There are many advantages about the system of promotion of captain by seniority. Once they reached that rank, captains are no longer in competition with one another for promotion, a state of affairs which has a very great deal to recommend it. Nelson described his captains as "a band of brothers," and that indeed is the condition which has survived to this day. It ought not to be that captains, who have already passed twice through a process of most careful selection, need any longer the stimulus of uncertain promotion to keep them up to the mark, They do not, indeed, and if there should be an exceptional case, the Admiralty can always deal with it by the method of non-employment.
A captain in the Navy has reached a position of great responsibility, in which he often has to make, unaided, decisions on matters of the highest importance. In such circumstances it is desirable that a captain should be in a position to exercise his responsibility freely, and not be cramped by the thought that he may lose a recommendation for promotion if his senior officer should disagree with a decision that he makes. These, no doubt are amongst the considerations which have kept this system in force in the Navy for two centuries.
The Aümiraly, however, have announced their decision to alter this time-honoured syslem. They propose to take power to promote any captain to rear-admiral by selection provided he has five years' sonority or more. It is $ be presumed that they adjudge the neces-
so urgent that the advantages of the old sys-lowering the age of flag officers to be tem must be suspended. But it is to be noted that the new system shortens the period of service in the rank of captain without shortening it in any of the lower ranks, There is much to be said regarding the Navy's need for younger captains. Perhaps the Admiralty will have to take action in this direction also.
Since the outbreak of war a number of appointments to flag commands had been made from time to time. Hardly any of them have been announced, however, for the obvious reasons that to do so would give a hint to the enemy of the nature of alterations in the organization and position of the Fleet. Recently, however, a list of flag appointments which had been made since the beginning of the war was issued by the Admiralty.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.