First, attention was devoted to the _personnel_. New schemes of training for officers and men and for the Naval Reserve were introduced. A new force--the Royal Fleet Reserve--was established, consisting of naval seamen and other ratings who had served afloat for five years or more; a Volunteer Naval Reserve was initiated; steps were taken to revise the administration of the naval establishments ashore, and to reduce the proportion of officers and men engaged in peace duties, freeing them for service in ships afloat. On the anniversary of Trafalgar in 1904, after a short period in command at Portsmouth in order to supervise personally the reforms in training and manning policy already introduced, Sir John Fisher--Lord Fisher as he is now known--returned to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord. Instantly, with the support of Lord Selborne and Mr. Balfour, then Prime Minister, to whom all honour is due, the new Board proceeded to carry into effect vast correlated schemes for the redistribution of the fleets at sea and the more rapid mobilisation of ships in reserve, the reorganisation of the Admiralty, and the re-adjustment of our world naval policy to the new conditions in accordance with a plan of action which the new First Sea Lord had prepared months in advance. Our principal sea frontier has been the Mediterranean. It was necessary to change it, and the operation had to be carried out without causing undue alarm to our neighbours--at that time we had no particular friends, though the foundations of the Entente were already being laid. Without asking your leave from Parliament, the great administrative engine, to which Lord Fisher supplied fuel, proceeded to carry out the most gigantic task to which any Governmental Department ever put its hand. Overseas squadrons which had no strategic purpose were disestablished; unimportant dockyards were reduced to cadres; ships too weak to fight and too slow to run away were recalled; a whole fleet of old ships, which were eating up money and adding nothing to our strength, were scrapped; the vessels in reserve were provided with nucleus crews. With a single eye to the end in view--victory in the main strategical theatres--conservative influences which strove to impede reform were beaten down. With the officers and men taken out of the weak ships, and others who were wrenched from comfortable employment ashore, a great fleet on our new frontier was organised. In the preamble to the German Navy Act of 1900 it had been stated: