vincent’s shoes, and who lacked the brains to realise that what St. Vincent had started with a definite Service object in view, he--the unknown mediocrity--had merely lost in the _means_. An example once created had to be followed. The hardships of conformity--of which overmuch is heard nowadays--are actually trivial, on account of the custom. The mischief lies not in the conforming, but in the waste of time of those who are made responsible for that conformity.