The Fairmont West Virginian

Navy and the Young Man.

Providence Bulletin.

Lieutenant Soule, of the United States Navy, does not share the impression generally held outside the service that the Navy does not offer a field encouraging to young men to enter through the hawse hole, however fair the prospect may be from the point of view of the cabin window. It is true that the naval organization affords only a remote chance to achieve a commission, except by way of appointment to Annapolis, but that even this ambition is not impossible of realization is shown in Lieutenant Soule's own experience for he entered the service as an enlisted man. As a matter of fact, the warrant officers are highly desirable goals for ambition compare very favorably with the positions of trust and emolument open to young men engaged in shore business. The modern warship requires a high degree of technical training on the part of the crew and no ordinary school course on shore is equally thorough in the instruction provided in electricity, engineering and other branches of skilled artisan ship. "When all things are considered," Lieutenant Soule points out in the Navy League Journal, "the certain pay, the government's liberal provisions and the opportunities to rise to warrant and even commissioned rank, it will be surprising if, within two or three years, we do not find the Navy 'full up' with young men who are in to stay, and it will become quite as hard a matter to enter the naval service through the enlisted branch as it is now to enter through Annapolis."