. The navy wants ship-fitters,
blacksmiths, plumbers, electricians, wireless operators, carpenters,
boiler-makers, painters, printers, store-keepers, bakers, cooks,
stewards, drug clerks; even as it wants gunners, boatmen, quartermasters,
sailmakers, firemen, oilers, and it will take clarinet, trombone, and
cornet players and the like for the ship's band.

If a man has no trade the navy will teach him one. There are navy
schools for electricians, shipwrights, ship-fitters, carpenters,
painters, coppersmiths, ship's cooks, bakers, stewards, and musicians.
There are schools where yeomen (ship's clerks) are taught all about
departmental papers; there is a Hospital Corps school; an aeronautic
school; a school for deep-sea diving. (There are no schools for
blacksmiths or boiler-makers; these must have mastered their trades
before enlistment.)

When a young fellow enlists he is sent to one of several naval
training-stations. Here they are quartered in barracks--well-aired,
well-lighted, well-heated buildings. At one place, where the climate is
mild, the boys sleep in barracks in bungalows with upper sides of
canvas, which are rolled down to let in sun and air in fine weather and
laced up against bad weather.

At all training-stations there are mess-halls, reading-rooms, libraries;
also gymnasiums, athletic fields, and ball parks. At all stations there
are setting-up drills, gymnastic, swimming and signal exercises, ship
and boat training. The men go on hikes, fight sham battles, dig trenches.
Line-officers give them advice which will be of use to them on shipboard
later; service doctors and chaplains hand them hygienic and moral truths
that will be of use to them anywhere at any time.

A recruit goes from the training-school to a cruising ship, where he may
find himself--according to his work--doing watch duty four hours on to
eight hours off; or working at hours like a man ashore--turning to at
eight or nine o'clock and knocking off at four or five or six o'clock in
the afternoon.

War-ships formerly meant close living quarters; and ships formerly went
off on cruises on which the men sometimes did not set foot on shore for
six months or a year, and quite often they had to go for months without
taste of fresh meat or vegetables. Those days are gone. Ships still make
long cruises from home, but they do not keep the sea as they used to.
Service regulations require that men now be given a run ashore once in
three months; a