Then comes the great anomaly--the immense gulf that divides the two classes of men. As I have said, the merchant-ship engineer knows no superior on board the ship except the master. He deserves the best treatment, the best pay, and the greatest respect; and he gets them. His work cannot be made lighter, it must always be full of danger and toil, but all that can be done by way of mitigation of these onerous conditions is done. On the other hand, the E.R.A. in the Navy is a nobody. His pay is trivial compared with his congener in a merchant ship, he gets no respect from anybody, the youngest officer in the ship is his despot, whom to answer back means degradation and loss of pension, and he is berthed and fed much as a fireman is on board a merchant steamer; so that he continually smarts under a sense of injustice, and looks with longing and envious eyes upon his chums who, wiser than he, have gone into the Merchant Service. More than that, he knows full well that there are no reserves of E.R.A.'s, there are not nearly enough of them to man properly the ships that are now afloat; in case of an outbreak of war with a European Power, huge bribes would be offered to merchant-ship engineers to come and help in the Navy; knows, too, that not one of them would come without being rated as an officer, and receiving all the deference due to an officer in her Majesty's service. And so he may find himself, after years of the most arduous experience, ruled by a nephew who was a babe in arms when he served his time, who has all his life been engaged in one steady occupation on the same kind of engines, never hurried, never bullied, and probably with a sea experience of one-third of his uncle's, the E.R.A. Therefore, because of these reflections and this knowledge, the E.R.A. is continually warning youngsters from the home shops not to enter the Navy by any means. The Merchant Service is the place for them if they want to be treated properly; the Navy is a place where they will never be anything else but a "dirty Tiffy," looked down upon by the youngest blue-jacket, and liable to be docked of many years' hard-earned pension for pointing out a mistake to an officer who, instead of accepting expert information gratefully, reports them for insolence.