Motto: "Non tibi, sed omnibus,"
A careful search through the Proceedings of the Naval Institute reveals the singular and instructive fact that they contain no consideration of, if indeed any allusion to, the subject of this essay. Papers and discussions, abstracts from service and technical journals, hints and suggestions abound which touch upon or completely elucidate a multitude of topics incident to the profession. They range over the entire field of naval thought, and they form, taken together, an enduring monument to the wisdom of the founders of the Institute, as well as to the capacity and devotion of those who have guided its destinies since its formation. Without these precious volumes no naval library is to-day complete. The student may learn from them substantially all there is to know, in theory at least, about administration, types of ships, their armament and protection, their speed and coal endurance, the details of their equipment, their use singly or in concert, the best method of educating officers and men, how to care for the latter in sickness and in health, etc., etc.; but of the necessity and means of cultivating that solidarity of sentiment which alone can put the breath of life into the ship or the fleet, considered as integers, never a word is spoken. The subject of a naval morale is not implicitly assumed; on the contrary, its very existence is either forgotten or deliberately ignored. A stranger to the service, who should seek diligently to acquaint himself with the essentials of naval practice, would rise from the conscientious study of these Proceedings without so much as a suspicion that there ever existed a body of unwritten law and traditions more potent than statutes and regulations in welding into a consistent whole the somewhat incongruous elements that go to form an organized navy. Yet every member of the profession knows, almost intuitively, that his relations to his associates, whether senior or junior, are governed by a rigid code peculiar to the Navy and dating back to time immemorial. It is a truism which, like many other truisms, it is well to revive and to repeat on occasion, that ships, however formidable in themselves, are measured in value by the resultant force of those on board. When officers and men act in harmony the result is happiness and efficiency. Where dissensions arise, and unity of effort gives place to the disrupting tendencies of opposing or selfish interests, the effect is at once manifest in a diminution of the fighting worth of the vessel or of the fleet.
In the Navy, esprit de corps is "the blest tie that binds." The essayist has thought that an inquiry into the reasons why esprit de corps has received so little attention from naval writers, an investigation into its nature and obligations, and a consideration of the consequences that attend its non-observance as well as of the profits that accrue from following its dictates, might be both timely and beneficial.
I.
The overwhelming necessity which has obtained, until a recent period, of rehabilitating our marine is conceded without dispute. To such a low ebb had our fleet fallen that the combined exertions and individual activities of all officers were imperatively demanded that we might build ships with the utmost practicable.
Speed and equip them with every device essential to the proper performance of their functions. We had reached a point when the very life of the Navy seemed at stake. Not to progress was to die. To the herculean task of reconstruction every person in the service brought his best energies and a zeal, an industry and an ability beyond praise. What seemed almost impossible at the outset was found entirely feasible, and to-day the work is largely accomplished. The writer is unwilling to yield first place in hearty recognition of both the end itself and the instruments by which it was achieved. But an apprehension has arisen that, in so entirely giving itself up to the material needs of the moment, the Navy may have insensibly drifted from its former standards of professional faith until the fact and need of a naval morale stand in danger of being overlooked. It would, perhaps, be inexact to assert that this apprehension has .grown into certainty, but the vicious development of this vicious tendency is at times but too marked not to call for the serious attention of such of us as have given their best years and their best thought to the service, as well as of those who, coming after, must receive the sacred flame from our hands and in turn transmit it bright and pure to their successors. Is it not, indeed, time to acknowledge frankly to ourselves that, like the Israelites of old, we have wandered away to strange gods and that we must revert to the ancient and true worship, lest we perish?
In the absorption occasioned by the building up of our naval edifice afresh from its very foundations, a reason may be found for our failure to cultivate the less obtrusive virtues of loyalty and self-abnegation, which, if not altogether sufficient, may yet be urged in excuse with much apparent justice.
Another powerful cause of the present regrettable condition of affairs lies in the distressingly impeded flow of promotion which, condemning bright and capable officers to spend the greater part of their lives in subordinate positions, blights their energies and produces that most pitiable discontent, bordering on despair, which discerns no rift in the clouds, no prospect of near or distant relief. The prize of youthful ambition has ceased to attract, or, when gained, the palate is too jaded by long waiting to appreciate or enjoy it. Like apples of Sodom it turns to ashes in the mouth. It would seem idle to quote Goethe to these unfortunates,
"Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren."
Even if the Navy List continues to remain unduly congested in places, the obligation still holds to bear our fate like men, striving to win better things, yet ready and willing to sacrifice our individual wishes and our personal comfort, working early and late, through doubt and discouragement, for that paramount object, the good of the service.
A third and hardly less potent occasion for this waning of esprit de corps, unless it may be conceived as standing rather in the relation of effect than cause, is the undue and wholly unprofessional exaltation of service on shore over service afloat. Time was when the goal of an officer's ambition lay in the commendable performance of duty on board ship. In the junior grades, to be considered a capable watch officer or navigator or executive or, later, to command a vessel or a fleet with ability and distinction, was deemed a sufficient recompense for toil and study, the ample crown of long years or a lifetime of sustained effort. The brilliant career of to-day, however, is measured but too often by the number of important and desirable positions occupied when not at sea.
Some apology for this erroneous and distorted view might have been brought forward when our ships were obsolete in type—the laughing-stock of the maritime world—and, in truth, it was during that period that sea-going was least in favor. A better spirit is now beginning to prevail, and the fact that sea duty is our chief concern to be generally admitted; but it is difficult to overcome the evil results of a false standard so long tacitly, if not openly, acknowledged; or to forget that it was not many years since officers were threatened with orders to sea as a punishment. We are, unhappily, still familiar with rather recent instances of officers who have deliberately elected service on shore in preference to service afloat, even at the loss of professional standing. Such cases should be to us as warnings rather than examples.
The long period of uninterrupted peace which the nation has enjoyed since the Rebellion, and for which as patriotic Americans we should be and are profoundly thankful, has exerted a powerful influence on service opinion, through the lack of opportunities for the display of personal prowess and professional skill in the operations of war. The ambitions of individuals have, perforce, sought their outlet in enterprises more in consonance with the prevailing sentiment of the hour. Denied, unfortunately as naval officers however fortunately as citizens, the chance for honor and advancement offered by hostilities, we have turned our activities into other channels and have found their scope in the more immediate, yet vastly less important matters of design and construction, and particularly in the administration of affairs, the chief, if not the only, means to-day of achieving distinction. No laurels adorn the brow of the faithful and capable sea officer. He has but the reward of an approving conscience, and he counts himself fortunate if he escapes condemnation for some trifling dereliction or for some assumed error of judgment. He has but done his duty.
Since the routine of ordinary cruising rarely if ever presents occasion for the manifesting of the larger capacities, he who would be reckoned something more than his fellows must, it would appear, look outside and beyond his ship. Be not deceived; the reputation of no naval officer can be considered enviable or exemplary which is not based upon an excellent record at sea. Lacking this condition, brilliant appointments on shore are but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, as evanescent as the noise produced by this scriptural orchestra. The essayist looks confidently to the time, and that in the near future, when the so-called prizes in the gift of the Navy will be reserved for those who have well discharged their duties as sea officers, and when a large credit in the column of the Navy Register entitled "sea service" will be regarded as a token of departmental approval. A general desire to go to sea will be followed by as general a determination to make the ship all of which she is capable in good order, efficiency and discipline; and by the re-adoption of esprit de corps as the sole instrumentality by which this end can be reached.
If further proof were needed of the comparatively low esteem in which sea-going has been held, it would be found in the fact that in years not long past the reward of the highest standing at the Naval Academy, an institution founded for the sole purpose of training naval officers, was assignment to a corps which has nothing whatever to do with the handling of ships and men. Such an exaggeration of the importance of the tool itself over that of the man who uses it is difficult to explain.
"Historically," says Mahan, "good men with poor ships are better than poor men with good ships; over and over again the French Revolution taught this lesson, which our own age, with its rage for the last new thing in material improvement, has largely dropped out of memory."1
While due allowance should be made for personal taste, many able men possessing a marked and insuperable bent for mechanical pursuits, it is unjust to the service and to the individual to encourage the notion that the human element is, or ever can be, subordinate in naval affairs to the machinery by which that element is aided in its labors, and through which it may make or mar the destinies of the nation. It has been truly said, "The ship is measured in its value by the value of the man who commands it." To pass voluntarily into a non-military corps therefore was a tacit acknowledgment on the part of the graduate of the Naval Academy that, while especially gifted in certain admirable mental attributes, he was deficient in those more sturdy qualities which characterize the successful naval officer, or else that he valued the larger salary of the constructor above the wider opportunities for power, distinction and usefulness afforded by a naval career.
In view of the hearty, earnest and, let us hope, successful efforts now making to remove by wise legislation some of the unnecessary and wholly unpleasing differences to be found in the naval service, it has become possible, at the very last moment of writing, to suggest what previously discretion and a regard for the susceptibilities of others would have barred out of the essayist's treatment of this question. Even sentiment requires something tangible for its sustenance, something real to which to cling. May not one reason for the rather lax condition of esprit de corps be found in the fact that pay has been greater and promotion more rapid in certain of the non-military branches of the Navy? In this sordid age when men measure things and, alas, other men, by their money value, their financial equivalent, the captain of a ship has not infrequently been less well paid than a junior under his command. Has this been seemly in itself or calculated to increase his self-respect? Men are but human after all. While they need not be unduly rewarded for the performance of duty, however onerous, still the latter should not be rendered irksome through receiving less practical recompense than that of a subordinate whose functions are not in the least military and whose responsibilities are, comparatively speaking, insignificant. The military duties of the profession ought to be first and foremost. It is for them that the Navy exists. The morale of the service must necessarily be unfavorably affected by every distorted appreciation of the importance of non-combatant performance.
The causes briefly alluded to, with others less obvious which it is bootless to investigate, have combined to produce a faulty conception of the service as a whole and a notable diminution of the force and recognition of that sound and healthy esprit de corps which it is our duty singly and collectively to foster and to encourage. No more pressing call exists to-day. None are too old to turn again to the true cult, none too young to grasp its essentials and to devote themselves earnestly and faithfully to its exercise. It is the soul of the Navy, and ours, from the junior cadet to the senior admiral, the charge to "save that soul alive."
II.
Living as we do at the close of the nineteenth century, and perceiving on every hand the signs of a complete revolution in the ideas which govern the relations of individuals to the State and to each other; watching the growth of new political doctrines which seek to reduce all members of society to one plane of dreary and uniform equality irrespective of innate capacity or external condition; recognizing the impatience with which the few remaining marks of differentiation between man and man are regarded, and the steady loss of influence on the part of that class of citizens who on account of their birth, education and moral elevation would, in the ideal community, be entrusted with the largest measure of the powers of government, we are unconsciously affected by the medium in which we live, and are likely, if unresisting, to be borne along by the swift current of general unrest towards the rocks upon which will be shattered the little that is left of respect for authority and reverence for our elders. It is not my purpose to discuss or even question the soundness of this new sociological development as touching the world at large, but as to its effect upon the organization to which we belong there can be but one opinion. Our only safe guide is experience. The history of the French navy under the Directory is conclusive on this point.2 Whatever be the conditions that hold in civil life, the precedents of generations of naval officers must, in the main, be our rule in the present and for the future. These precedents may, with propriety, be traced back to and in the British navy from which we drew our early laws and usages. The physical continuity is confessedly interrupted, for our navy was not formed, as naturalists say, by fission—the dividing of a parent stem and the splitting off of one or more complete vital units—but the moral continuity is unbroken.
What was the fundamental motive that governed England's naval leaders? The answer is not far to seek. Loyalty to the Crown.
It is impossible to read such of the writings of England's great sailors as have been transmitted to the present day without observing the frequent recurrence of expressions that breathe this sentiment. While these phrases may occasionally be a form of speech as common and unmeaning as the "Your obedient servant" at the end of a letter, which is but now disappearing from correspondence, they are often encountered in such connections that they can only be interpreted as involuntary outbursts of genuine feeling. Thus Drake, in submitting "A Relation of the Rare Occurrences &c" to Queen Elizabeth, speaks of it as "a worke to him no less troublesome, yet made pleasant and sweete, in that it hath bin, is, and shall be, four your Mats content, to whom I have devoted myslefe, live or die."3 The courtier in Drake never overshadowed the venturesome hard-fighting sailor to whom God's truth and the air of a bloody combat seemed equally essential conditions of a Christian life.
The same devotion is to be seen in his letter to Walsingham announcing his departure for Cadiz. " The wynd commands me away, our shipe is under sayell, God graunt we may so live in his feare, as the enemy may have cawse to say that God doth fight for her Majestic as well abrod as at home, and geve her long and happye lyfe, and ever victory agaynst God's enemyes and her Majesties."4 It is difficult to rightly apportion the various ingredients in this quaint prayer—ambition, love of fighting, and loyalty—yet that all three are to be found therein cannot be denied.
When Sir Edward (afterwards Lord) Hawke was given the thanks of the House of Commons for his splendid action at Quiberon he replied, "In doing my utmost, I only did the duty I owed to my King and my country, which ever has been, and shall be, my greatest ambition to perform faithfully and honestly to the best of my ability."
With us, as Americans, it is love of country which should supply the place of a feudal or monarchical loyalty and furnish an incentive to brave deeds and patient suffering. That the object of the new devotion is less worthy than that of the old no one can fairly claim. For a sovereign, possibly lacking in all the attributes of kingship save the sceptre and royal purple, we may substitute our native land, the seat of our joys and sorrows, the mistress whom we stand ready to serve through good and evil fortune, in prosperity and calamity. As a distinguished officer happily expresses it, "The bed-rock of a naval service is organization; its soul, honor; its demand, courage; its inspiration, love of country."5
If we be willing to offer up our lives for our native land unquestioningly and as dutiful sons, surely we ought not to begrudge those daily sacrifices and minor offices which, distasteful as they may be, are the sine qua non of true discipline and an efficient organization.6
This general rule of conduct will be admitted by officers without exception as admirable and exact. It is a truism which none can deny, and to the inert it appears so delightfully vague as to involve no possible risk to comfort and peace of mind. Without question then we all agree to it. But if we do, what follows then? Does it carry no mandate that shall control our actions? Such a moral principle once accepted must impose conditions that we are powerless to evade. A little reflection will show that, far from being a transcendental speculation of no real effect, it is or should be a living force influencing every official thought and deed. It commands us to be diligent in making ourselves useful servants through painstaking study of all that relates to the theory and practice of our profession, and it lays down certain lines along which the discharge of our several duties must proceed if we would be true to ourselves.
Granting the obligation in abstract terms, how shall we apprehend its concrete embodiment? There can be but one answer—in cheerful obedience to and hearty co-operation with our immediate superiors. The links in the chain are complete and the chain itself continuous, stretching from the President as Commander-in-Chief, through his administrator, the Secretary of the Navy, the commander-in-chief of the fleet, the captain of the ship, the executive officer and the other heads of departments and their subordinates, down to the most insignificant person of the crew. Upon each member of the hierarchy the moral law, already defined, presses with an insistence which only ignorance or willfulness refuses to recognize.
To every individual in the naval profession, no matter what be his position and his responsibility, there is granted a horizon of labor and effort plainly marked and unmistakable in the sunlight of a patriotism which takes the local guise of a sense of duty. In the words of our great and good Farragut, "I will do my duty to the best of my ability, and let the rest take care of itself." "Duty," said Nelson, "is the great business of a sea officer." And in his last hours his departing soul was cheered by the reflection to which he gave expression in those noble words, "Thank God! I have done my duty."
Nor was this sentiment confined in its exercise and its bearing upon his life to the occasional crises which have rendered his name immortal. Even a Nelson had his dark days when his most strenuous efforts appeared fruitless and unappreciated. To his ability, courage and perseverance was chiefly due the capture of Bastia, for which he won from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Hood, only an equal share of praise with his junior who commanded a single landed battery. Yet Nelson, suffering from the keen disappointment and wounded pride which belonged to his sensitive nature, could write to his wife in that entire confidence which permits the utterance of the inmost thoughts of the heart, "However services may be rewarded, it is not right in an officer to slacken his zeal for his country."
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do—do it with all thy might." As with the servant in the parable, who being faithful in a few things was set over many things, the reward is inevitable. To every man a task is allotted by his immediate superior, and he serves his country acceptably and well who performs that task with tireless energy and inflexibility of purpose.
The task may not be agreeable in itself; it may be opposed in nature or method to one's most cherished professional convictions. If it seems fraught with harm, a proper representation to the senior is of course obligatory.
A hearty and prompt obedience is not only right in itself but right also in its far-reaching effects.5
Be patient, to all a day must come when they in turn shall direct. Happy for their subordinates if they remember their former woes and are as considerate in the exercise of power as they once thought their superiors inconsiderate. If they have served with loyalty while inferiors, naturally and easily will come to them the enjoyment of a like loyalty in the hour of their elevation. But if they have previously failed in this respect, how shall they expect to be served with a loyalty they were unwilling to render? They have sinned against esprit de corps and their punishment will consist in finding their orders executed to the letter, yet broken in the spirit, and in encountering the same sullen and dogged opposition which it was previously their delight to offer.
The Golden Rule is not banished from the Navy. Quite the contrary. The successful captain was guided by it in his youth when he did for his superior what as a superior himself he would have liked his subordinates to do for him, and he reaps his reward in that harmony of official thought and deed exemplified in the morale of the British fleet at the Battle of the Nile. "I had the happiness to command a band of brothers," said Nelson in reporting his victory—possibly the greatest ever achieved afloat This sentence is both the embodiment and the exemplification of esprit de corps. Never have the results of this vital principle been more happily illustrated. To such a fleet, so commanded, with officers and men all animated by the mutual respect and confidence born of a sound naval morale, nothing, absolutely nothing, was impossible. The French ships were doomed from the first moment of pursuit, and their destruction would have been equally complete no matter where encountered. Not the least of Nelson's qualities as a great captain was this faculty of arousing enthusiasm for the common good—a readiness to do and to suffer. In his hands esprit de corps was a potent instrument to move men's souls and to elevate even the baser of his confreres to the highest plane of professional honor.
The essayist suggests that no better definition of esprit de corps can be found than in the sympathetic reading of this famous despatch. We cannot all be Nelsons, but we can and must be a band of brothers.
III.
It is not a pleasant task to hold the mirror up to nature and to reveal to their owner the blemishes which mar the countenance; still less is it agreeable to acknowledge our own faults and weaknesses; but a frank recognition of our shortcomings must precede, indeed it is the first step towards, their correction.
To run over the gamut of official error is, however, neither necessary nor desirable. A few instances that may be described in general terms will abundantly suffice for the purpose in view. The essayist has thought it inexpedient to state his case in full, and, on the other hand, he has not felt at liberty to assume that its proof will be conceded without question in the forum of service public opinion. In thus attempting to avoid Charybdis without falling upon Scylla, he has ventured to rely upon a friendly sympathy with his motive, which is to aid the profession in remedying its faults and yet not to paint those faults in needlessly somber or alarming colors. He would indeed greatly deplore the application of any remark of his, designed avowedly to describe but an exception, to the establishment of a general rule. The majority of the personnel in our own Navy is animated by right sentiments in the main. Of the minority, again, the larger portion is readily amenable to influences that make for good. While the essayist is justly proud of the profession of which he is a humble member, he cannot blind himself to the fact that some improvement still remains possible before it reaches that high plane of thought and feeling of which it is abundantly capable. A little of specific exposition of its needs appears therefore desirable and pardonable.
We are all but too familiar with a type of officer which is the inevitable product of a systematic, if unwitting, attempt to substitute narrowly defined regulations for the broad and comprehensive operations of esprit de corps and service traditions. Many there be who study the letter of these printed ordinances; but for one who seeks in them enlightenment as to his duties and responsibilities, others will be found who look only for a statement of their rights and privileges. Such officers, in short, devote the time spent over them more especially to ascertaining rather what others may not do than what they should do, and they arise from their investigations better equipped for blocking than for facilitating the work which all must execute.
It is not meant to imply that the safeguards with which the regulations surround the exercise of authority, in the interest and for the protection of the subordinate, are to be disregarded. On the contrary, they are wise and salutary, for the superior is not always exempt from the failings of human nature; but they can be made harmful if the dominant fact be overlooked that they need only be appealed to when an evident disposition is manifested to forget that while great power is given to the superior there is attached to this great power the obligation to use it for the good of the service and not to the prejudice of the individual.
The officer of the type developed through this one-sided study of our book of regulations sets up to be an oracle on such matters; he announces that he will not obey such and such orders if given, he is a focus of incipient mutiny, a thorn in the side of his superior, a nuisance to his messmates, and he is seldom, if ever, a good officer.
This is no new doctrine. Fifty years ago Captain Liardet wrote in his admirable "Professional Recollections," "Those who cavil most at the orders of their superiors while they themselves are in a subordinate situation, are almost invariably the most tenacious and overbearing to others when in command themselves. The heart and soul of all good naval discipline is strict obedience to orders; and when any officer habitually deviates from this principle, whatever his rank or abilities may be, he cannot be considered of any value to the public service. To insure the morale of the Navy, officers are now called upon more than ever to be scrupulously careful in their conduct; as captains and senior lieutenants, in the present day, have quite enough to do to uphold the discipline of their ships, without having to contend with insubordination from those who are expressly appointed by the Admiralty to assist in carrying out all things for the good of the service with energy and zeal." The officer under study devotes so much time and thought to the pastime of preparing a pitfall for his seniors that he has little or none left in which to learn the duties of the position he occupies on board. Fault is found with some minor negligence on his part, the regulations are invoked as a shield, and friction arises. He is rarely capable of separating his official and personal relations, so that a rebuke almost invariably turns him into an enemy watching with the eye of a hawk for the first mistake committed that shall furnish the occasion for a report to a common superior.
Instances again are stated to have occurred where one officer profited by another's shortcomings to himself break the rules of the service, in conscious security against charges that could be met by counter-charges of equal or greater severity. To hold over an erring brother the threat of publishing his frailties or his derelictions is an offense only possible on the part of an officer lacking in the elementary notions of esprit de corps. He is disloyal to his messmate in thus whetting his knife for a covert thrust, and he is disloyal to his profession in condoning an offense which, in his judgment, would, if known, be visited with severe punishment and which, therefore, must be of serious nature.
It is of course difficult to lay down a hard and fast rule of conduct in such cases, for esprit de corps has two phases, the major reflecting the service as a whole, the minor touching the relations between individuals. If each officer were constantly on the alert to report every infraction of the regulations on the part of others, life on board ship would be intolerable. A generous sympathy is obligatory on all, but when the safety of the ship is imperiled, or when her good name is jeopardized by wanton action or notoriously scandalous behavior, the offender forfeits his claim to consideration and he must be sacrificed, regretfully if you please, but none the less inexorably, to the necessity of maintaining the general reputation for high aims and clean living. There can be no doubt as to what to do when the question assumes the definite form of choosing between the individual or the service, yet we can all adduce instances wherein an undesirable or even a disreputable person has been persistently screened by his shipmates under a faulty conception of esprit de corps.
Certain ships in the Navy have enjoyed the unenviable reputation of being "unhappy."7 It is believed that in nearly every such case the fault lies with the officers themselves. Instead of devoting their energies to making the vessel efficient, each in his own way and branch, they have sought to undermine the central authority, and have even gone to the forbidden length of sitting in open judgment on their seniors. The essayist is the last person in the world to seek to deprive his colleagues of that blessed privilege of growling which is dear to the hearts of all that go down to the sea in ships. There are indeed some kinds of growling which furnish harmless relief, like a prompt safety valve, or which produce amusement and a healthy intellectual competition after the most delicately imaginative figures of descriptive speech. These are permissible, if not actually necessary and salutary. But personal growling against the superior, for example, and sarcasm and dispraise, are under the ban. These are dangerous and they must be eliminated. How much better is it to recognize the necessity at the outset and refrain from contracting habits that bring us questionable pleasure, no benefit, and certain trouble.
As a matter of fact, the general happiness of a ship depends less upon the temper and whims of the captain than is generally supposed. Vastly more important in this connection are the good fellowship of the officers themselves and the character, strength and tact of the executive. Blessed is the ship where the first lieutenant is strong and courteous, able and considerate. He fosters that sentiment of loyalty to the ship, the captain and the admiral, without which the cruise would be dreary indeed, and he sets an example which influences the professional life and development of every youngster on board. With such an executive it matters little for the atmosphere of the vessel what may be the captain's idiosyncrasies. The coming generation of officers can find no better diversion than in planning how they shall shape their professional growth in order to command, when executive, the respect of their equals and juniors and the entire confidence of their commander.
There is, by the way, no method devised by Satan so infallibly certain to destroy the happiness of a ship, so contrary to the dictates of esprit de corps, as the open discussion of superiors. Servants have been the reporters of such conversations since Noah's time, carrying their accounts forward to the ship's company, where nothing is lost in the telling, with a regularity and a zeal which could well be devoted to better employment. Nor is this the only harm done. Such criticisms produce loss of respect for the seniors, and a readiness to take umbrage, which exert a baneful effect on the tone of the entire vessel. They are without justification in themselves and they offend against esprit de corps. No ship has ever been happy or efficient where they are tolerated. Lord Collingwood is said to have written, "All mutinies are started at the ward-room table."
Says Captain Griffiths in his work on Naval Economy, "But that officers should sit down in the presence and hearing of their servants, sentinels, etc., and use disrespectful language against their superiors (particularly their captains) must at once appear so self-evidently improper, so subversive of all discipline, so calculated to provoke insubordination and mutiny, that it would be idle to dwell on the subject."8
The essayist begs to be understood as showing by his quotations from foreign writers that our own Navy has by no means the monopoly of the defects mentioned. Moreover, from personal experience, we are all aware that other services are similarly affected. The reason may be deep-seated in the nature of the seafaring man. None the less would it be gratifying if the Navy of the United States could claim the role of exemplar in this matter of naval morale. To this end a solemn sense of duty should impel us. Nor is the end remote or difficult of attainment. We have but to will it and the prize shall lie in our hands. This is no figure of speech. Our case has already been passed upon in the highest court and judgment pronounced upon us by a keen yet kindly critic.
Says the Secretary of the Navy in his Annual Report to the President for the year 1897:
It is a pleasure to report to you the high character and fine sense of duty, the professional attainments, and patriotic spirit of the great body of officers of the line and staff of the Navy and Marine Corps. The whole impulse, from their entrance into the service at the Naval Academy, is to develop not only efficiency in the performance of duty, but variety and breadth of ability and culture. They have the liberal education of extended foreign travel. Their employment necessitates the study not only of international and commercial relations, but also of modern scientific forces and their application to the practical demands of a great department of the national life.
Naval service is not limited to the sailing of a ship and the firing of a gun. A modern man-of-war is a compendium of industrial inventions and appliances; a business and manufacturing plant as well as a fighting machine. A large part of its crew is engaged in skilled labor—the running of engines and the movement of machinery. An officer's duties, and the demands upon his professional resources, whether in the movement of ships or in the work of the mechanical departments connected with their make and repair, involve problems of construction, the use of the dynamic forces of air, water, steam and electricity, and the nice adjustment of batteries, guns and gear of enormous tonnage, yet moved on hair lines and by a touch of the finger.
All this calls for advanced requirements on the part alike of those who command and direct, and of those who construct and operate. The responsibility that attaches to the captain of a single battle-ship, or to the admiral who commands a fleet, necessitates the greatest resources of skill, prudence, discretion and education. To these demands the Navy rises. Whether serving on shipboard, or in the important work of instructing our naval youth, or studying war problems, its officers in every line of the naval establishment deserve the public confidence.
There are, of course, sporadic cases of demerit. There is now and then an officer guilty of excessive use of intoxicating liquors, a fault which is simply unpardonable, in view of his responsibility for life and property and of the importance of his example to the men under his command, and which I know you are determined to punish with unrelenting severity. There is the occasional shirk, the seeker for soft place, the nerve-worn hesitant, the petty despot. There are cases, happily rare, of pecuniary dishonesty or untrustworthiness. It is the function of the examining boards to weed out all these elements and prevent their promotion.
There are also, sometimes, petty frictions and jealousies which make one long for the high mind. There is too often an inclination on the part of some officers, when a new question or exigency arises, to consider with aggressive and sometimes petulant zeal its bearing upon their special position, or command, or corps or bureau, or station, lest they lose or somebody else get a thin slice of authority or jurisdiction, whereas their always first and paramount impulse should be the best interests of the whole service—a text that ought to hang on every eyelid in the Navy. There are men who would count their lives as nothing beside their country's need, yet pull apart "like a balky team" in the homely adjustments of ordinary work.
The rigid economy which, in view of the large and growing expenses of the Navy, ought to obtain in every detail of naval expenditure, is sometimes lacking, and the Department is making special effort to keep the importance of its necessity in the mind of the service.
There have been two or three courts-martial held upon offending officers, the results of which are monuments of either stupidity or favoritism.
But these exceptions only prove the rule, and the great body of our naval officers, especially the sifted wheat of it which would be selected for responsibility and command in case of emergency, are men of marked worth and of the best type, ready at any hazard of life or fortune to go anywhere, brave any peril, do any duty—qualified to serve their country not only in war but in the more varied arts of peace. Their standards are high, their zeal ardent, their courage and ability adequate to any demand, and no crisis can come in which they will not prove themselves in every respect the equals of the most illustrious names in naval history.
The essayist asks his brother officers if praise could be more generous or blame more gently and justly urged than in these notable words? We should be unworthy of the exalted place which, as a body, we are privileged to occupy in the regard of our official chief if we failed to respond to his demand to correct our faults and to weed out from among our number the shiftless, the drunken and the incompetent, the insubordinate—"the occasional shirk, the seeker for soft place, the nerve-worn hesitant, the petty despot." When we shall have done this and warranted the Secretary of the Navy in rewriting this section without its qualifications, we shall be able, if our modesty does not forbid, to pose as a model to our rivals of other flags. Until then, a becoming humility is more in consonance with our merit.
The "high mind" longed for in the report, be it remarked, is but the wider manifestation of esprit de corps. It is not often than an obscure writer for the Proceedings of the Naval Institute, after toiling for a year or so, finds, at the eleventh hour of his composition, that his plea is adopted by the Navy Department itself and presented in words so frank, cordial and forceful that they must inevitably prove of immeasurable and immediate effect. As to the future, and of his encomiums, we may indeed say with Virgil,
"Haec olim meminisse juvabit."
For a rule of action, then, the all-sufficient criterion when doubt arises as to what it is best to do under certain conditions is the good of the service. Whatever militates against that is wrong; whatever makes for it is right. "The best interests of the whole service are a text that ought to hang on every eyelid in the Navy." If we are guided by such a code we cannot go astray. To the good of the service we are bound by the obligations of a patriotism which it should be our pride to acknowledge as the rule of life, no less imperative now than was the personal loyalty to the sovereign which animated the great sailors of old.
IV.
From the instances briefly cited, which, if such multiplication were necessary, could be added to from the experience of those who have had the patience to read these pages, it is fair to draw the inference that esprit de corps is the moral foundation of the edifice of naval efficiency as well as the inspiration of individual success. Where esprit de corps is present the ship is harmonious and well disciplined; where it is absent, discord and inefficiency prevail. Sound organization demands the concurrent efforts of all towards a common end, the good of the service; in other words, the recognition and guidance of esprit de corps. The seaman's art is valueless and his education is incomplete without it. There is no part of an officer's obligations and duties more vitally essential than the cultivation of this cardinal principle. By precept and example it should be especially drilled into the minds of those just embarking upon a naval career, until it becomes a second nature, entering into and controlling every act. Only to those who carefully take its lessons to heart is the full fruition of a naval life possible. It is the a b c of the profession, the primer of our art.
Every ship is a school that leaves the impress of its tone and teaching upon its graduates. An officer is either the better or the worse for every cruise he makes, for official contact with every superior.9 Qui non proficit, deficit. We must either advance or retreat; we cannot stand still.
As has been finely expressed, in one of those great addresses which have justly won for their author the admiration of all privileged to listen to his periods glowing with life and truth, "The impression we cast upon those that pass within our shadow they carry on forever. The very words they speak have immortality…
"And our immediate influence! This touch of life upon life: how wonderful it is! Something of character always goes with it. If the blacksmith puts some indefinable quality of himself into the iron he shapes, if the printed page in order to reach its highest artistic perfection must come from the direct touch of the printer's hand upon the press, how much more do human souls take from us impressions of character? And that which fixes the impression, that which is the impression, is character. The trade, the art, the profession, being learned, that which more than anything else does the work is character. Character is in the carpenter's strokes upon the nail, it is in the sailor's pull upon the rope, it is in the officer's orders upon the deck; it commands the ship, it paints the picture, it delivers the oration, it writes the book; it is the finest quality of gifts and of life…
"All we do must live on. Evil deeds must have a wicked immortality…
"But the cheering thought is that whatever is good in us shall likewise have tenacity of being. The moralities and virtues of our lives, the generous acts, the good dispositions that have marked them…must all live as seeds in the world. Not seeds garnered and locked up in the enclosure of single lives; but seeds scattered abroad, that become in their fruitfulness the blessing of all."10
This reflection brings home to all of us the sense of a grave responsibility. Through our example, if not through our precepts, we are unconsciously instrumental in shaping the careers of those around us. We may stand for good or we may stand for evil. That we should stand for nothing is forbidden us. Whether we will or no, we are apostles of, or apostates from, esprit de corps. It becomes our charge, then, "to show in ourselves a good example of virtue, honor, patriotism and subordination," as our naval bible phrases it, and to indicate to others the path that leads to professional usefulness and honor.
The theme is not a new one. Our great Farragut illustrated it in every act of his life, as the midshipman ten years old and as the admiral of nearly seventy. A more painstaking student of his calling never existed. His fund of varied information was astonishingly extended, but whatever he learned was with the sole view to increasing his value as a naval officer. Other ambition he had none. His extreme modesty restrained him from pouring out his soul, even in his diary or intimate correspondence, as did Lord Nelson, his only rival in our esteem, so that we are unable to quote his own words in proof of his motives and must find the mainsprings of his deeds in the deeds themselves. "The moral of Farragut's life," says his biographer, "is that success is never an accident; that the surest way to become great is by rising to the top of one's profession, thoroughly mastering the duties of each grade as it is reached. To such a man, fame, if it comes, is but an episode; his mind is fixed solely upon the full development of his powers and effective performance of his appropriate work." It would almost seem as if Farragut had shaped his course by that admirable code laid down by Collingwood to a protégé in a letter which all young officers should commit to memory. "A strict and unwearied attention to your duty," said he, "and a complaisant and respectful behavior, not only to your superiors, but to everybody, will ensure you their regard…Guard carefully against letting discontent appear in you; it is sorrow to your friends and triumph to your competitors, and cannot be productive of any good. Conduct yourself so as to deserve the best that can come to you…Let it be your ambition to be foremost on all duty. Do not be a nice observer of turns, but forever present yourself ready for everything; and if your officers are not very inattentive men they will not allow the others to impose more duty on you than they should; but I never knew one who was exact not to do more than his share of duty, who would not neglect that when he could do so without fear of punishment…Remember, Lane, before you are five and twenty you must establish a character that will serve you all your life."
Of another he wrote, "If he takes no more pains in his profession than he has done he will not be qualified for a lieutenant in sixteen years, and I should be very sorry to put the safety of a ship and the lives of men into such hands. He is of no more use to US here as an officer than Bounce11 is, and not near so entertaining…He is living on the navy, and not serving in it." Let us hope that this last remark is applicable to few, if any, of our number.
Commodore Morris writes of himself: "By great perseverance I acquired the ability to read French with facility, and then used works in that language to read history and study naval tactics and other subjects connected with the higher branches of my profession." Morris's careful devotion to the acquisition of nautical knowledge saved to our navy its most famous frigate, for it was by his suggestion that the Constitution, of which he was the first lieutenant, was warped out of gunshot from the chasing British squadron in 1812. He ascribes the subsequent victory over the Guerriere to "the unwearied exertions of our officers to devise and bring into daily exercise every important improvement which might increase the chances of success against a navy, to which we might soon be opposed as an enemy, and upon which there were so many injuries and insults to be avenged for the honor of our country. This expectation and feeling were of general, almost of universal prevalence among our officers, and led them to a unity of purpose and action which could not fail of producing important results. Their number was so small that each knew almost every other, and there was scarcely a feeling of unworthy jealousy, though much of generous emulation, among those of corresponding ranks." It was Nelson's "band of brothers" again, but conservatively expressed as became Morris's more self-contained and less expansive nature.
It is impossible to read the lives of the great sailor captains of our own as well as of foreign navies without being profoundly impressed with the fact that their laurels were won only through the seizure of the happy opportunity for which their whole previous career had been one long preparation, in careful study and practice of their profession and in cultivating that loyalty to the service and to each other which alone could make their study productive.
It was the contemplation of Farragut's character which led Admiral Belknap12 to write: "Ah, that is the sort of men we want Annapolis…to turn out. A man who knows his own mind, has the courage of his convictions, believes in himself, and in the loyalty, devotion and intrepidity of the officers and men he commands under any circumstances of peace or war. An officer whom to know is to love, whose subordinates, in their great trust and supreme devotion, will follow to the death."
The essayist suggests to his brother officers that among the many benefits that will flow from a revival of the ancient cult is an improvement in their material conditions.
As a body, we labor under many unnecessary disadvantages and hardships from which we ought to be relieved, that the maximum efficiency of the fleet may be attained. Pay and promotion, for example, are legitimate subjects upon which to urge remedial legislation. While, as suggested by Mr. Secretary Long, something is possible through rigid examinations that, by weeding out the unworthy, shall at the same time benefit the capable and faithful, the limit in that direction is soon reached. A reasonable petition for help out of our troubles would then be in order, and, coming from the entire naval organization as a unit, it could not fail of its purpose. One need not be a prophet nor the son of a prophet to assert that there will be no marked change in existing naval law under these heads until the Navy speaks as with one voice.13
If the essayist has seemed unduly strenuous in claiming importance for the efficiency of a naval morale, it is because, in this materialistic age, the transcendental and less obvious condition is overlooked, and the underlying motives and the indispensable medium of mutual confidence, in which these motives work to the desired end, are unacknowledged, if not unperceived. Just as in all human actions there are the body, the mind which guides and the soul which animates—so in naval affairs there is the ship herself, her drills and discipline, with the education and training of her officers and men as the means by which the ship is controlled and directed, but it is esprit de corps which furnishes the breath of life. If we keep this fact before our eyes, realizing that as a man is measured by his desires and aspirations, so, in a ship, her general tone is the index of her efficiency, we cannot fail to practice and to preach the doctrine which it has been the intention of this paper to expound.
We shall surely have our reward. It may be in the correction of some of the many irregularities and anomalies which bear upon us hardly at times, and for whose adjustment mutual confidence and a readiness to sink self for the good of all are prerequisite. This much, at least, is certain, no relief to the body of officers and no general improvement of the service as a whole can be obtained so long as individual interests are fostered at the expense of the Navy at large, and so long as esprit de corps is regarded as of antiquarian or transcendental interest rather than recognized and proclaimed as a living and compelling force, the only bond by which to unite all the members of the naval profession, whatever be their rank or corps, in a homogeneous body of faithful, loyal and patriotic servants.
And doing this we shall likewise gain the right to use the stirring words of Nelson when asked by Lord Barham to select his own officers: "Choose yourself, my lord; the same spirit actuates the whole profession; you cannot choose wrong."
1. Mahan, Rev. and Emp. I, 103.
2. See Mahan, Sea Power in the French Revolution and Empire, vol. I, chap. II.
5. Rear-Admiral Belknap, U. S. N., in "Some Aspects of Naval Administartion in War, with its Attendant Belongings in Peace."
6. The Secretary of the Navy says, "There are men who would count their lives as nothing beside their country's need, yet pull apart 'like a balky team' in the homely adjustments of ordinary work."
7. As naval officers we should be proud of the cheery expression "Ay ay, sir!" the finest ever invented for the acknowledgment of an order. It is commended as a fruitful text to the coming generation of graduates of the Academy.
8. A sronger phrase is not uncommon.
9. Quoted, with approval, in Lairdet's Professional Recollections, p. 288.
10. Thus Commodore Charles Morris, in his Autobiography, says of Lieutenant Daniel Murray: "My subsequent improvement may, in a great degree, be fairly attributed to his influence, and the elegance of his manners, his cheerful and amiable temper, and his high and firm principles furnished an example which excited a desire and even an attempt to imitate."
11. From a sermon delivered at the Naval Academy, by Chaplain Henry H. Clark, U. S. Navy.