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with floating workshops for repairs, and a number of depot and parent ships for service with the torpedo craft, and the Admiralty have provided groups of mine-layers and minesweepers ready for instant service.

This, in briefest outline is the organization of the British Navy at present. It takes no account of older ships with small maintenance crews. Of sixty-three battleships and battleship-cruisers (Indomitables) of less than twenty-five years old, thirty-one are maintained on a war footing and ten possess nucleus crews of regular officers and men, varying in strength from 50 per cent. and upwards of the full war strength. Of thirty-eight armored cruisers less than twenty years old, eighteen are maintained in full commission in Europe, and ten have large nucleus crews. There is an even larger proportion of protected cruisers kept permanently in commission, but many of them are outside European waters, constituting the China, East Indies, Australian, Cape of Good Hope, and West Indian Squadrons. There are also four armored cruisers on the China Station, where Germany has a very small force, including one armored ship only. An examination of the Navy List shows that rather more than half of the torpedo craft of the British Fleet-the new vessels-are kept in full seagoing commission and the remainder with large nucleus

crews.

It should be added that nucleuscrew ships are not comparable with the ships in reserve in foreign fleets, in that the British vessels are dispatched to sea frequently for cruises and engage in gunnery and other competitions similar to those in the fully commissioned divisions of the fleet. Nor can one other salient fact be ignored. Ship for ship the British Navy possesses units which are without compeers under any other flag. This

month there will be in the Home Fleet a group of nine ships embodying the all-big-gun principle, four vessels of the Dreadnought type, three of the Indomitable class, and the Lord Nelson and Agamemnon. There will in addition be eight battleships of the King Edward VII. class. In no other European fleet in the world is there a single unit equal to either of these seventeen armored ships. Judged by the new standard of naval strength which rests upon peace training for war, the British Fleet has never been worked more persistently and consistently or to better purpose than to-day. So great has been the improvement of naval gunnery owing to the spirit of emulation which has been excited afloat, the institution of the war nucleus crews, and the introduction of improved weapons and resources, that as a fighting machine the fleet is today of three times the fighting value that it was ten years ago.

Looking back over the period which has elapsed since Germany abandoned the old easy-going methods of peace and inaugurated the new routine of careful preparation for war, the British people have cause for congratulation. The Navy to-day exhibits the result of careful thought and intelligent organization. Thankful for what has already been accomplished in remodelling the British forces to modern conditions, it is at the same time apparent that there are still deficiencies to be made good. The strength of a chain is that of its weakest links. The British Navy still has weak links. It requires a well-considered scheme of mobile coast defence upon our eastern shores. It requires increased docking facilities between Rosyth in the north and Portsmouth in the south-a stretch of coast which is at present without a single dock which can take a Dreadnought. It stands in need of a persistent and courageous policy

which shall provide it with an adequate number of new ships of war— not less than eight Dreadnoughts this year so that it may successfully meet the unprecedented rivalry in the new types which threatens it in the immediate future. And, lastly, it will require increasingly large expenditure on The Nineteenth Century and After.

war training if it is to maintain its traditional standing. There must be economy financially-otherwise our resources will prove inadequate-but let us be spendthrift in the attention devoted to preparation for war as a definite end. Thus and thus only can we secure peace.

Archibald S. Hurd.

LEAVES FROM THE DIARY OF A TRAMP.

So

A happy chance, kind alike to the writer of the following pages and to me, brought us into communication in the month of January. Letters, inquisitive on the one side and frank on the other ripened the acquaintance; and informing me little by little of all but the outward aspect of the writer, enable me to state to-day with confidence not only that he is what he represents himself to be-not only that he has lived the life and plumbed the depths which he describes-but, over and above this, that he has passed through the sharp experience unembittered, with a spirit unbroken, and with hope in his breast. much I may permit myself to say of the writer. For the reader, it may be good for some, dozing in the sunshine of prosperity, to dwell awhile on the diverse fortunes and deserts of men. Nor, at a time when the dark twin brethren of Unemployment and the Poor Law-problems to one class, spectres to another-loom large, and demand so much of the public thought, will it harm any to hear a witness rarely qualified to speak. For to know the inside of the tramp ward and still to be able to paint it, not luridly, but with dry impartiality to see with vagrant eyes good as well as evil in the stolid householder-is to possess a knowledge and a power rarely found in a single man. Here is one who, speaking from the gulf, speaks nevertheless in our own tongue.

Stanley J. Weyman.

I have been for some months now a tramp; herding in common lodginghouses with outcasts, outlaws, men broken on the wheel of life. Sleeping by the wayside in fields, in haystacks, when fate has been cruel and I penni

less. Hungering often, not merely for bodily food, but for spiritual, human sympathy and fellowship. Going from shop to shop asking to be employed: asking at first hopefully, then timidly and with fear. Haunting railway stations, hoping to earn a copper by carrying the bag of some well-fed, selfsatisfied traveller, who rarely deigns to answer the timid request. Following luggage-piled cabs. Standing one of a hungering crowd before the dock gates. Breaking stones hard as a nether millstone in the workhouse labor yard.

My life had been such a quiet one. I went to school when I was three, so that the teacher could do the work of the nursemaid my heavily-burdened mother was too poor to employ. When I was twelve I was awarded a scholarship tenable at the grammar school; but the call to "follow the Gleam" was not for me. Money was needed in the home: I had to leave school and go to work in the velvet-mill. Hateful work to me, but helpful to the family exchequer.

Far back as my memory goes I have loved books. All my pennies went into the pocket of the second-hand bookseller in the market-place. Every Saturday night I rummaged through his "penny" box, to return home laden with my spoil. Then, as I grew older and was allowed to roam at will

through the well-stocked shop, what glorious times I had! What did it matter if I was chained to the mill in the daytime? Half-past six saw me washed, dressed, tea over, and six hours in front of me during which I could company with the wise and great of all time, and forget that at six o'clock next morning I would be called to prepare for the cramping routine of another day. In the daytime I was a machine; the evening I lived. And so the years passed-eleven of them-quiet, uneventful. I lived in a little world of my own; then, without warning, my little world ceased to revolve on its axis.

That trade had been bad for long I knew; of the mill closing I never dreamt. Yet close it did and I was masterless. I had worked from boyhood to manhood at the one millgrown up with it, until I grew to regard my going there as part of the settled order of things. Now I had to go out into the world to try to find another little niche into which I could creep.

I tried hard, without success; answering advertisements personally and by letter. My little stock of money soon came to an end. My belongings had to go. Then I had to face the fact that from my books also I must part. I arranged for a dealer to call; then, going into my little room, I locked the door and spent my last evening with them, bidding them farewell.

How ridiculous this will seem to the man of business, whose eyes are rarely raised from the muck his rake is turning over, or gathering together!

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the British workman be-pedestalled by Smiles, whose god is Thrift; or to the British workman-my workmateswhose god is Beer, whose temple is the "Black Boy," whose high priest is the publican.

These books had made up the best

part of my life. To them I had always gone for sanctuary when troubles beset me. Not without a wrench could I part from them. And so I sat, with just the light of the fire flickering along the shelves. And as I sat memories of all the books had meant to me and been to me came round me like a flood.

Wordsworth; Coleridge; De Quincey; Swift; fussy little Oliver Goldsmith; Matthew Arnold; Malory; Mill; Gibbon; Darwin; Spenser's "Faerie Queene"; Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus"; Hakluyt; Bacon; rare Ben Jonson; More's "Utopia"; Plato's "Republic"; sententious Selden; mystical Crashaw; satirically comic Butler; Voltaire the cynic; "Religio Medici" Browne; Rabelais, with his jewelled mud and his muddied jewels; Rousseau--clay, clay, and fine gold; Schopenhauer, who always seemed to make the sun go down and the birds cease their singing; lovable Quixote; Milton, lonely, blind, immortal; inspired Bunyan; brave, sturdy old Johnson; Tolstoy; Gorki; Maeterlinck; Heine these and many others, a goodly company, flitted across the lantern screen of memory as I sat there glancing along the laden shelves.

Last of all, the little company of the elect, my special friends: Shakespeare; gentle Elia; eruptive Carlyle; Bridge's "Prometheus the Firegiver"; "Aylwin"; "John Inglesant"; Stevenson; Keats; the old Persian Omar Khayyam; John Richard Green; George Eliot; optimistic Robert Browning; and, hiding himself, as though in company too great for his deserving, “The Road-mender."

I divided the proceeds with my mother, then, leaving my native place, I took train for Leeds, for I thought that surely in busy Yorkshire there would be a place for me. After Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, and SO on through the principal towns.

In each town I entered I made for the free library, and went through the advertisement columns of the local newspapers, making notes of the employers in need of men-whatever the work was. Then followed the weary tramp from shop to shop, works to works, office to office; and my spirits would go lower and lower as I received the barely civil, "not suitable" or "too late," or the abrupt "no," given in the tone of the successful to the failure. Then I began to work my way toward Lancanshire again, going through Preston and Lancaster. When I reached Morecambe my funds were reduced to one penny, and, buying two bananas, I walked through the town. No work. When in the evening I looked across the bay in the direction of Barrow-in-Furness, where next I had determined to go, the lowering clouds gave promise of a stormy night: a promise they did not fail to keep.

But rain, hail, or snow, without money for a bed, on I must tramp. As the way out of Morecambe in the direction of Barrow was difficult to find, I got on to the railway track, hoping that the darkness of the night would atone for making the legitimate way difficult to discover by hiding me from official and officious eyes. Some miles I had walked along when I was seen by a signalman, who ordered me off; he softened the order, however, by asking me into his cabin to have a cup of tea, and then pointing out a road quite near the track, that would lead me in the right direction.

Shortly after this the storm burst. Soon I was drenched to the skin, and "squelch," "squelch," went my boots as I plodded along-for shelter there was none. After some hours' walking I came to a ruined building, and soon I was through a breach in the walls. The place was already occupied, for out of the darkness a voice remarked LIVING AGE. VOL. XLIV.

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on the wildness of the night. I could hear the loud breathing of others who were sleeping, but there was no light, and I could not see who my fellowlodgers were. Sitting on a piece of fallen masonry I tried to sleep. In vain. Ghosts of past days haunted me; past ambitions mocked me; and I had no weapon with which to drive them away.

On

Dawn revealed to me, sleeping soundly on the other side of the floor, a man, a woman, and two children, evidently vagrants; and, stepping quietly out, I resumed my tramp. through Carnforth, Grange-over-Sands --the scenery beautiful; but I had no eyes for beauty of scenery. My feet began to blister, my legs to ache and for the first time in my life I knew what real hunger was. The tower at Ulverston was in view for hours before I reached it-that was the worst of the tramp. I thought I had not far to go from Morecambe, Barrow is but a few miles-just across the water; but continually when I thought I had got on the right side of the bay I found another arm stretching inland, and I had to go further and further round. At Ulverston I got a lift for a few miles on a mineral-water wagon. We had not gone very far when the carter pulled up at an ale-house and invited me to "have a pint." I told him I was an abstainer and he went in and left me to wait outside for his return. So I have found it all along: it is very easy to get beer, terribly difficult to get food. Many men will say: "Come an' 'ave a drink," who would never dream of saying: "Come an' 'ave a bite."

When the wagon reached its destination-Dalton-and I had to get off, I found myself so stiff and sore that walking was torture. It was night when I reached the Furness Abbey, on the outskirts of Barrow, and I walked on towards the town, hungry, without

the slightest idea how I was going to spend the night. As I passed the railway station a man came out carrying a bag. Vanity beat a rapid retreat before the combined forces of hunger and weariness, and I asked him if I might carry it. Without a word he handed it to me, and I started off behind him. Atlas could not have found the bearing of his burden more difficult than did I that bag that night. From shoulder to shoulder I shifted it, and from hand to hand, but gradually it grew in weight until I thought my staggering legs would refuse to perform their office. Just when I felt I

could go on no longer my employer stopped at a gate, took the bag from me, placed it on the ground, and gave me a shilling! I could hardly believe my good fortune. Then, taking my hand in a firm grip, he said: "You look too good for this kind of work, my lad. With all my heart I pray God send you better times." With his kind words ringing in my ears and warming my heart I started to look for a cheap eating-house, and, finding one, I was soon doing my utmost to empty quickly a generous basin of soup. Then I went out to look for a common lodging-house in which to spend the night. I wonder if any of my readers have ever been inside a doss-house. Until then I never had, though I have been in many since from the palatial municipal enterprise to the "tup-penny doss."

I found a house-not very inviting in appearance-with, oyer the door, a notice: "Good beds for working men and travellers"; and I went through the open doorway, along a dark passage. A hard-featured woman came out of the front room, and I asked her if I could have a bed. She looked at me curiously for a moment, then "Yis," she said. "Wher's yer money?" paid her. "Thet's road to t' kitchen," nodding her head towards a door at

I

the end of the passage.

the

The kitchen was below the level of the street. There had evidently been at one time two rooms, which had been converted into one by simply knocking down the dividing wall. A single gas-jet gave just light enough to reveal the, at one time, whitewashed walls, the benches and tables scattered about, the dirty, sawdust covered floor, the strange company, and mercifully hid from me many things the stronger light of day revealed. There was a good fire-the one redeeming feature of even worst of doss-houses-and soon my clothes were steaming as I sat beside it, and began to take stock of my fellow-lodgers. They were mostly vagrants, in appearance disreputable, in many cases even criminal. The conversation vile-the landlady signalizing each visit to the kitchen by the perpetration of some joke (!), making up for lack of wit by superabundance of filth. The smell of the room sickening the odor of cooking, strong tobacco smoke, beer fumes, and other and viler odors, struggling for the mastery. There was one man sitting near me, however, who looked like a respectable workman "down on his luck," and I entered into conversation with him. He was a mechanic, had tramped from Bradford looking for a job, and was now supporting himself by begging. He was a good workman -he showed me a six years' "character" from his last employers; but he was rapidly drifting toward the unemployable stage. I have found during my sojourn in the world "Là-bas," and intercourse with its inhabitants, that if a man is once driven by want to either crime or begging there is a fatal fascination about success; it takes not more than two months to transform the honest unemployed workman

who ought to be an asset to society -into the practically unemployable vagrant, or into the criminal preying

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