Catch boys young, inure them to Naval discipline, and teach them the value of it, and to them it will become part of the essential fabric of their lives. A good example of how men of Naval training cling to the discipline of the Service as to a firm unbreakable rope was shown in Captain Scott’s South Polar expeditions. Some of the officers, and practically the whole of the crews, were lent by the Navy, but the expeditions themselves were under auspices which were not naval. At sea Captain Scott’s legal authority was that of a merchant skipper, on land during his exploring expeditions he had no legal authority at all. Yet all the officers and men, knowing that their lives depended upon willing subordination, agreed that the discipline both at sea and on land should be that of the Navy to which most of them belonged. The ships were run exactly as if they had flown the White Ensign, and as if their companions were under the Navy Act. Strict though it may be, there is nothing arbitrary about naval discipline, and those who have tested it in peace and war know its quality of infinite endurance under any strain. The Navy is a small Service, small in numbers, and to this very smallness is partly due the beauty of its Soul. For it is a picked Service, and only by severe selection in their youth can those be chosen who are worthy to remain among its permanent members. The professional officers and men number only some 150,000, and the great temporary war expansion—after the inclusion of Naval Reservists, Naval Volunteers, and the Division for service on land, did little more than treble the active list. The Navy, even then, bore upon its rolls names less than one-twelfth as numerous as in those legions who were drafted into the Army. Yet this small professional Navy, by reason of its Soul and the vast machines which that Soul secretes and employs with supreme efficiency, dominated throughout the war the seas of the whole world. The Navy has for so long been a wonder and a miracle that we have ceased to be thrilled by it; we take it for granted; but it remains no less a wonder and a miracle.