respectable seamen into a service that was made at that time a barbarous despotism by a set of brainless whipper-snappers who gained their rank by backstair intrigue with a shameless aristocracy!  All that kind of villainy has been wiped out; and the men of the Royal Navy are now treated like human beings; and they do their work not a whit less courageously and well than they did when it was customary to lash God’s creatures with strands of whipcord loaded with lead until the blood oozed from their skins.  There is no need to press either men or boys to enter the King’s Naval Service.  It has now been made sufficiently attractive to obviate the need for that.  Nor is there any necessity for shipowners to be called upon, with or without subsidy, to train and supply men for the Navy.  They have enough to do to look after their own manning, and this can be done easily by the adoption of methods that will break down any objection British parents may have to their sons becoming indentured to steamship owners, who will find work for them to do, and who will have them trained by a kindly discipline, paid, fed, and lodged properly; but still, if they are to be thorough men, there should be no pampering.  Unquestionably, then, the place for training should be aboard the vessels they are intended to man and become officers and masters of.  No need for subsidised training vessels; and certainly no need for a national charge being made for the benefit of shipowners, who have no right to expect that any part of their working expenses should be paid by the State.

As an example of how sympathy is growing for the apprenticeship system, Messrs. Watts,[3] Watts & Company, of London, have for many years carried apprentices aboard their steamers, and the grand old Blythman who adorns the City of London commercial life with all that is ruggedly honest and manly, has just purchased, at great cost, a place in Norfolk, which his generous son, Shadforth, has agreed to furnish, and then it is to be endowed as a training-field for sailor-boys.  The veteran shipowner is well known by his many unostentatious acts of philanthropy to have as big a heart as ever swelled in a human breast; but, knowing him as I do, I feel assured that his philanthropy would have taken another form had he not been convinced he was conferring a real national benefit by giving larger opportunities to British lads to enter the merchant service.

I give two other notable examples of success because of the care taken in selecting the boys and the care adopted in training them.  Mr. Henry Radcliffe, senior partner of Messrs. Evan Thomas, Radcliffe & Co., of Cardiff, has taken a personal interest in boy apprentices for years.  His experience of them has long passed the experimental state, and his testimony is that this is the only way the merchant navy can be adequately and efficiently maintained.