Preparedness for naval war therefore consists not so much in the building of ships and guns as it does in the possession of trained men in adequate numbers, fit to go on board at once and use the material, the provision of which is merely one of the essential preparations for war.  The word “fit” includes fairly all that detail of organization commonly called mobilization, by which the movements of the individual men are combined and directed.  But mobilization, although the subjects of it are men, is itself a piece of mental machinery.  Once devised, it may be susceptible of improvement, but it will not become inefficient because filed away in a pigeon-hole, any more than guns and projectiles become worthless by being stored in their parks or magazines.  Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves.  Provide your fit men,—­fit by their familiarity not only with special instruments, but with a manner of life,—­and your mobilization is reduced to a slip of paper telling each one where he is to go.  He will get there.

That a navy, especially a large navy, can be kept fully manned in peace—­manned up to the requirements of war—­must be dismissed as impracticable.  If greatly superior to a probable enemy, it will be unnecessary; if more nearly equal, then the aim can only be to be superior in the number of men immediately available, and fit according to the standard of fitness here generalized.  The place of a reserve in any system of preparation for war must be admitted, because inevitable.  The question, of the proportion and character of the reserve, relatively to the active force of peace, is the crux of the matter.  This is essentially the question between long-service and short-service systems.  With long service the reserves will be fewer, and for the first few years of retirement much more efficient, for they have acquired, not knowledge only, but a habit of life.  With short service, more men are shoved through the mill of the training-school.  Consequently they pass more rapidly into the reserve, are less efficient when they get there, and lose more rapidly, because they have acquired less thoroughly; on the other hand, they will be decidedly more numerous, on paper at least, than the entire trained force of a long-service system.  The pessimists on either side will expound the dangers—­the one, of short numbers; the others, of inadequate training.

Long service must be logically the desire, and the result, of voluntary systems of recruiting the strength of a military force.  Where enrolment is a matter of individual choice, there is a better chance of entrance resulting in the adoption of the life as a calling to be followed; and this disposition can be encouraged by the offering of suitable inducements.  Where service is compulsory, that fact alone tends to make it abhorrent, and voluntary persistence, after time has been served, rare.  But, on the other hand, as the necessity for numbers in war is as real