In essence, modern uniform is simple enough: that the various ranks should be noted by special insignia is obviously desirable. For combatant officers, the distinguishing sleeve-marks are:-- [Illustration: Admiral  Vice-Admiral  Rear-Admiral  Commodore  Captain  Commander  Lieutenant-Commander  Lieutenant  Sub-Lieutenant] Engineer officers wear the same insignia with purple between the stripes. Non-combatant officers are without the curl to the stripes, and wear colours to distinguish them as follows:--Doctors, red; Paymasters, white; Naval Instructors, blue. The system for the supply of the _personnel_ is to-day altogether different from what it was a hundred years ago. Till comparatively recently future deck officers were taken very young, passed into the Service as Naval Cadets, and thence promoted up to Midshipmen, etc., while Engineers and officers of the other civilian branches joined later in life. More or less contemporaneously with the Dreadnought era this was altered by the “New Scheme of Entry,” also known as the “Selbourne Scheme,” after the then first Lord of the Admiralty, but really the creation of Admiral Fisher, the Sea Lord who was the moving spirit at the Admiralty at that time. Few schemes have been more virulently criticised--few, in some cases, more unfairly. Like nearly all Admiral Fisher’s innovations, the scheme was better on paper than in fact. Like all his other schemes it was carried through at far too great a pace for the ultra-conservative moods of the British Navy, which has ever resented anything but the most gradual of changes. On the other hand, it is too often forgotten by critics that a great agitation on the part of naval engineer officers, backed by very considerable shore-influences, was then in existence. Something had to be done, and done quickly. Of Admiral Fisher it may ever be said that he acted where others merely argued. Under the New Scheme, the deck-officer, the engineer, and the marine-officer were all to enter as cadets at a very tender age, undergo a common training, and be specialised for any Branch at option or at Admiralty discretion later on. Whatever may be said against the New Scheme, it was magnificent on paper. Engineer officers had first come into the Navy as mechanics to work an auxiliary motive-power in which no “seamen” had much faith. From that humble beginning the status of their Branch grew and grew, till both motive-power and the existence of nearly everything on ship-board depended on the engineers. At the same time the official status of the Branch remained practically in the same stage as it did when the first few “greasers” were entered. The deck-officer was (nominally, at any rate) drawn from the aristocracy; the engineer officer from the democracy in a great measure. In so far as this obtained, “social war” was added to the real issue. It was obvious that this state of affairs was detrimental to naval efficiency. Something had to be done.