pleted the time required to qualify for
Flag Rank. The Queen's Regulations ordained that before a captain could
win this prized position he must have completed a period of from five to
six years of active service. In 1892, Lord CHARLES, the flag almost in
reach of his hand, applied for permission to count-in the 315 days he
was strenuously and brilliantly at work in the Soudan. The Board of
Admiralty, invulnerable in their environment of red tape, refused the
request, repeating the _non possumus_ when on two subsequent occasions
the request was preferred.

It must be admitted that the Board had no reason to regard Lord CHARLES
with favour or even with equanimity. When returned to Parliament, the
man who had superintended the mending of the boiler on the penny
steamboat on the Nile, devoted himself to the bigger task of mending the
Navy, at that time in an equally pitiful condition. During his brief and
solitary term of office as Junior Lord of the Admiralty, Lord CHARLES,
who thought he was put there to do some work, drew up a memorandum on
the necessity of creating at the Admiralty a Naval Intelligence
Department. The memorandum was laid before the Board, and the Junior
Lord was told he was meddling with high matters that did not come within
the scope of his business. A few weeks later a Naval Intelligence
Department (of a sort) was created. _Sic vos non vobis._

'Twas ever thus. Lord CHARLES, whether in office, on active service, or
from his familiar place above the Gangway in the House of Commons,
bringing to bear upon Naval affairs the gift of keen intuition and the
endowment of long practical experience, has, with one exception, done
more than any man living to deliver the Navy from mistakes inevitable in
the case of the over-lordship of a civilian who is subject to currents
of political and party feeling. By way of reward he has received more
kicks than ha'pence.

* * * * *

Illustration: GERMANISED TURKEY.

"DERE YOU ARE, MEIN FRIENDT; DER SAME OLD FLAG MIT A _LEEDLE_
DIFFERENCE."

* * * * *

ANOTHER RUINED TRADE.

I had secured an empty compartment. Something in my blood makes me rush
for an empty compartment. I suppose it is because I am a Briton, yet it
was another Briton who intruded upon my privacy.

At the first glance I saw that he would talk to me about the--well, what
do you expect? I can always tell when men want to talk about it.