In March 1909, the Naval Institute’s Prize Essay, titled “Some Ideas About Organization on Board Ship,” was written by Lieutenant Ernest J. King, U. S. Navy, who noted, among other things, that:
“The methods of handling personnel now obtaining in the service are largely due to accretion, combined with the primary disadvantage that there has never been any logical system . . . on which to base anything—navy personnel has no semblance of organization . . . the service leads a “hand-to-mouth” existence. . . . However, it must be conceded that this state of affairs has one advantage . . . the personnel can be adjusted to any situation or requirements whatsoever.”
Further, Lieutenant King charged that:
“It has become the practice to allow the title and standing of petty officers to a large number of men on board ship whose duties and training are not in the way of command; the presence of so many pseudo-petty officers has operated to nullify the importance, the authority and the employment of the actual petty officers. . . . It is suggested that the title and the standing of ‘petty officer’ be withdrawn from all pseudo-petty officers and that they be called ‘rated men.’ ”
At one point in his essay, Lieutenant King observed, almost as an aside, that “. . . the desire to excel will cause men to exert every effort to prove their superiority . . .” which becomes especially significant when the reader recalls that only four-and-a-half years later, Lieutenant Commander King would become the Editor of the Proceedings; that, five years after winning the Essay contest, he had gained his first command—a destroyer—and that, less than 20 years afterward, he had qualified himself both as a submariner and as a naval aviator. And, of course, after some 33 years, he became Commander U. S. Fleet and, finally, the ninth Chief of Naval Operations.
Four years after King’s essay was published, in March 1913, Commander R. R. Belknap wrote:
“In former generations, when our officers could and did take part in outside business and rub shoulders in active competition, there were many accomplished men among them, the equals of any in any walk of life; but the present generation suffers from the evils of professional inbreeding. We can fully remedy this only by outside contact . . . getting interested in the great problems of the technical and business world, and in touch with the leading educators, and—what is of equal importance—getting them interested in us. . . . not only shall we learn from those in civil life, but those in civil life also will learn something worth having from us.”
In 1924, Lieutenant Wallace S. Wharton also examined the relationship between military men and their civilian brethren:
“To gain its end it is necessary that the Navy take its message and show its needs to the people. It is necessary that this message be so well delivered that the entire nation will realize that the Navy is an asset and that it must be continued in a state high efficiency.
“Navy enthusiasts, both in and out of the service can do a great deal toward accomplishing this end by stopping their chatter about the glory of Navy as the sole argument why it should exist and use concrete facts as to what the Navy does for the nation as a whole during the piping times of peace as well as in war . . . bring the people to see that the Navy does make returns for the money spent in its behalf.”
The mid-1920s found the naval mind coming to grips with all sorts of problems, many of which would still be confounding naval officers in the 1970s. Rear Admiral David W. Taylor, for example, wrote:
“. . . there is no more important job in the Navy today than that of improving the method of making the record of an officer's fitness as a basis for promotion by selection. This does not mean improvement of the fitness report only . . . but also indoctrination of the officers of the Navy . . . with the idea that records should be made in such a manner as truly to gauge the value of an officer to the Navy. . . .”
Lieutenant Commander Sidney Ballou was thinking 20 years ahead when he wrote:
“[The bomber or torpedo plane’s] chief enemy is and will be the single-seated pursuit plane . . . it is probable that bombers will have to have protecting pursuit planes rather than rely on their own limited powers of defense. . . .
“. . . the superior fleet needs only command of the air. . . . At sea there will be two sharp focal points, the carriers from which the planes must start and the adverse fleet which is their objective.”
It was not hardware, however, that occupied the thoughts of Lieutenant Commander Oscar Smith. He philosophized:
“Formulas and instructions are devised with the intent and purpose of making things easy for us. It seems proper for us to stop and consider the fact that men do not advance, and nations do not progress, when things are made easy. What we need is an incentive to drive us ahead. . . . The Wrights did not conquer the air on a series of successes but by overcoming repeated failures.[”]
And, in January 1930, Commander Charles S. Stanworth put out of his mind the great Depression that gripped the land and pondered the future of the battleship:
“The question of whether the battleship is merely the survival of an idea, and is no longer a utility, has been confused by the consideration of new weapons of offense, the torpedo, the mine, the airplane bomb; but we may dismiss these weapons from consideration and consider the gun only.
“The battleship is spoken of as the ‘backbone of the fleet,’ but what vertebrate animal uses its backbone for offense or defense?”
On this and other pages of this anniversary issue of the Proceedings, we have seen examples of the thoughts—some bordering on the clairvoyant, others almost ludicrous in retrospect, while still others were strongly controversial—that naval officers and others have expressed over the past century. It is to the latter category, the papers, essays, and articles which, even in today’s permissive age, seem a shade too frank, a whit too outspoken, that Captain G. V. Stewart, U. S. Navy (Retired), addressed his own fine mind in the memorable article, “The Admiral Servant, Occasionally Obsequious.”
“The Admiral Servant,” published on the 75th anniversary of the Institute, met the subject of censorship head-on:
“As to the publication of an article, there should be only one criterion. If, in the opinion of the Institute Staff, it does not trespass upon things that are secret and confidential and does not offend good taste, it should be held to be publishable. Decision as to what is printable should never be sought outside the Institute itself. If the members of the staff entertain doubts that it does not comply with the criterion above, they should consign the proposed manuscript to the waste basket. . . .
“This freedom of speech is no paltry thing to be set aside for temporary favor from higher up or as dutiful homage to one in authority. It is the great Freedom, the acme of freedom, for from freedom of speech flow all the other rights which we hold to be inalienable. Men have martyred themselves, have lost their hopes and lives in the ever continuing struggle so that we may possess the privilege of speaking our opinions and convictions without fear, and without punishment by those who differ with us and who prefer us silent and acquiescent. If other brave souls have given up their liberty and lives for that which they valued so highly, is it not mandatory that we risk a few black looks or banishment from favor to maintain the birthright they have willed to us?”
And while, to many, Captain Stewart’s lengthy anthem to the Institute, his paean to its Proceedings, represents the ultimate statement of what the Society is and strives to be, there are others who recall the article written in 1919 by Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske. Here then, in its entirety, is Fiske’s “The United States Naval Institute.”
“It is an old story of the navy that a captain of the forecastle once brought a captain of the head to the mast to make a report against him; and that when the officer of the deck inquired what was the nature of the offense, the captain of the forecastle answered, ‘Why, sir, he don’t take no pleasure in his work.’
“The story is supposed to be amusing, from the fact that the duties of the delinquent were not such as would be expected to give a man much pleasure; but it is instructive, because it shows that the experience of the captain of the forecastle had taught him that men do not usually do their work well, unless they take pleasure in it.
“There are, of course, many kinds of pleasure; but it is the experience of most men past middle life that there is no pleasure more lasting, or more certain to be realized, than the pleasure of doing work, if one does it well. Other pleasures may be keener; but, on the general principle that one always has to pay for what he gets, pleasures that are pleasures merely, especially pleasures that are keen, are usually expensive in some way; whereas, the pleasure of doing work well is automatically paid for by the doing of the work.
“Now, one of the functions of the Naval Institute is to present the problems of the navy in such a way as to make officers see how much variety and interest they possess, and how much pleasure can be secured by working on them. Without some such stimulus as the Institute, the navy would be less like a profession and more like a trade; we would be less like artists, and more like artisans; we would become too practical and narrow; we would have no broad vision of the navy as a whole, each one of us would regard his own special task as the only thing that concerned him, and would lose that sympathetic touch with his brother officers which all of us now enjoy.
“The Naval Institute is a club at once social and professional, which is not restricted to any club-house on any avenue in any city, but which spreads over all the oceans to all of our ships and stations, down even into the depths of the sea where our submarines lie, and ten thousand feet into the air where our aeroplanes fly. It is the embodiment of the thought of the navy. It is the unofficial custodian of the navy’s professional hopes and fears. It looks ahead into the future, and back into the past, and keeps track of the happenings of the present.
“During the forty-five years that have elapsed since Admiral Luce wrote the first article in the first number of the Naval Institute, the Naval Institute has been the most stimulating single agency that has existed for the development of an American navy; for, while the official publications of governments, and the official reports concerning their activities, are our surest sources of information as to what other navies are doing, yet their only usefulness to us, is in showing us what foreign ideas we should adopt; whereas the Naval Institute enables officers to look into the great beyond, and discuss and perhaps develop ideas of their own on original American lines. Officers are officially responsible for the discharge of their official tasks, and are of necessity compelled to strict reticence concerning them; but the Naval Institute, by reason of its unofficial character, enables them to get out of the rut of the actual sometimes, and soar among the glories of the possible.
“In the early days of the Naval Institute, it was ridiculed by a large class of naval officers, who call themselves ‘practical.’ They were practical, but that was all. To them, the whole of the naval profession was comprehended in the practice of the various drills and exercises in gunnery, seamanship, navigation, etc., which they saw in any ship. Their highest ideal of an officer was a man who performed those duties well.
“All honor to those sterling men, but how limited was their vision! Not only did they fail to foresee the great advances about to be made in their profession by the ‘theorists’ whom they condemned, but they also failed to see that the very arts which they then practiced owed their actual existence to the class of men they stigmatized. They failed to see that the very ships which they sailed so boldly, could not have carried them over the seas if ‘theorists’ had not theoretically ascertained the laws of buoyancy and propulsion, and applied those laws to the making of engines, sails and ships. If the naval profession were like that of breaking stones along the road, those officers would have been right; because each officer after ‘learning his job’ would have been able to practice it thereafter in a thoroughly practical and efficient way; just as a man can break stones on the road day after day, in a thoroughly practical and efficient way. What those brave and forceful, but partially blind, men failed to see, was the intellectual future of all navies, and the consequent necessity of enlisting in the service of our navy the various intellectual faculties of men; and of assisting those faculties with whatever aid the literary art might give; in order that our officers might have placed before them in the most inspiring form as many and as good problems, suggestions, and ideas as possible.
“For many years, the Naval Institute maintained a precarious existence; and it was not until within the last, say fifteen years, that it became thoroughly established in good favor. Doubtless, one element in assisting it has been a realization of the fact that, in the competitive race for excellence which navies have been holding, the use of scientific instruments and methods might have a determining effect. This competition still exists, with abundant indication that it is going to continue to exist.
“One of the factors which has handicapped the Naval Institute has been a curious shyness about writing articles for it. This shyness existed much more in the past than it does now; but it still exists to a degree that is really lamentable. Scores of times I have said to some officer who had made some suggestion, or described some instructive experience, “You ought to send that to the Institute,” and he has answered, “But I can’t write.” Now, any man who can think can write. Writing is merely recording. If a man has anything to record, writing can record it.
“The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, ‘I have an idea but I can’t express it;’ that man hasn’t an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 per cent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit.
“So far, in this article, it has been assumed that the articles of the Naval Institute are, or ought to be, extremely serious. Possibly, most of them should be; life itself is mostly serious, and so is naval life, and so should be the Naval Institute. But life is not wholly serious; and the most useful lives have usually been lives in which the strain of serious work was relaxed by frequent recreation, and brightened with wit and humor. Possibly, the Naval Institute bas too large a proportion of seriousness in its pages, and this is my individual opinion. But this is not the fault of the Institute; because the Institute has made persistent efforts to induce officers to write of any exciting or amusing experiences they might encounter. The lack of success which the Institute has met in getting due response has not been only amazing but deplorable. Why should officers hesitate to write in the Naval Institute Proceedings of those exciting and funny experiences which naval officers have in a greater degree than do any other men in the world?
“The Naval Institute has been of inestimable value to the navy in the past, and it can be made to be of inestimable value to the navy in the future. Whether it shall be so or not will depend on United States Navy officers. The degree of support which they give to the Institute by contributing to its maintenance, by reading the articles it prints, and by writing articles themselves, will determine the amount of good which the Institute can do to the navy. It is the duty of every officer, therefore, to do his utmost to support it.
“The Navy of the United States is now embarking on a career of greater importance and splendor than it even imagined a few years ago. No one thing can guide and brighten its path more wisely and more happily than a properly supported and encouraged Naval Institute. ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters, and it will return to thee after many days.’ ”