occupies but five days, it is intensive in
its scope and application. The cold print of our official instructions
has its limitations, and Admiralty circulars are not perhaps famous for
lucidity. More can be done by a skilled interpreter with a blackboard in
a few minutes than could be gathered in half an hour's reading. At first
assembly there is perhaps an atmosphere of boredom. Routine details and
a programme of operations are hardly welcome to masters accustomed to
command. In a way, we have condescended to come among our juniors, to
listen with the mates and second mates to what may be said: we assume,
perhaps, a detached air of constraint.

It is no small tribute to the lecturer that this feeling rarely persists
beyond the opening periods. Only the most perversely immovable can
resist the interest of a practical demonstration. The classes are under
charge of an officer, R.N., who has had deep-sea experience of enemy
submarine activities. Often he is of the 'Q-ship' branch, and can
enliven his lectures with incidents that show us a side of the
sea-contest with which not many are familiar. If we are informed of the
deadly advantage of the submarine, we are equally enlightened as to its
limitations. In a few minutes, by virtue of a plot on the blackboard,
the vantage of a proper zigzag is made clear and convincing. Points of
view--in a literal sense--are expounded, and not a few of us recall our
placing of look-outs and register a better plan. Following the officer
in charge, a lieutenant of the Submarine Service dissects his vessel on
the blackboard, carefully detailing the action in states of weather and
circumstance. The under-water manoeuvres of an attack are plotted out
and explained in a practical way that no handbook could rival. The
personal magnetism of the expert rivets our attention; the routine of
under-seafaring gives us a good inkling of the manner of man we have to
meet and fight at sea; we are given an insight to the mind-working of
our unseen opponent--the brain below the periscope is probed and
examined for our education.

Nothing could be better illustrative of the wide character of our
seafaring than the range of our muster in the lecture-hall. Every type
of our trade appears in the class that assembles weekly to attend the
instructional course. We have no grades of seniority or precedence. We
are sea-republicans when we come to sit together in class. Hardy
coasting masters, commanders of Royal M