for the protection of subordinate officers and men against arbitrary action by a captain, against arbitrary and prejudiced action by an admiral in a fleet, how much more necessary is it as a protection of naval standards and traditions against arbitrary action by the Board? For a captain is at any rate an entirely naval authority; an admiral is certainly an officer of large naval experience, acting generally with at least one other admiral. But the Board is largely a lay body. Indeed, it is now by a majority a lay body. And like all boards, it is liable to be the mouthpiece of its strongest personality. If this, as sometimes happens, is a seaman, he may be a partisan--I say it in no invidious sense--of certain policies and so prejudiced against brother officers who differ. If the stronger character is a layman, he may be ignorant of, or see no danger in waiving, naval traditions that are embodied in no statute or regulation, but are not embodied simply because their cogency has never been questioned. In other words, the autocracy of the Admiralty is a necessity of executive administration, but can only be exercised safely if its enforcement is continuously tested by professional opinion. How many people, I often wonder, really appreciate how singular a body is that which is made up of admirals, captains, commanders, and lieutenants of the Royal Navy? The accomplishments that make the seaman confuse the landsman by their strangeness and intricacy. Indeed, if one wishes to express the extremity of bewilderment, he does so best by the metaphor which describes the sailor’s normal environment. When we say we are “at sea,” we do so because language expresses no greater helplessness. To master these conditions calls for forms of knowledge and proficiency that are only acquired by a lifetime’s familiarity. But these conditions are not only baffling, they are incredibly dangerous. If steam has done much to lessen the perils of the sea, speed, the product of steam, has added to them. The sailor then, even in times of peace, passes his days, and still more his nights, encompassed by the threat of irreparable disaster. An oversight that may take thirty seconds to commit--and a hundred deaths, a wrecked ship, and a shattered reputation reward thirty years of constant and unblemished devotion to duty. To face a life and responsibilities like these calls for more than great mental and physical skill, though nowhere will you find these in a higher degree or more widely diffused than in the Fleet. It calls for moral and spiritual qualities, for a development of character in patience, unselfishness, and courage which few landsmen have any inducement to cultivate. A life lived daily in the presence of death must be a unique life, and it is not surprising that men bred to these conditions--always as hard and ascetic as they are uncertain and unsafe--grow to be a body quite unlike other men, with standards and