Many causes have combined to make this little group—this few, this happy few, this band of brothers—the most splendid human force which the world has ever seen. The Naval Service is largely hereditary. Officers and men come from among those who have served the sea for generations. In the Navy List of to-day one may read names which were borne upon the ships’ books of hundreds of years ago. And since the tradition of the sea plays perhaps the greatest part in the development of the Naval Soul, this continuity of family service, on the lower deck as in the wardroom and gun room, needs first to be emphasised. The young son of an officer, of a warrant-officer, of a seaman, or of a marine, enters the Service already more than half trained. He has the spirit of the Service in his blood, and its collective honour is already his own private honour. I remember years ago a naval officer said to me sorrowfully, “My only son must go into the Service, and yet I fear that he is hardly fit for it. He is delicate, shy, almost timid. But what can one do?” “Is it necessary?” I asked foolishly. He stared at me: “We have served from father to son since the reign of Charles II.” So the boy entered the _Britannia_, and I heard no more of him until one morning, years after, I saw in an Honours List a name which I knew, that of a young Lieutenant who had won the rare naval V.C. in the Mediterranean. It was my friend’s son; blood had triumphed; the delicate, shy, almost timid lad had made good. The Navy catches its men when they are young, unspoiled, malleable, and moulds them with deft fingers as a sculptor works his clay. Officers enter in their early teens—now as boys at Osborne who afterwards become naval cadets at Dartmouth. Formerly they spent a year or two longer at school and entered direct as cadets to the _Britannia_. The system is essentially the same now as it has been for generations. The material must be good and young, the best of it is retained and the less good rejected. The best is moulded and stamped in the Dartmouth workshop, and emerges after the bright years of early boyhood with the naval hall mark upon it. The seamen enter as boys into training-ships, and they, too, are moulded and stamped into the naval pattern. It is a very exacting but a very just education. No one who has been admitted to the privilege of training need be rejected except by his own fault, and if he is not worthy to be continued in training, he is emphatically not worthy to serve in the Fleets.