That a navy, especially a large navy, can be kept fully manned in peace--manned up to the requirements of war--must be dismissed as impracticable. If greatly superior to a probable enemy, it will be unnecessary; if more nearly equal, then the aim can only be to be superior in the number of men immediately available, and fit according to the standard of fitness here generalized. The place of a reserve in any system of preparation for war must be admitted, because inevitable. The question, of the proportion and character of the reserve, relatively to the active force of peace, is the crux of the matter. This is essentially the question between long-service and short-service systems. With long service the reserves will be fewer, and for the first few years of retirement much more efficient, for they have acquired, not knowledge only, but a habit of life. With short service, more men are shoved through the mill of the training-school. Consequently they pass more rapidly into the reserve, are less efficient when they get there, and lose more rapidly, because they have acquired less thoroughly; on the other hand, they will be decidedly more numerous, on paper at least, than the entire trained force of a long-service system. The pessimists on either side will expound the dangers--the one, of short numbers; the others, of inadequate training. Long service must be logically the desire, and the result, of voluntary systems of recruiting the strength of a military force. Where enrolment is a matter of individual choice, there is a better chance of entrance resulting in the adoption of the life as a calling to be followed; and this disposition can be encouraged by the offering of suitable inducements. Where service is compulsory, that fact alone tends to make it abhorrent, and voluntary persistence, after time has been served, rare. But, on the other hand, as the necessity for numbers in war is as real as the necessity of fitness, a body where long service and small reserves obtain should in peace be more numerous than one where the reserves are larger. To long service and small reserves a large standing force is the natural corollary. It may be added that it is more consonant to the necessities of warfare, and more consistent with the idea of the word "reserve," as elsewhere used in war. The reserve in battle is that portion of the force which is withheld from engagement, awaiting the unforeseen developments of the fight; but no general would think of carrying on a pitched battle with the smaller part of his force, keeping the larger part in reserve. Rapid concentration of effort, anticipating that of the enemy, is the ideal of tactics and of strategy,--of the battle-field and of the campaign. It is that, likewise, of the science of mobilization, in its modern development. The reserve is but the margin of safety, to compensate for defects in conception or execution, to which all enterprises are liable; and it may be added that it is as applicable