NAVAL PREPAREDNESS
In a preceding chap01 endeavored to show why it is that the necessities of the naval defense of a country have caused the gradual development of different types of vessels, each having its distinctive work. If those different types operated in separate localities they would lose that mutual support which it is the aim of organization to secure, and each separate group could be destroyed in turn by the combined groups of an enemy. For this reason, the types or groups are combined in one large fleet, and an admiral is placed in command.
The command of a fleet is the highest effort of the naval art. Its success in time of war demands in the admiral himself a high order of mind and nerve and body; and it demands in all the personnel, from the highest to the lowest, such a measure of trained ability and character that each shall be able to discharge with skill and courage the duties of his station.
In order that the material fleet shall be efficient as a whole, each material unit must be efficient as a unit. Each ship must be materially sound; each pump, valve, cylinder, gun, carriage, torpedo, and individual appliance, no matter how small, must be in condition to perform its expected task. The complexity of a fleet baffles any mental effort, by even those most familiar with it, to grasp it fully. Each dreadnaught, battle cruiser, destroyer, submarine, collier, tender, hospital ship, scout, supply ship, and what-not, is a machine in itself, and is filled with scores—in some cases, hundreds—of highly specialized machines, operated by steam, oil, air, electricity, and water. A superdreadnaught is a machine which, including the machines inside of her, costs $15,000,000; a battle cruiser more.
The personnel is nearly as complicated as the material. Not only are there all the various ranks of commissioned officers in the line, medical corps, pay corps, marine corps, etc., but there are ten kinds of warrant officers besides; while in the enlisted personnel there are ninety-one different "ratings" in the navy, and thirteen in the marine corps, besides temporary ratings, such as gun-pointer, gun-trainer, gun-captain, etc. Each rank and rating carries its rigidly prescribed duties, as well as its distinctive uniform and pay. That such a multitudinous host of types and individuals, both material and personnel, can be actually combined in one unit fleet, and that fleet operated as a mobile directable organism by its admiral, is a high achievement of the human intellect.
How is it done?
By discipline, by training, by knowledge, by energy, by devotion, by will; by the exercise of those mental, moral, and spiritual faculties that may be grouped under the one term "mind": the same power that co-ordinates and controls a still more complex machine, the organism of the human body.
Despite its relative crudeness, a fleet possesses, more fully than any other fruit of man's endeavor, the characteristics of an organism, defined by Webster as "an individual constituted to carry on the activities of life by means of parts or organs more or less separate in function, but mutually dependent." And though it must be true that no fleet can approximate the perfection of nature's organisms, nevertheless there is an analogy which may help us to see how a complex fleet of complex vessels has been slowly evolved from the simple galley fleets of earlier days; how its various parts may be mutually dependent yet severally independent; and how all must be made to work as one vast unit, and directed as one vast unit by the controlling mind toward "the end in view."
The common idea is that an army consists of a number of soldiers, and a navy of a number of ships. This idea is due to a failure to realize that soldiers and ships are merely instruments, and that they are useless instruments unless directed by a trained intelligence: that the first essential in an army and the first essential in a navy is mind, which first correctly estimates the situation, then makes wise plans to meet it, then carries out those plans; which organizes the men and designs the ships, and then directs the physical power exertable by the men and the ships toward "the end in view."
Owing to the enormous mechanical power made available in ships by the floating properties of water, machinery is more used by navies than by armies; but this does not mean that machinery can take the place of men more successfully in navies than in armies, except in the sense that navies can use more mechanical power. The abundant use of machines and instruments in navies does not mean that machinery and instruments can take the place of trained intelligence—but exactly the reverse. Under the guidance of trained intelligence, a machine or instrument can perform wonders. But it is not the machinery that does the wonders; it is the trained intelligence that devised the instrument or machine, and the trained intelligence that operates it. Let the trained intelligence err, or sleep, and note the results that follow. The Titanic, a mass of 40,000 tons, moving through the water at 20 knots an hour, a marvel of the science and skill of man, crashes into an iceberg, because the trained intelligence directing her errs—and is reduced at once to an inert mass of iron and brass. The mighty fleet of Russia meets the Japanese fleet in Tsushima Straits; and because the trained intelligence that directed its movements seriously erred, in an engagement decided in less than an hour, is stripped of its power and glory, and transformed into a disorganized aggregation of separate ships—some sunk, some sinking, some in flight. The Japanese fleet, on the other hand, because it is directed with an intelligence more highly trained than that which directs the Russian fleet, and because, in consequence, the officers and enlisted men perform their various duties not only in the actual battle, but in preparation for it, with a skill greater than that used in the Russian fleet, suffers but little damage in the fight—though the advantage in number and size of ships is slightly with the Russians. As a consequence of that battle, the war between Russia and Japan was decided in favor of Japan, and terms of peace were soon agreed upon. Russia lost practically all the ships that took part in the battle, and several thousand of her officers and sailors—and she lost the whole object for which she went to war.
The difference between the Russian and Japanese fleets that gave the victory to the Japanese was a difference in trained intelligence and in the relative degrees of preparedness which that difference caused.
During the actual battle, the intelligence was that of the officers and men in the respective fleets, in managing the two fleets, the ships themselves, and the guns, engines, and machines of all kinds that those ships contained. It is this factor—trained intelligence—that has decided most of the battles of history, and the course that nations thereafter followed. Battles have usually been fought between forces not very different in point of numbers and material, for the reason that a force which knew itself to be weaker than another would not fight unless compelled to fight; and in cases where two forces of widely differing strength have fought, the situation has usually been brought about directly by a superior intelligence. In fact, one of the most frequent and important endeavors of strategy and tactics—used triumphantly by Napoleon—has always been such a handling of one's forces as to be superior to the enemy at the point of contact—to "get the mostest men there the firstest," as General Forrest is said to have expressed it.
The effect of superior-trained intelligence is greatest "at the top," but it can accomplish little unless a fine intelligence permeates the whole. A fine intelligence at the top will so direct the men below, will so select men for the various posts, and will so co-ordinate their efforts, that the organization will resemble a veritable organism: all the various organs fulfilling separately yet accurately their allotted functions; all the fire-control parties, all the gun crews, all the torpedo crews, all the engineer forces properly organized and drilled; all the hulls of the vessels, all the guns, all the torpedoes, all the multifarious engines, machines, and instruments in good material condition and correctly adjusted for use.
But it is not only in the actual battle that fine intelligence is required; it is required long before the battle and far distant from the scene—in the "admiralty" at home. The Japanese fleet set out fully manned with a highly trained, enthusiastic, and confident personnel; the Russian fleet set out manned with a poorly trained and discouraged personnel, only too well aware of their defects. The issue at Tsushima was decided before the respective fleets left their respective homes—though that issue was not then known to mortals. The battle emphasized, but did not prove, what had been proved a hundred times before: the paramount importance of preparedness; that when two forces fight—the actual battle merely secures the decision as to the relative values of two completed machines, and their degrees of preparedness for use.
Preparedness of material is not, of course, so important as preparedness of personnel, because if the personnel is prepared, they will inevitably prepare the material. And the preparedness must pervade all grades: for while it is true that the preparedness of those in high command is more important than the preparedness of those in minor posts, yet there is no post so lowly that its good or its ill performance will not be a factor in the net result. An unskilful oiler may cause a hot bearing that will slow down a battleship, and put out of order the column of a squadron; a signalman's mistake may throw a fleet into confusion.
Perfect preparedness of personnel and material is essential because events follow each other so rapidly in war that no preparation can be made after it has begun. To fight is the most intense work a man can do; and a war is nothing but a fight. No matter how great or how small a war may be, no war can lose the essential qualities of a fight, or (save in the treatment of prisoners) be more brutal or less brutal when fought between two little savage tribes, than when fought between two colossal groups of Christian nations, civilized to the highest point. War is the acme of the endeavor of man. Each side determines that it will win at all costs and at all hazards; that nobody's comfort, happiness, or safety shall receive the slightest consideration; that everybody's strength and courage must be worked to the limit by night as well as by day, and that there must be no rest and no yielding to any softening influence whatever; that the whole strength and mind of the nation, and of every individual in it, must be devoted, and must be sacrificed, if need be, to the cause at stake.
In war, a navy's primary duty has usually been to protect the coast and trade routes of its country; and in order to do this, it has had to be able to oppose to an attacking fleet a defending fleet more militarily effective. If it were less effective, even if no invasion were attempted, the attacking fleet could cripple or destroy the defending fleet and then institute a blockade. In modern times an effective blockade, or at least a hostile patrol of trade routes, could be held hundreds of miles from the coast, where the menace of submarines would be negligible; and this blockade would stop practically all import and export trade. This would compel the country to live exclusively on its own resources, and renounce intercourse with the outside world. Some countries could exist a long time under these conditions. But they would exist merely, and the condition of mere existence would never end until they sued for peace; because, even if new warships were constructed with which to beat off the enemy, each new and untrained ship would be sunk or captured shortly after putting out to sea as, on June 1, 1813, in Massachusetts Bay, the American frigate Chesapeake was captured and nearly half her crew were killed and wounded in fifteen minutes by a ship almost identical in the material qualities of size and armament—the better-trained British frigate Shannon.
For these reasons, every nation that has acquired and has long retained prosperity, has realized that every country liable to be attacked by any navy must either be defended by some powerful country, or else must keep a navy ready to repel the attack successfully. To do this, the defending navy must be ready when the attack comes; because if not ready then, it will never have time to get ready. In regard to our own country, much stress is laid by some intelligent people—who forget the Chesapeake and Shannon—on the 3,000 miles of water stretching between the United States and Europe. This 3,000 miles is, of course, a factor of importance, but it is not a prohibition, because it can be traversed with great surety and quickness—with much greater surety and quickness, for instance, than the 12,000 miles traversed by the Russian fleet, in 1904, in steaming from Russia to Japan.
The 3,000 miles that separate the United States from Europe can be traversed by a fleet more powerful than ours in from two to three weeks; and the fleet would probably arrive on our shores in good condition, and manned by full crews of well-trained officers and men, habituated to their duties by recent practice and thoroughly ready to fight, as the Shannon was. We could not meet this fleet successfully unless we met it with a fleet more militarily effective; and we could not do this unless we had in the regular service and the reserve a personnel of officers and men sufficiently numerous to man immediately all the vessels that would be needed, and to man in addition all the shore stations, which would have to be expanded to a war basis. The officers and enlisted men, of course, would have to be at least as well trained as the corresponding personnel in the attacking fleet, and have as recent and thorough practice in their respective duties; for otherwise, no matter how brave and devoted they might be, the fate of the American fleet would be the fate of the Chesapeake.
In order to be ready when war breaks, the first essential is a plan for preparation. Preparation is divided naturally into two parts: first, preparation of sufficient material and personnel; second, preparation of plans for the conduct of the war after it has begun. These two parts are both considered in what are technically called "War Plans."
Preparation for war has always been known to be essential. Lack of preparation has never been due to lack of knowledge, but always to neglect. The difference between the wise and the foolish virgins was not a difference in knowledge but a difference in character. The difference between Alexander's little army and the tremendous army of Darius was not so much in numbers as in preparedness. Trained under Philip of Macedon for many years, organized for conquest and aggression, prepared to meet any situation that might arise, Philip's army carried Philip's son from victory to victory, and made him the master of the world. Cæsar was great in peace as well as war, but it was by Cæsar's army that Cæsar's greatness was established; and it was a thoroughness of preparation unknown before that made Cæsar's army great. Napoleon's successes were built on the splendid preparation of a mind transcendently fitted to grasp both principles and details, and on the comparatively unprepared state of his opponents.
The Great Elector began in 1640 a course of laborious and scientific preparation which committed all Prussia, as well as the army, to acquiring what now we call "efficiency." As this plan developed, especially under the Elector's grandson King Frederick William, the next King found himself, as Alexander had done, the chief of an army more highly prepared for war than any other. By means of that army he made himself Frederick the Great, and raised Prussia from a minor position to the first rank of European Powers. Pursuing Frederick William's system of progressive preparation, Prussia continued her prosperous course till William I defeated Austria, then France, and founded the German Empire. This does not mean that the only result of developing national efficiency to its highest point is to secure success in war—in fact, we know that it is not. But it does mean that the same quality—efficiency—which tends to prosperity in peace tends also to victory in war.
Preparing for war was a simple thing in the olden days compared with preparing now, for the reason that the implements of war are much more numerous and complicated than they used to be, especially in navies. A navy is not ready unless all preparations and plans have been made, tested, and kept up to date, to insure that all of the vessels of every kind and all the shore stations will be in material condition, fully equipped and manned by a sufficient and efficient personnel of officers and crews, in time to meet the enemy on advantageous terms, and unless the central authority has already decided what it will do, when any probable emergency shall arise. This was the condition of the German army in 1870. This was also the condition of the British navy, when war broke out in August, 1914; the British navy was ready; and therefore it was able to assume command of the sea at once, drive its enemy's commerce from the ocean, and imprison its fleets in sheltered ports.
In all countries the peace establishment of the army and navy is smaller than the war establishment, for reasons of economy, upon the assumption that there will be enough time after war is declared to get on a war basis before the enemy can strike. But since 1870, all the military nations have realized that the vital struggle of a war takes place before a shot is fired; that the factors that decide which nation shall be the victor and which the vanquished are determined before the war begins; that they are simply "functions" of preparedness. Germany was ready not only for war but for victory, because her troops were so much better trained, organized, and equipped than those of France, and her war plans so much more complete, that she was able to lay France prostrate, before the enormous resources of that country in men and material could rally in her defense.
The relative conditions in which two opposing forces will enter a war, and their relative performances afterward, will depend upon the relative excellence of the war plans made for them, and the thoroughness with which the plans are tested before war breaks. So it is not difficult to see why all the great armies have patterned after Germany, and organized special bodies of officers for the preparation and execution of War plans; and why it is that they endeavor to secure for that peculiar duty the most thorough and industrious of their officers. Owing to the nature of war itself, the principles of warfare apply in their essentials to navies as well as to armies; and so the navies have patterned after the armies and made plans whereby they can get ready to fight in fleet organization on the ocean with the greatest possible effectiveness in the shortest possible time.
During peace times every navy is maintained on a "peace basis"; only such ships and other material being kept in full commission, and only such a number of officers and enlisted men being actively employed, as the appropriations allotted by the government permit. Those ships and other material that are not actually in commission are maintained in reserve, a condition of partial readiness, of which several degrees are recognized, in which a reduced number of officers and men are kept on board, and the various structures and apparatus are kept in as high a degree of readiness as circumstances will permit. In order to man in time of war these vessels in reserve, and insure a sufficient personnel in the active fleet, a "naval reserve" is organized in each country, composed of officers and men who have had experience in the regular navy. They are compelled to undergo a specific amount of training each year, to keep themselves in readiness at all times to answer the call for active service on short notice, and to maintain such communication with the government as will make it easy to locate any man at any moment.
The act of getting ready, the passing from a state of peace to a state of readiness for fighting, is called "mobilization." Mobilization plans are an important element in war plans, but the details of any mobilization plan are of such a confidential nature that it would not be proper to discuss them in public print. There can be no impropriety, however, in making the general statement that in all navies the endeavor is made to keep the mobilization plans continually up to date, and to have them prepared in such detail that every officer and enlisted man in active service, the retired list, the naval reserve, and the naval militia, will become instantly available for a predetermined duty, and that every shore station and every necessary vessel will be ready to take part. The plans prescribe methods in very great detail whereby the ships and other vessels in reserve can be quickly put into commission with full crews of officers and men, all their various equipments, fuel, and ammunition put on board, and the vessels themselves sent out to sea to join the fleet. In addition, plans are made whereby certain auxiliaries can be fitted out at once and put into commission—such as supply ships, ammunition ships, transports, colliers, mine ships, hospital ships, etc. The mass of detailed plans, orders, and instructions is stupendous and bewildering. Years of study, trial, and rectification are required to get them into such condition that the plans can be put into immediate and effective use when war breaks out. The work must be done, however, and with the utmost thoroughness, before war breaks out; otherwise it will never be done, if an active enemy is about, because he will strike at once—and then it will be too late.
In most of the great naval countries the work of mobilizing the fleet is comparatively easy, for the reason that the coast-line is short and is not far from any part of the interior, enabling reserves to live in fairly close touch with the coast and with naval affairs, and so near the coast that they can get quickly to any port. But the conditions in the United States are more difficult than those in any other country, because of the enormous stretch of our coast, the great average distance from any place in our country to the coast, the difficulty of getting a naval reserve that could be of practical use (owing to the ease with which young men can make a comfortable living on land), and the perilous slowness of the nation as a whole to realize the necessity for preparedness.
As an offset to this, we have the 3,000 miles of ocean between us and Europe, and the 5,000 miles between us and Asia; and on account of this we may to a certain extent discount the danger of attack and the preparedness required to meet it. But our discount should be reasonable and reasoned out, and certainly not excessive. Fortunately the problem of how much time we should allow for mobilizing and joining the fleet is easy, as a moment's thought will show us that it must be simply the two weeks needed for a fleet to come from Europe to America; for we must realize that the report of the sailing of the hostile fleet would be the first news we should get of any hostile preparation or intent.
The general situation in which every isolated naval nation stands regarding other nations is not complicated, but very plain. Each nation has, as possible opponents in its policy, certain countries. The naval forces of those countries and the time in which they can be made ready are known with sufficient accuracy for practical purposes. If any isolated naval nation wishes to carry out a policy which any of those countries will forcibly oppose she must either build a navy equal to that of the other country, or else be prepared to abandon any attempt to force her policies. Stating the question in another way, she can carry out only such policies as do not require for their enforcement a navy stronger than she has.
It is true that diplomacy and the jealousies of foreign powers unite to make possible the averting of war during long periods of time. Diplomacy averted war with Germany for forty-three years, but it could not continue to avert war eternally. War finally broke out with a violence unparalleled in history, and possessing a magnitude proportional to the duration of the preceding peace. "Long coming long last, short notice soon past" is a sailor's maxim about storms; and it seems not inapplicable to wars. Certain it is that the frequent wars of savage tribes are far less terrible than the infrequent wars of enlightened powers.
This indicates that, even though a nation may be able to avert war for a long time, war will come some day, in a form which the present war foreshadows; and it suggests the possibility that the longer the war is averted, the more tremendous it will be, the greater the relative unpreparedness of a slothful nation, and the sharper her punishment when war finally breaks upon her.
NAVAL DEFENSE
There has never been a time since Cain slew Abel when men have not been compelled to devote a considerable part of their energies to self-defense. In the early ages, before large organizations existed or the mechanic arts had made much progress, defense was mostly defense of life itself. As time went on, and people amassed goods and chattels, and organized in groups and tribes, it came to include the defense of property—not only the property of individuals, but also of the tribe and the land it occupied. Still later, defense carne to include good name or reputation, when it was realized that the reputation, even of an organization, could not be destroyed without doing it an injury.
At the present day, owing to the complexity of nations and other organizations, and to the long time during which many of them have existed, the question of defense has become extremely difficult. The places in which defense has been brought to its highest excellence are the large cities of the civilized countries; for there we see that defense of the life, property, and reputation of every individual has been carefully provided for. This has been made possible by the intimate intermingling of the people, the absence of racial rivalries, and the fact that the interests of all are identical in the matter of defense of life, property, and reputation; since, no matter how bad any individual may be, he wishes that others shall be good, in order that he himself may be safe.
The defense of reputation has two aspects: the practical and the sentimental. The practical aspect regards the defense of that element of reputation which affects ability to "make a living"; while the sentimental aspect is concerned with the purely personal reputation of the individual, or with the reputation of an organization or a nation. The sentimental aspect is much more important, especially in enlightened nations, than is realized by some who have not thought much about it; for there is, fortunately, in every decent man a craving for the esteem and even the affection of his fellow men; and a knowledge that, no matter how wealthy or powerful he may be, he cannot be happy if he knows that he is despised.
The fact that individuals organize to acquire the strength of united effort brings about, among organizations, a spirit of competition like that among individuals. It is more intense, however, because no man alone can get up the enthusiasms that ten men acting together can get up, and ten men cannot get up as much as a thousand. The longer any organization is maintained, the sharper this spirit of rivalry grows to be, owing to the feeling of clanship that propinquity and material interests evoke. Its acme is found in those organizations called nations, that have lived together, nourished from the same soil, for generations; where the same loves and jealousies and hates that they now feel were felt by their fathers and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers for centuries back. Among a people possessing the potentialities of national solidarity and greatness this feeling waxes, into a self-sacrificing devotion to the nation and to the land that bore them.
That there should be such a thing is sometimes deplored; because patriotism, like all human qualities, has its bad side and its unfortunate effects. If it were not for patriotism there would probably be no war, and the greatest suffering that the world endures would thus be obviated. But if it were not for patriotism there would be no competition among nations; and in any one nation there would be no national spirit, no endeavor on the part of every man to do his part toward making her strong, efficient, and of good repute or toward making the people individually prosperous and happy. In the same way, on a smaller scale, many people deplore the necessity of competition among organizations, saying that it is ruthless and selfish; that it stamps out the individual; that it makes every man a mere cog in a money-getting machine; that it brings about strife, hatred, jealousies, and sometimes murders; that, if it were not for competition, all men would live together in peace.
This may be so; but if it were not for competition there would probably be little of that strenuous, endeavor without which no effective progress in advancing the welfare of men has ever yet been made. Of course, it may be that what we call "progress" has really not advanced the welfare of men; that the savage in Samoa is as happy as the millionaire in New York; that knowledge itself is not an unmixed benefit; and if we accept this view, we may logically declare that competition, progress, and patriotism are all disadvantages. But who will go so far? It seems to be a fact that we cannot get something for nothing: that every plus has its minus, every joy its pain; that if men succeed in passing beyond the savage state, and in overcoming the forces of nature, so that they can live in houses with every modern luxury and convenience, they must pay for it by a condition of competition that causes personal jealousies among individuals, commercial wars among organizations, physical wars among nations.
Yet the instinctive desire of every one is for peace and comfort, for the maximum of good with the minimum of exertion; and therefore the normal person dislikes to see interjected into human life the abominable confusion of war. From this it comes about that every nation, even if it consciously brings about a war, always endeavors to make it appear that the other party is the aggressor. For this reason in every country the army and navy are said to be for the "defense" of the country. No nation, no matter how aggressive its policy may secretly be, openly declares that it intends to provoke aggression. This does not mean that any nation ever deliberately raises an army and navy for aggression, and then consciously deceives the world in regard to its intention; for men are so constituted as to feel more or less unconsciously that their interests and desires are proper and those of their opponent wrong; and every nation is so firmly persuaded of the righteousness of its own policies as to feel that any country which exhibits antagonism toward these policies is trying to provoke a fight.
Now these policies, especially after a nation has adhered to them for long, seem vital in her eyes, and they usually are so. To Great Britain, whose major policy is that she must be mistress of the seas, it is vital that she should be. Her people are surrounded by the ocean, and unless they are willing simply to eke out an agricultural existence, it is essential that she should be able to manufacture articles, send them out in ships to all parts of the world, and receive in return money and the products of other lands. In order that she may be able to do this, she must feel sure that no power on earth can restrain the peaceful sailing to and fro of her exporting and importing ships. This assurance can be had only through physical force; it can be exerted only by a navy. Germany has been gradually coming into the same position, and the same clear comprehension, owing to the increase of her population, the growth of their desire for wealth, and their realization of the control by Great Britain and the United States of large areas of the surface of the earth. Germany's determination to break down, at least in part, that overpowering command of the sea which Great Britain wields has been the result. The ensuing rapid growth and excellence of Germany's navy and merchant marine brought Germany and England into sharp competition. Military and naval men have seen for years that these competing nations would have to go to war some day in "self-defense."
In the minds of some people the idea of what constitutes "defense" is rather hazy, and "defense" is deemed almost synonymous with "resistance." Perhaps the clearest idea of what constitutes "defense" is given in a sentence in Webster's Dictionary, that reads: "The inmates of a fortress are defended by its guns, protected by its walls, and guarded against surprise by sentries."
The distinction is important, and the partially aggressive character of defense it indicates is exemplified in all walks of human and brute life. Any animal, no matter how peaceably inclined, will turn on his aggressor—unless, indeed, he runs away. No one ever saw any brute oppose a merely passive resistance to attack. Every man recognizes in himself an instinct to hit back if he is hit. If it be an instinct, it must have been implanted in us for a reason; and the reason is not hard to find in the universal law of self-protection, which cannot be satisfied with the ineffectual method of mere parrying or resisting.
Naval defense, like military defense, therefore, is not passive defense only, but contains an element of "offense" as well. When the defense contains in large measure the element of offense, it is said in military parlance to be "offensive-defensive"; and the most effective defensive is this offensive-defensive. When a defending force throws off its defensive attitude entirely and advances boldly to attack, it is said to have "assumed the offensive"; but even this assumption, especially if it be temporary—as when a beleaguered garrison makes a sortie—does not rob the situation of its defensive character.
For these reasons the dividing line between offense and defense is very vague; and it is made more vague through a realization by all military people that the offense has certain decided advantages over the defense (unless the defense has the advantage of position); so that when strained relations between two nations come, each is so fearful that the other will take the offensive first, when the two nations are near each other, that it is apt to take the offensive first—in real self-defense! A striking illustration is the action of certain European Powers in the latter part of July, 1914.
In addition to the sincere convictions of either party, there is also apt to be considerable yielding to the temptation to persuade the world that the other party is the aggressor, merely to get the sympathy that usually goes to the innocent victim—the support of what Bismarck called "the imponderables." Few wars have been frankly "offensive," like the conquests of Alexander, Cæsar, and Pizarro, at least in modern times; each side has usually claimed (and often sincerely believed) that its action was demanded in self-defense and that its cause was just.
To some in the United States naval defense means merely defense against invasion. This notion is of recent growth, and certainly was not held by the framers of our Constitution. Section 8 of Article I defines the powers of Congress; and although eight of the eighteen paragraphs deal exclusively with measures of defense on sea and land, only one of those paragraphs (the fifteenth) deals with invasion. The, first paragraph reads:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.
The juxtaposition of the words "common defense" and "general welfare" in this admirably written paragraph could hardly have been accidental, or have been due to any other cause than a juxtaposition of those ideas in the minds of the Constitution's framers. And what more natural connection can there be between any two ideas than between those of common defense and general welfare, since the general welfare of no country has ever continued long unless it was defended. Now the general welfare of every maritime power has always been intimately concerned with its sea-borne commerce. It is only by means of sea-borne commerce, for instance, that Americans can live in the way Americans wish to live. "General welfare" means more than mere existence. A mere existence is the life a savage lives. Furthermore, the general welfare of a country requires the safety of its exported and imported goods while on the sea, and includes the right of its citizens to travel with safety in every land, to buy and sell in foreign ports, to feel a proper measure of self-respect and national respect wherever they may go, and to command from the people of the lands they visit a proper recognition of their claims to justice.
Naval defense may, therefore, be said to consist of three parts:
1st—Defense of the coast against bombardment and invasion.
2d—Defense of the trade routes traversed by ships carrying the exports and imports of the country.
3d—Defense of the national policy, including defense of the nation's reputation, honor, and prestige.
Of these, defense of the coast against bombardment and invasion is the easiest, and defense of the national policy the most difficult; because in preventing bombardment and invasion the defender has the strategical advantage of being nearer home than the adversary; while in the defense of a country's policy, a naval force may have to "assume the offensive," and go even to the far distant coasts of the enemy—as the Russian fleet went to Tsushima, where it met its death.
In that part of naval defense which is concerned with trade routes, the strategical advantage must go, in general, to that side which is the nearer to the locality where the decisive battle may occur.
In laying down a policy of naval defense, however, it is not necessary to consider these three parts separately, because no nation can ever tell whether in the distant future its naval defense will have to be used directly for any one of the three, or for all. In general terms, it may be stated that in nearly all naval wars the fleet has been used more for the defense of the nation's policy than for the actual defense of the coasts or the trade routes. This does not mean that there has never been a bombardment or invasion, or that the defense of trade routes may not have been the cause of the war itself; but it does mean that in actual wars bombardment or invasion has been rare, the capture of merchant vessels has played a minor part, and the deciding events have been battles between two fleets, that were often far from the land of either.
Owing to the fact that within modern times most of the important countries of the world have been those of continental Europe, with frontiers contiguous, and in fact identical, the defense of a country has been largely committed to the army, and most of the wars have been on land. The country standing in exception to this has been Great Britain, whose isolated and insular situation demanded a defense that was strictly naval. The tremendous advance in recent times of the engineering arts, by which ships became larger and faster, and able to carry more powerful and accurate guns than ever before, has enhanced the value of naval power and enabled Great Britain to reach all over the surface of the earth, and become more powerful than any continental nation. Thus she has made out of the very weakness of her position a paramount tower of strength.
Naval defense was taken up systematically in Great Britain in the eighth century by King Offa, to whom is credited the maxim, "He who would be secure on land must be supreme at sea"; but it must have dropped to a low ebb by 1066, for William of Normandy landed in England unopposed. Since that time Great Britain's naval defense, committed to her navy, has increased steadily in effectiveness and power, keeping pace with the increase in the national interests it defended, and utilizing all the growing resources of wealth and science which the world afforded. Until the present crisis, Great Britain's naval defense did its most important work during Napoleon's time, when Great Britain's standing, like the standing of every other European nation, was subjected to a strain that it could hardly bear. So keenly, however, did the nation and the nation's great leader, Pitt, realize the situation that the most strenuous measures were adopted to keep the navy up, press-gangs even visiting the houses of subjects of the King, taking men out and putting them by force on board his Majesty's ships. But the British navy, even more than the British army, brought Great Britain safe out of the Napoleonic danger, and made the British the paramount nation of the world.
Since then Great Britain has waxed more and more powerful, her avowed policy being that her navy should be equal to any other two; realizing that her aloofness in point of national characteristics and policy from all other nations made it possible that a coalition of at least two great nations might be pitted against her at a time when she could not get an ally. Accompanying the growth of the British navy has been the establishment of British foreign trade, British colonies, and British bases from which the navy could work, and the general making of a network of British commerce and British power over the surface of the earth. No other nation has ever dominated so large a part of the surface of the globe as has Great Britain during the last two centuries; and she has done it by means of her naval power. This naval power has been, in the language of Great Britain, for the "imperial defense"; not for coast defense alone, but for the defense of all the imperial interests, commercial and political, and even the imperial prestige. And this defense of prestige, it may here be remarked, is not a vainglorious defense, not an exhibition of a swaggering, swashbuckling spirit, but a recognition of the fact that the minds of men are so constituted that the prestige of an individual, an organization, or a nation has a practical value and is an actual force. No government that appreciates its responsibilities will willingly risk the prestige of the nation which it governs, because it knows that any weakening of it will be followed by a weakening of influence and a consequent increase of difficulty in attaining some "end in view."
The greatness of the British navy, compared with that of the British army and the other elements of Great Britain's government, has taken on magnified dimensions during the last half century. So long as war-ships used sails as their principal motive power, so long were they forced to employ methods of construction and equipment that forbade the efficient employment of high-power guns, the attainment of great speed, and the use of instruments of precision; so long, in other words, was their military effectiveness prevented from increasing greatly. But when the British navy decided to abandon sail power altogether and propel their ships by steam, a new phase was entered upon, in which every resource of the engineering arts and the physical sciences was called into requisition; and now, on board a dreadnaught, battle cruiser, destroyer, or submarine, can be found the highest examples of mechanical and electrical art and science. Every material resource which the brain and wealth of man can compass is enlisted in her naval defense; and in order to take advantage of the rapidity and certainty of movement they afford for operating fleets and ships, there has been a great advance in methods of operation, or, in military parlance, "staff work." To assist this work, the radio, the cable, and even the humble typewriter have contributed their essential share, with the result that to Great Britain's naval defense there has been devoted an extraordinary degree of efficiency, continuous effort, a more varied activity, and a larger expenditure of money than to any other object of man's activity.
The United States navy, to which is committed the naval defense of the United States, has followed the same lines as the British; and its task, while in some ways easier, is in other ways more difficult. Perhaps the chief reason why the naval defense of Great Britain is so difficult is the extreme closeness of her borders to the borders of her possible foes—for the English Channel is only twenty-three miles across from Dover to Calais. And yet the very narrowness of the Channel there lends a certain element of assistance to the defender of either coast against an enemy like Germany, because it enables the defender, by simply protecting that narrow area, to prevent an enemy from passing to the sea or from it, except by going around the British Isles. But while it is interesting thus to compare the tasks of two navies by comparing the lengths of coast line, populations, wealth, and areas of their countries, or their distances from possible antagonists, such comparisons are really misleading; for the reason that all nations are on a par in regard to the paramount element of national defense, which is defense of national policy. It was as important to Belgium as it was to Germany to maintain the national policy, and the army of Belgium was approximately as strong as that of Germany in proportion to her wealth, area, and population; but nevertheless the Belgium army was routed, and Belgium was conquered by the German army.
Much has been written to prove that the sole reason for the possession of the paramount navy by Great Britain is that the soil of Great Britain cannot support her people. In an essay, entitled "Naval Power," which I contributed to the United States Naval Institute in 1911, the fallacy of this was shown; and it was pointed out that even if Great Britain grew more than enough to feed her people, life could be made unendurable to the 60,000,000 living there (or to the people in any civilized and isolated country) by an effective blockading fleet. The question of how great a navy any country needs depends, not on the size, but on the policies of that country, and on the navies of the countries that may oppose those policies. The navy that a country needs is a navy that can defend its policies, both offensively and defensively. If, for instance, the United States does not wish to enforce any policy that Great Britain would oppose, or to oppose any policy that Great Britain would enforce, then we may leave her navy out of consideration. But if we decide that we must maintain a certain policy which a certain country may oppose, then we must have a navy at least equal to hers; because we do not know whether we should have to meet that navy near our coast, or near hers, or far away from both. For the reason, furthermore, that a war with a European Power might occur at a period of strained relations with some Asiatic Power, we must realize the temptation to that Asiatic Power to seize the opportunity and attack us on the Pacific side, knowing that we should need all our navy on the Atlantic side. This seems to mean that in order to have an effective naval defense (since we are precluded by our policy from having European allies and no South American country could give us any effective naval help) we must have on each ocean a fleet as strong as that of any nation on that ocean against whose wishes we may have to enforce a policy—or against whose policy we may have to oppose resistance.
The essential requirement of any defense is that it shall be adequate; because an inadequate defense will be broken down, while the attack will retain a large proportion of its original strength. In the United States Naval Institute, in 1905, the present writer showed, by means of a series of tables, how, when two forces fight, the force which is originally the more powerful will become gradually more powerful, relatively to the weaker, as the fight goes on. That, for instance, if two forces start with the relative powers of 10 and 8, the weaker force will be reduced so much more rapidly than the stronger that when it has been reduced to zero the stronger force will have a value of 5.69. The values mentioned indicated the actual fighting strength—strength made up of all the factors—material, physical, and psychic—that constituted it. Of course, none of these factors can ever be accurately compared; but nevertheless the tables seemed to prove that in a contest between two forces whose total strengths are as 10 and 8 one force will be reduced to zero, while the other will be reduced not quite one-half.
One of the lessons drawn was "the folly of ineffectual resistance." Doubtless a clearer lesson would have been "the folly of ineffectual preparedness"; because, when the decision as to resistance or non-resistance is forced upon a nation, the matter is so urgent, the military, political, and international conditions so complex, and the excitement probably so intense, that a wise decision is very difficult to reach; whereas the question of what constitutes effectual preparedness is simple, and needs merely to be approached with calm nerves and an open mind.
Inasmuch as the psychic element in defense is the strongest single element, it is apparent that if the decision is reached to prepare an effectual defense the nation must be absolutely united, and must appreciate at its full value the debilitating influence of opposition to the measure; for, no matter how much money a nation may expend, no matter how many lives it may sacrifice, its defense cannot have an efficiency proportional to the effort if a considerable number of its citizens are permitted to oppose it.
In our own country there has been so much talking and writing recently about defense, that there is danger of the question coming to be considered academic; though no question is more practical, no question is more urgent.
Defense must defend.
NAVAL POLICY
Every country that has a satisfactory navy has acquired it as the result of a far-seeing naval policy, not of opportunism or of chance. The country has first studied the question thoroughly, then decided what it ought to do, then decided how to do it.
Naval policy has to deal with three elements: material, personnel, and operations, which, though separate, are mutually dependent. A clear comprehension of their actual relations and relative weights can be obtained only by thorough study; but without that comprehension no wise naval policy can be formulated, and therefore no satisfactory navy can be established.
The most obvious thing about a navy is its material: the ponderous battleships, the picturesque destroyers, the submarines, the intricate engines of multifarious types, the radio, the signal-flags, the torpedo that costs $8,000, the gun that can sink a ship 10 miles away.
The United States navy ever since its beginning in 1775 has excelled in its material; the ships have always been good, and in many cases they have surpassed those of similar kind in other navies. This has been due to the strong common sense of the American people, their engineering skill, and their inventive genius. The first war-ship to move under steam was the American ship Demologos, sometimes called the Fulton the First, constructed in 1813; the first electric torpedoes were American; the first submarine to do effective work in war was American; the first turret ship, the Monitor, was American; the first warship to use a screw propeller was the Princeton, an American; the naval telescope-sight was American. American ships now are not only well constructed, but all their equipments are of the best; and to-day the American battleship is the finest and most powerful vessel of her class in the world.
Our personnel, too, has always been good. The American seaman has always excelled, and so has the American gunner. No ships have ever been better handled than the American ships; no naval battles in history have been conducted with more skill and daring than those of American ships; no exploits in history surpass those of Cushing, Hobson, and Decatur.
In operations, however, in the handling of the navy as a whole, we have never excelled; though no better individual fleet leaders shine in the pages of all history than Farragut and Dewey. The strategical operating of our material and personnel has not been in accordance with carefully laid plans, but has been left largely to the inspiration of the commander on the spot, both in peace and in war. Material has suffered from lack of a naval policy, but only quantitatively, because material is a subject that the people understand. Personnel has suffered more, because the people fail to realize the amount of training needed to make a personnel competent to perform their tasks successfully, in competition with the highly trained men of other navies. But operations have suffered incomparably more than material and personnel; because naturally the people do not comprehend the supreme importance of being ready, when war breaks out, to operate the material and personnel skilfully against an active enemy, in accordance with well-prepared strategic plans; nor do they realize how difficult and long would be the task of preparing and testing out those plans. Therefore, they fail to provide the necessary administrative machinery.[*]
[Footnote *: Since this was written, the Congress has so enlarged the scope of the Office of Chief of Naval Operations as to make it a General Staff.]
In fact, the kind and amount of machinery needed to conduct operations skilfully and quickly cannot be decided wisely until the country adopts some naval policy; and in naval policy the United States must be admitted to have lagged behind almost every other civilized country. Spurred as we were to exertion by the coming of the Revolutionary War, we constructed hastily, though with skill, the splendid ships that did service in that war. But after the war, interest in the navy waned; and if it had not been for the enormous tribute demanded by the pirates of the Barbary coast from our government, and a realization of the fact that not only was it cheaper to build ships and fight the pirates than to pay the tribute, but paying the tribute was a disgraceful act, our navy would have run down even more than it did. Yet even with this warning, 1812 found our navy in a desperate condition. Rallying to the emergency, though too late to accomplish much practical result, we built a number of excellent ships, against the votes of many highly influential men in Congress. These ships did gallant service, and redeemed the reputation of Americans from the oft-repeated charge of being cowards and merely commercial men, though they were too few to prevent the blockade which British squadrons maintained on our Atlantic coast. After the war, the navy was again allowed to deteriorate; and although our ships were excellent, and the officers and men were excellent, and although the war with Mexico supplied some stimulation, the War of the Rebellion caught us in a very bad predicament. The country rose to this emergency too slowly, as before; but the enemy were even less prepared than we, so that during the four years of the Civil War we were able to construct, man, and buy several hundred ships of various kinds; with the result that, at the end of the war, our navy, if not quite so powerful as Great Britain's, was at least very close to it, and with a recent experience in actual war which the British navy did not possess.
After that war, the same story was repeated. The people convinced themselves that they would never again be forced to go to war; that they had seen the folly of it, and the misery of it, and would devote themselves thereafter to the delightful pursuits of peace. Gradually the fighting ships of the ironclad class were allowed to go to pieces; gradually even the larger ships of the wooden sailing class fell into disrepair; gradually the idea of war faded from the minds even of naval officers; gradually squadrons and fleets, as such, were broken up, and our ships were to be found scattered singly over all the seas, and swinging idly at their anchors in pleasant ports.
Fortunately, Admiral Luce and a very few other officers had learned the salient lessons of war during the Rebellion, and sturdily stood up against the decadent tendency of the times. Against much opposition, Luce succeeded in founding the Naval War College at Newport, where the study of war as an art in itself was to be prosecuted, and in enlisting Captain Mahan in the work. In a few years Mahan gave to the world that epochal book, "The Influence of Sea Power upon History" (embodying his lectures before the War College), which stirred the nations of Europe to such a realization of the significance of naval history, and such a comprehension of the efficacy of naval power, that they entered upon a determined competition for acquiring naval power, which continues to this day.
Meanwhile, a little before 1880, the people became aroused to the fact that though the country was growing richer, their navy was becoming weaker, while the navies of certain European countries were becoming stronger. So they began in 1880 the construction of what was then called "the new navy." The construction of the new ships was undertaken upon the lines of the ships then building abroad, which were in startling contrast with the useless old-fashioned American ships which then were flying our flag.
The construction of the material of the navy has progressed since then, but spasmodically. At every session of Congress tremendous efforts have been made by people desiring an adequate navy, and tremendous resistance has been made by people who believed that we required no navy, or at least only a little navy. The country at large has taken a bystander's interest in the contest, not knowing much about the pros and cons, but feeling in an indolent fashion that we needed some navy, though not much. The result has been, not a reasonable policy, but a succession of unreasonable compromises between the aims of the extremists on both sides.
Great Britain, on the other hand, has always regarded the navy question as one of the most difficult and important before the country, and has adopted, and for centuries has maintained, a definite naval policy. This does not mean that she has followed a rigid naval policy; for a naval policy, to be efficient, must be able to accommodate itself quickly to rapid changes in international situations, and to meet sudden dangers from even unexpected quarters—as the comparatively recent experience of Great Britain shows. At the beginning of this century the British navy was at the height of its splendor and self-confidence. Britannia ruled the waves, and Britannia's ships and squadrons enforced Britannia's policies in every sea. The next most powerful navy was that of France; but it was not nearly so large, and seemed to be no more efficient, in proportion to its size. Owing to Britain's wise and continuing policy, and the excellence of the British sailor and his ships, the British navy proudly and almost tranquilly held virtual command of all the seas.
But shortly after this century began, British officers discerned a new and disturbing element gradually developing on the horizon. The first thing which roused their attention to it was the unexpected attack of the Japanese torpedo-boats on the Russian squadron in Port Arthur. No war had been declared, and the Russian squadron was riding peacefully at anchor. The suddenness of the attack, and the distinct though incomplete success which it achieved, startled the British into a realization of the fact that there had been introduced into warfare on the sea methods and tactics requiring a higher order of preparation than had ever before been known; that the scientific methods which the Germans employed so effectively on land in 1870 had been adapted by the Japanese to naval warfare, and would necessitate the introduction into naval policies of speedier methods than had hitherto been needed.
Another event which had happened shortly before showed that naval policies would have to be modified, if they were to utilize recent advances in scientific methods. This event was the unprecedented success at target practice of H. M. S. Terrible, commanded by Captain Sir Percy Scott, which proved that by a long and strenuous training and the adoption of instruments of precision, it was possible to attain a skill in naval gunnery never attained before. Up to this moment the British navy had almost despised gunnery. Inheriting the traditions brought down from Howe, Rodney, and Nelson, permeated with the ideals of the "blue-water school," proud of being British seamen, proud of the pure white of their ships, enamoured of the stimulating breeziness of the quarterdeck and bridge, imbued with almost a contempt for such mathematical sciences as were not directly used in practical navigation, British naval officers exalted seamanship as the acme of their art, and took little interest in gunnery. All the battles of the past had been won by dash and seamanship and dogged persistence. Ships had always fought close alongside each other. No science had ever won any naval battle of the past, so why should they bother with science now—and why should they bother with target practice, except just enough to insure that the battery was in order, and that the men were not afraid of their guns? Besides, target practice dirtied the ship—a sacrilege to the British naval officer.
But the events of the war between Japan and Russia, especially the naval battles of Port Arthur, August 10, 1904, and the Sea of Japan, May 27, 1905, riveted their attention on the fact that something more than seamanship and navigation and clean ships would be needed, if the British navy was to maintain its proud supremacy on the sea; for in these battles, overwhelming victories were won purely by superior skill in gunnery, strategy, and tactics.
To these causes of awakening was added one still greater, but of like import—the rapid rise of the German navy from a position of comparative unimportance to one which threatened the British navy itself. The fact became gradually evident to British officers that the German navy was proceeding along the same lines as had proceeded the German army. Realizing the efficiency of the German Government, noting the public declarations of the German Emperor, observing the excellence of the German ships, the skill of the German naval officers, and the extraordinary energy which the German people were devoting to the improvement of the German navy—the British navy took alarm.
So did the other navies.
Beginning about 1904, Great Britain set to work with energy to reform her naval policy. Roused to action by the sense of coming danger, she augmented the size and number of vessels of all types; increased the personnel of all classes, regular and reserve; scrapped all obsolete craft; built (secretly) the epochal Dreadnaught, and modernized in all particulars the British navy. In every great movement one man always stands pre-eminent. The man in this case was Admiral Sir John Fisher, first sea lord of the admiralty, afterward Lord Fisher. Fisher brought about vital changes in the organization, methods, and even the spirit of the navy. He depleted the overgrown foreign squadrons, concentrated the British force in powerful fleets near home, established the War College, inculcated the study of strategy and tactics, appointed Sir Percy Scott as inspector of target practice, put the whole weight of his influence on the side of gunnery and efficiency, placed officers in high command who had the military idea as distinguished from the idea of the "blue-water school," and imbued the entire service with the avowed idea that they must get ready to fight to the death, not the French navy, with its easy-going methods, but the German navy, allied perhaps with some other. At the admiralty he introduced methods analogous to those of the General Staff, to maintain the navy ready for instant service at all times, to prepare and keep up to date mobilization plans in the utmost detail, and to arrange plans for the conduct of war in such wise that after a war should break out, all the various probable situations would have been studied out in advance.
The work required at the admiralty, and still more in the fleet—night and day and in all weathers—taxed mental and physical endurance to the limit; but the result was complete success; for when war broke out on the 1st of August, 1914, the British navy was absolutely ready. Many complaints have appeared in print about the unreadiness of Great Britain; but no one who knows anything of the facts supposes that these criticisms include Great Britain's navy.
The United States navy in the early part of this century occupied, relatively to others, a very ill-defined position; but the increased interest taken in it by our people after the Spanish War, combined with the destruction of the flower of the Russian fleet in the Russo-Japanese War, and the crushing blow inflicted on the French navy by the maladministration of Camille Pelletan, resulted in placing our navy, about three years ago, in a position second only to Great Britain's—a position which it recently has lost. Owing to a common origin and language, our navy has always followed the British navy, though at a somewhat respectful distance; and while it is true that in point of mechanical inventions we are ahead, in seamanship, navigation, and engineering on a par, and in gunnery and tactics not far behind, yet we must admit that in policy and in policy's first cousin, strategy, we are very far in the rear.
There are many reasons why this should be, the first being that the British navy has nearly always lived under more stimulating conditions than we, because the probability of war has seemed greater, and because the United States has underestimated what reasonable probability there has been, and failed to realize how tremendously difficult would be the task of getting ready for it. Owing to the present war, our people have gradually come to see that they must get more ships and other material; but they realize this as only a measure of urgency, and not as a matter of policy. If the emergency passes us by in safety, the people may see in this fact only a confirmation of their notion that war can be postponed ad infinitum, and may therefore fail to take due precautions for the future. If so, when we at last become involved in a sudden war, we shall be as unprepared as now; and, relatively to some aggressive nation which, foreseeing this, may purposely prepare itself, we shall be more unprepared.
A curious phase of the navy question in our country is the fact that very few people, even the most extreme partisans for or against a large navy, have ever studied it as a problem and endeavored to arrive at a correct solution. Few have realized that it is a problem, in the strictest sense of the word; and that unless one approaches it as such his conclusions cannot be correct except by accident.
In Germany, on the other hand, and equally in Japan, the question has been taken up as a concrete problem, just as definite as a problem in engineering. They have used for solving it the method called "The Estimate of the Situation," originated by the German General Staff, which is now adopted in all the armies and navies of civilized countries for the solution of military problems. Previous to the adoption of this method the general procedure had been such as is now common in civil life, when a number of people forming a group desire to make a decision as to what they will do in any given contingency. The usual procedure is for some one to suggest that a certain thing be done, then for somebody else to suggest that something else be done, and so on; and then finally for the group to make a decision which is virtually a compromise. This procedure is faulty, and the decisions resulting are apt to be unwise; because it is quite possible that some very important factors may be overlooked, and equally possible that some other factors be given undue weight. Furthermore, a measure advocated by a man who has the persuasive and emotional abilities of the orator is more apt to be favorably considered than a measure advocated by a man not possessing those abilities.
In the "Estimate of the Situation" method, on the other hand, the orator has no opportunity, because the procedure is simply an accurate process of reasoning. It is divided into four parts. The first part consists of a careful study of the "mission," ending in a clear determination of what the "mission" really is—that is, what is the thing which it is desired to do? The second part consists of a careful study, and eventually a clear comprehension, of the difficulties in the way; the third part consists of a careful study, and eventually a clear comprehension, of what facilities are available with which to overcome the difficulties; the fourth part consists of a careful study of the mission, difficulties and facilities, in their mutual relations, and a "decision" as to what should therefore be done.
Military and naval people are so thoroughly convinced of the value of this method that they always employ it when making important decisions, writing down the various factors and the successive steps in regular order and in complete detail.
In this country, while naval and military people use this method in their comparatively minor problems, the country at large does not use it in deciding the major problem—that is, in deciding how much navy they want, and of what composition. They do not take even the first step toward formulating a naval policy, because they do not study the "mission" of the navy—that is, they do not study the international and national situations and their bearing on the need for a navy. Yet until they do this they will not be in a sufficiently informed condition of mind to determine what the "mission" is—that is, what they wish the navy to be able to do—because, before they can formulate the mission they must resolve what foreign navy or navies that mission must include. If they decide that the mission of the navy is to guard our coast and trade routes against the hostile efforts of Liberia the resulting naval policy will be simple and inexpensive; while if they conclude that the mission of our navy is to guard our coast and trade routes against the hostile acts of any navy the resulting naval policy will be so difficult and costly as to tax the brain and wealth of the country to a degree that will depend on the length of time that will elapse before the date at which the navy must be ready to fulfil that mission.
This factor reminds us of another factor: the minimum time in which the navy can get ready to fulfil a given mission (for instance, to protect us against any navy); and we cannot decide the mission correctly without taking this factor into account. For example, it would be foolish to decide that the mission of our navy is to protect us now against any navy, including the greatest, when it would take us at least twenty years to develop and train a navy to accomplish that task; and it would be equally foolish to decide that the mission is to protect us against any navy except the greatest, because such a decision could rest on no other ground than present improbability of conflict with the greatest navy, or improbability for the very few years ahead (say two or three) which we poor mortals can forecast.
This reasoning seems to indicate that the first step in formulating a naval policy for the United States is to realize that any conclusion as to which navies should be included in the mission of our navy must not exclude any navy about whose peaceful conduct toward us we can entertain a reasonable doubt, during the period of time which we would require to get ready to meet her. For instance, inasmuch as it would take us at least twenty years to get ready to protect ourselves against the hostile efforts of the British navy, we cannot exclude even that navy from a consideration of the mission of our own, unless we entertain no doubt of the peaceful attitude of that navy toward us for at least that twenty years.
Clearly, the problem is not only very important but very difficult—perhaps the most difficult single problem before the country; and for this reason, naval officers have long marvelled that the leading minds of the country do not undertake it. Perhaps one reason is that they do not know how difficult it is: that they do not realize the extraordinary complexity of modern ships and engines, and the trained skill required to handle them; that they do not realize what Great Britain now realizes, that we must prepare for one of the most stupendous struggles ever carried on; that we must have a personnel both of officers and enlisted men trained to the highest point, because they will have to meet officers and enlisted men trained to the highest point; that the training must be such that the skill produced can be exercised by night and day, in cold and heat, in storm and calm, under circumstances of the utmost possible difficulty and danger; that, while it takes four years to build a ship and get her into the fleet as an effective unit, it takes much longer to train an enlisted petty officer as he should be trained, and a lifetime to train officers of the upper grades. Perhaps also our leading minds do not realize the intellectual requirements of the higher realms of the naval art, or comprehend what the examples of Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, Nelson, and Farragut prove: that, in the real crises of a nation's life her most valuable asset is the trained skill in strategy that directs the movements of her forces.
Further than this, they may not realize that the greater the danger which they must avert, the earlier they must begin to prepare for it, because the more work in preparation will have to be performed; and yet realization of this truth is absolutely vital, as is also realization of the fact that we have no military power as our ally, and therefore must be ready to meet alone a hostile attack (though perhaps in the far-distant future) from any foreign power. To see that this is true it is merely necessary to note the facts of history, and observe how nations that have long been on terms of friendship have suddenly found themselves at war with each other; and how countries which have always been hostile have found themselves fighting side by side. In the present war, Great Britain is allied with the two countries toward which, more than toward any other, she has been hostile; and she is fighting the country to which, more than any other, she is bound by ties of consanguinity and common interests. The history of war is so filled with alternations of peace and war between every pair of contiguous countries as to suggest the thought that the mere fact of two countries having interests that are common is a reason why their respective shares in those interests may conflict; that countries which have no common interests have nothing to fight about; that it is only for things in which two nations are interested, and which both desire, that those two nations fight.