Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/378

 MARRIAGE No. 2. WHAT IT MEAN5 TO Service, the THE Navy being the senior wife of a naval officer takes precedence of the wife of a soldier, but privately this rule is not adhered to strictly. The Navy differs in almost every particular from the Army, and the naval man's wife feels quite strange when faced with Army regulations. "The Poor Man's Service" A lieutenant of eight years' standing in the Navy ranks with a major of the Army ; with less than eight years his rank equals that of an Army captain. A naval captain of three years' standing is equal to an Army colonel ; with less " than three years he equals a lieutenant-colonel. A rear-admiral is of equal rank to a military major-general, a vice-admiral to a lieutenant-general, and an admiral to a general. So Captain Mrs. Tones whose husband serves on H.M.S. Mercury ranks higher socially than Captain Mrs. Jones whose husband commands a battery of Royal Horse Artillery. ' The Navy, however, is the " poor man's Service," and exceptional are the junior officers who have more to live on than the pay the State allows them. This is not more than los. to 14s. a day for a lieutenant, cx'clusive of any small sums he may receive for knowledge of various branches of gunnery. A captain receives 21s. to 24s. a day On this he considers himself rich enough to marry, but naturally his wife is only able to entertain very little. One of the unwritten rules of the Navy is that junior officers shall not entertain much, and if anyone transgresses this rule, he is spoken to rather severely by his captain. Of course, there are a few lieutenants and captains who have ample private means. They can do as they like in this matter, and often are able to give a pleasant time to their less fortunate friends in the Service. An admiral's wife, with her husband's pay of £5 to £6 a day, is expected to entertain a great deal. She will, if she likes the officers' wives living near her station, invite them to her parties, even including the wife of the youngest heutenant. Another reason for the smallness of the amount of entertaining done by naval BE A NAVAL OFFICER'S WIFE officers' wives is the fact that they have the companionship of their husbands for so short a time. An officer's commission for foreign service is now usually two years, except for very distant stations, and his shore leave is only a fortnight for every year he serves. This means he spends only a month with his wife every alternate year, holidays that seem like recurring honeymoons. It is only a small proportion of officers who serve with the Home Squadron, in the dockyards, or in any of the scanty shore posts. Most officers' wives have to content themselves with being " grass widows," and enjoy life as best they can without their husbands. The officer serving at home in any capacity gets six weeks' leave at the end of his term of service. But he is also able to get week- ends occasionally, and other short periods of leave. Yet slackness can never be attributed to the sailor. He works like a horse. He is as keen, too, on sport as the Army man, and encourages it among his men. This takes up what otherwise would be his " spare time." A large number of officers' wives live in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth and Devon- port, where they can join the circle of naVal society, and be near at hand for the sailing and incoming of the ships. Some wives, though the number is small, go abroad with their husbands, though, of course, never on their husband's ship, and spend the two years at the station which is the head- quarters of the fleet with which the husbands are connected. They either take lodgings, or hire a furnished house from some departing Army or Navy man. Life in Foreign Stations These stations are usually largely composed of men of both Services and their wives, and life is very much the same, except, perhaps, a little gayer, as it is in a home station. The favourite stations are Gibraltar, the headquarters of the Atlantic Fleet, and Malta, the headquarters of the Mediterranean Fleet. Here the population is almost entirely made up of Service men and their wives, and no one is lonely or without friends. The admiral's wife and the general's wife