THE BLACKSMITH AND HIS SHIPMATES The bluejackets get practical instruction in welding, making shackles, chains, and bolts at the forge "H THE EDUCATIONAL WORK OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY BY FRANK HUNTER POTTER THE PHOTOGRAPHS WERE TAKEN EXPRESSLY FOR THE OUTLOOK OW are the men behaving?" asked Admiral Osterhaus the other day of the Secretary of the Naval Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association in Brooklyn. "Spendidly," replied the Secretary; "I have not seen a drunken man in the building for over a month." "Well," said the Admiral, " it's so long since I have seen a drunken bluejacket that I have forgotten what one looks like." The old-fashioned type of hard-drinking, hard-swearing sailor is a thing of the past in the navy, and the days when a liberty party ashore meant a fight all along the water-front have gone forever. The new ships, aggregations of the most intricate machinery, demand a new class of sailor, and qualities different from the ability to lay out on a yard in a gale of wind or to haul away on a rope. The mechanical demands of these ships are so great that they have produced an entirely new type of bluejacket, a clear-eyed, cleanlimbed young man, mentally alert and physically active, fitted for the high pressure of the Iduties which have come to him under the new order of things. As a matter of fact, the navy has become one vast public school where everybody, officer and sailor, is employed in learning or teaching, very often in both. The duties on board our modern men-of-war are so highly specialized that it is impossible to find men fitted for them outside the service—they have to be trained in it. Consequently, from the day the apprentice sailor arrives at the training station until he leaves the service, his life is occupied in learning one thing or another, sometimes along the lines of a particular trade, always in the absorption of certain moral lessons and the acquirement of certain points of view which are, after all, the most valuable things which he gets out of his life in the navy. Getting into the navy is no longer the easy thing it once was. A recruit must be an American citizen, in the first place, and he must be intelligent, more or less educated, and of good moral character. Thanks to the number of men who apply for enlistment, a large proportion of whom are from inland cities, recruiting officers can see to it that these conditions are fulfilled, both for the good of the service and for their own comfort, for they are going to command these young men later, and it is pleasanter and easier to handle bright boys than dullards, and well-behaved ones rather than ruffians. Indeed, the good behavior of our sailors has come to be a matter of gratified comment everywhere. Admiral Evans said, with pride, that when he took our battle-ship fleet around to San Francisco the authorities of every port at which the fleet touched complimented him on the behavior of his men; and evidence to the same effect is continually forthcoming. The officer in charge of the detachment of men sent from the battle-ship Delaware to the inauguration of President Wilson gave his men two days' leave after the ceremonies were over, and plenty of spending money. At the end of the two days every single man reported at the railway station, and the train drew out a quarter of an hour ahead of time. Only a few weeks ago the correspondent of the New York "American," in Panama, described how nine hundred sailors from the fleet were taken at one time over the Canal works, and how on their return there was not a single straggler, but every man reported on his ship. Considering that these men had not left their ships in over a month, and remembering the attractions which Panama and Colon offer to young men of the college boy age, which is that of most of these sailors, it is reasonable to ask whether an equal number of collegians from any institution in the country would have made as good a record. There was a time, indeed, when the navy was regarded as a sort of reform school, and magistrates would consent to suspend sentence on condition that the prisoner "would enlist in the navy," but that sort of thing is discouraged by the recruiting officers, who refuse such men when they know their histories, and happily it is becoming less in favor with magistrates themselves. Not long ago Justice Goff, of the New York Supreme Court, refused to suspend sentence in a case THE NEW METHOD sprinkling of college men. The motives for enlistment are various. Some go in because they have not yet settled on a career. Others go in because the navy affords them a better prospect than most ordinary trades. Railroading is considered to be an unusually good trade. At the time recently when the engineers were demanding increased pay it was calculated that the average pay of railway men was $640 a year; the average pay of the bluejacket is $420, but he has in addition free board, lodging, and medical attendance, while there is no danger of loss from strikes or lay-offs. Hence it is clear that the net amount which the sailor has in hand at the end of the year, after all expenses have been paid, is very considerably larger than the railway man has. Another feature of life in the navy which attracts many young men is the prospect of seeing something of foreign countries. Some years ago I attended the funeral of a retired naval officer in a suburban town, and on my return in the train sat next the petty officer (a gunner's mate, I think), in charge of the firing party of bluejackets from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He asked if he had not seen me in the church, and added that he was interested in church matters because his brother was the rector of a large church in a neighboring city. I talked to him for some time, and then, impressed by his faultless English and evident good breeding, ventured, with due apologies, to ask him how it was that he, a man of such obvious cultivation, came to be an enlisted man in the navy. It was clearly not habitual dissipation which drove him to it; his rank precluded that. He was evidently intelligent The semaphore arms are raised or lowered at different angles, and at night these arms have three distinct color lights which are flashed at intervals of this kind, saying that "the navy does not want criminals. The day has passed when crooks and scoundrels can get into the navy. It is composed of respectable young men." As all enlisted men must be citizens of the United States, and the lowest age limit for enlistment is seventeen years, all of them have a certain amount of education, while a number are high school graduates, with a enough to have made his way ashore; what was it? "Well, I'll tell you," he said. "I love to travel and see the world. I could never be rich enough to have a yacht and go about, so I get it in the navy. I have been all over the East and in the Philippines, and around the Mediterranean. When my last enlistment expired we were in Beirut, Syria. I meant to re-enlist, of course, but not there. The regulations compel the Government to send us back to the place of our last enlistment, and mine was New York. They had to send me back by way of Constantinople, and I was there just after the Armenian massacres. It was very interesting." Then he went on to tell me that these massacres were not the result of religious hatred, which was the pretext, but of economic causes. The Armenians were the Jews of Turkey, who by their usury and sharp practice had so enriched themselves at the expense of the Turks that they were hated as the Jews were in Russia, and these massacres were blind outbursts of that hatred. He told me, too, the Levantine proverb that "It takes three Scotchmen to beat a Jew, three Jews to beat a Greek, and three Greeks to beat an Armenian." This was all very interesting, but so utterly at variance with the generally accepted views that I did not think anything more about it. A few months later, however, I was at a dinner table in London, and there I heard the same theory advanced by an English member of Parliament, who stated that this view of the case had only recently been accepted, because the Armenians had been trying to attract sympathy to themselves by posing as victims of religious persecution. When I told this gentleman that I had heard the same thing some months before from an American bluejacket, he had difficulty in crediting what I said. Yet here was nothing more than any intelligent man might have learned in the circumstances; and the fact is that life in the navy is every day opening just such opportunities for self-education to the young men in it, opportunities for which rich fathers pay great sums of money when they send their sons round the world or to Europe with tutors, sometimes in ships especially chartered for the purpose. There is no other public school anywhere which can offer so much to the young men in it. But the tuition in the navy is not all, nor for the most part, indirect. When the apprentice seaman enlists, he is sent forthwith to a training-station where he is put to school in the most literal sense. He has athletics and setting-up exercises for his physique, and lessons for both his head and his hands. He is taught to box the compass, to make splices and hitches and bowlines, to handle sails and oars, and all the other things which are needed to turn the landsman into a sailor. He is put into a battalion and taught to drill and maneuver. He is given a rifle and taught how to shoot with it. He is taught signaling with arms or flags (semaphore or wigwagging). He is taken off on short practice THE BAKERS OF THE SHIP cruises; and, finally, after a few months of this preparation, he is examined, and if he passes, he becomes a full-fledged seaman with increased pay. But do not imagine that this is the end of his education; it is only the beginning. It corresponds to the entrance examination of a college, and from that time on the sin.ilarity between the two institutions becomes stronger. There is, for instance, the elective system, which is found in one shape or another in many of our colleges, only in the navy it is the officer who does the electing, not the student. These young men enlisted as landsmen, and received instruction at the Commissary School, where they qualified and are now bakers schools maintained for training in these branches. He may be sent to the school of carpentry if he shows ability along that line, or to the school for seaman gunners if he develops capacity in that direction. There is a school for torpedoes, another for wireless telegraphy, and it is likely enough that, by the time this article is printed, either a school for marine aviation will have been established or arrangements will have been made to send sailors to the army school, for aeroplanes are just as important to warships in enabling them to detect the presence of submarines as they are to armies on land in detecting the position of masked batteries... Instruction in all these branches is carried on on board ship, and the progress of the men is watched with eager interest. If a man works faithfully, he can take the examinations for petty officer, and before |