The ‘canker of a long peace,’ during recent years at any rate, is not manifested in disuse of arms, but in mistaken methods.  For a quarter of a century the civilised world has tended more and more to become a drill-ground, but the spirit dominating it has been that of the pedant.  There has been more exercise and less reality.  The training, especially of officers, becomes increasingly scholastic.  This, and the deterioration consequent on it, are not merely modern phenomena.  They appear in all ages.  ‘The Sword of the Saracens,’ says Gibbon, ’became less formidable when their youth was drawn from the camp to the college.’  The essence of pedantry is want of originality.  It is nourished on imitation.  For the pedant to imitate is enough of itself; to him the suitability of the model is immaterial.  Thus military bodies have been ruined by mimicry of foreign arrangements quite inapplicable to the conditions of the mimics’ country.  More than twenty years ago Sir Henry Maine, speaking of the war of American Independence, said, ’Next to their stubborn valour, the chief secret of the colonists’ success was the incapacity of the English generals, trained in the stiff Prussian system soon to perish at Jena, to adapt themselves to new conditions of warfare.’  He pointed out that the effect of this uncritical imitation of what was foreign was again experienced by men ’full of admiration of a newer German system.’  We may not be able to explain what it is, but, all the same, there does exist something which we call national characteristics.  The aim of all training should be to utilise these to the full, not to ignore them.  The naval methods of a continental state with relatively small oceanic interests, or with but a brief experience of securing these, cannot be very applicable to a great maritime state whose chief interests have been on the seas for many years.

How is all this applicable to the ultimate efficiency of the British Navy?  It may be allowed that there is a good deal of truth in what has been written above; but it may be said that considerations sententiously presented cannot claim to have much practical value so long as they are absolute and unapplied.  The statement cannot be disputed.  It is unquestionably necessary to make the application.  The changes in naval materiel, so often spoken of, introduced within the last fifty years have been rivalled by the changes in the composition of the British Navy.  The human element remains in original individual character exactly the same as it always was; but there has been a great change in the opportunities and facilities offered for the development of the faculties most desired in men-of-war’s men.  All reform—­using the word in its true sense of alteration, and not in its strained sense of improvement—­has been in the direction of securing perfect uniformity.  If we take the particular directly suggested by the word just used, we may remember, almost with astonishment,