The true position of the surgeon in a warship is not recognised; the official duties of a doctor are officially purely “curative,” very rarely “preventive.” Some or most of this is due to the prevalence of old-fashioned obsolete ideas in high quarters; but some also is to be laid at the door of the “Churches,” and their fancy for differentiating between diseases. The matter is not one that admits of further discussion here; but the enforcement upon naval surgeons (who have to deal with large bodies of men crowded into spaces necessarily favourable for contagion) of conditions which, rightly or wrongly, are deemed to be for the public’s ultimate welfare on shore, are a terrible menace to naval efficiency. Things are indeed bettering in this respect, but still somewhat slowly. After the Great Mutiny of 1797 the pay of the men was approximately trebled. Although “extras” have since been added, the normal pay has remained to all intents and purposes stationary, while if qualifications be taken into account it has actually decreased, since the “ordinary” of to-day is called on to do just about what the “able seamen” of a hundred odd years had to do. The respective rates[45] are:-- ================+============+============= | 1797 | 1914 | per week. | per week | | (minimum). ----------------+------------+------------- Ordinary seamen | 6/6 | 8/9 Able seamen | 8/4 | 11/8 ================+============+============= Since the cost of living has certainly gone up at least twenty per cent. in the interim, and since the normal increase is undoubtedly under that, a _prima facie_ case is certainly made out for those who contend that the British sailor is, if anything, worse paid than he was a hundred years ago. The board and lodging which he obtains of course adds to the actual total; but the fact remains that the board and lodging labourer of to-day, who takes no risks of his life, is now as much ahead of the sailor as he was behind him in 1797. And “uniform” means a heavy extra expense for clothing. In 1912 the men of the Navy definitely asked for a twenty per cent. increase of pay. It amounted to nothing but an adjustment of 1797 conditions to modern ones. They did not obtain it--unasked for off-chances of “Democracy on the Quarter Deck” were given instead. Later on a 3d. a day concession was made to able seamen after the completion of six years’ more service. There at the moment the question remains. It has to a certain extent been obscured by question of naval punishments; about which a good deal of nonsense has been written by people who in some cases should know better.