Lynwood remembered having asked the officer who had given him this summary of the naval system how it was, then, that so many of the officers he had met at the colleges had been visibly happy, and, within certain limits, contented. “To start with,” his informant had replied, “the officers who are appointed to Osborne and Dartmouth are picked men--men who, because they were born with most of the required qualities, haven’t had their natures badly damaged. The colleges are star billets. You don’t meet there--or, for that matter, in the society from which most civilians draw their conclusions--the two and a half stripe salt-horses who will never become commanders or the engineers who have sweated their souls out for the sake of a family which attains the ultimate glory of a Portsmouth suburb--in short, the underworld of H.M.S. And you don’t meet the drunks. But there’s another reason. The Service does its training young, on the principle of flog a dog while it’s a puppy. And if you get through that stage--well, you’re probably shaped to the mould like the Chinese women’s feet, and you forget, and it doesn’t do you any fresh hurt. But if you break while the pressure is being applied, you break--that’s all. A good thing you broke so soon. If you can’t afford to leave it, the Service has your measure. It knows you broke, and your promotion is not rapid.... Of course,” he added, “there are a few who are neither broken nor shaped. They go on in the Navy, successful up to a point, dabbling in something else they might have been masters of. Or else they go--often too late.” And now Lynwood looked forward to the inevitable pressure of the mould. It was applied, he knew, to junior officers for the Service’s and their own good. The customary phrase was: “Junior snotties must be shaken.” The system was unofficial; indeed, its more obvious extremes had been expressly forbidden; but it was a recognized system, of whose existence the whole Navy was aware. No protest against it--and this had been particularly impressed on cadets--would gain any sympathy from any rank. So the Navy had been created, and so it must continue. Conditions, said the senior officers, were much better than in Nelson’s time--much better, indeed, than in their own days as midshipmen. Comparatively, modern midshipmen were wrapped up in cotton-wool. The senior officers, in their Wardroom armchairs, didn’t know what the Service was coming to!