1. The sole reason for the existence of the Navy Department is the probability of war.
2. The most important office in the Navy Department (after that of the Secretary of the Navy) is the office of naval operations.
3. All other offices in the navy are merely subsidiary to that one particular office—the Office for the Conduct of war.
4. The several bureaus of the department, the navy yards, and naval stations generally, each and all, exist solely for the one great end—to contribute, each in its own way, to the successful conduct of war under the Secretary of the Navy and his chief director of naval operations.
5. Inefficiency in this one office (the office of naval operations) means the wreckage, in time of war, of the entire system. Hence the supreme importance of the office cannot be exaggerated.
6. Military history teaches that a general staff, composed of officers specially instructed in staff duties, is a necessity. Says a high German authority:
The General Staff forms an essential part of a modern army organization; … it has grown in importance with the numerical increase of modern armies, and the development of military training and efficiency.
7. "The Staff College" (for training officers for duties on the general staff) "owes its origin to the experience of the Great King (Frederick) in the Seven Years' War."
8. It has now come to be well understood that what is true of a land army, in this respect, is equally true of a sea army. A naval general staff, under whatever name may be preferred, is absolutely necessary to the proper conduct of naval warfare with this marked distinction: that a naval general staff is a small and very simple organization compared to that of an army.
9. To prepare officers for duty on the general staff requires special training—as for any other specialty.
10. For the training of officers for staff duties, staff colleges have been established (see par. 7).
During his last campaigns, Napoleon began to reap the advantages of an institution which had been under his fostering care, and a host of distinguished young generals fully justified the praises which the Emperor lavished on his "poulet aux oeufs d' or," the hen that laid him golden eggs.
11. The Naval War College, which is essentially a staff college, was established for the express purpose of training officers for naval staff duties.
12. The object was to enable officers to prepare themselves by a course of conscientious work, for duty in the most important office in the Navy Department next after that of the Secretary of the Navy, namely: for the Office of Naval Operations.
13. Through want of understanding the importance of the War College, together with a misconception of its true character as an educational institution, the Navy Department has failed to reap a tithe of the benefits the college had to offer.
14. The annual conferences of only four months' duration, and their often inconsequent conclusions, have deluded the service at large into the belief that the college had nothing better to offer.
The real work of the College has been done by the members of the staff during the winter months. To refute the service idea that the College has "no studies of utility," it is only necessary to call attention to Rear-Admiral Mahan's great works on Sea Power, which were first given out in the form of lectures delivered at the College. There are many other valuable papers which have been developed by the staff members, and used by the Navy Department.
15. During the past twelve years of its existence the request for additional officers to carry on the college work has been met by the assurance that there were "no officers to spare."
16. It is not the lack of officers that has retarded the development of the War College. It is the lack of appreciation on the put of the naval service of the relative importance of naval duties. The profession has nothing higher of attainment than the mastery of the art of war.
17. On the scale of educational values, the War College stands at the head, not even excepting that great School of Application— the fleet. For War College training means the direction of the operations of the fleet.
18. Appreciation of relative educational values would suggest that, in the assignment of officers to duty, the Naval War College should receive the very first consideration. A War College diploma should insure the holder the most important duties the nary has to offer.
19. Of every ten officers who pass through a term of a year or more of Naval War College work, there will not be more than one, or at most two, who will develop an aptitude for the particular kid of work required on the general staff. An officer may excel in ordnance or in gunnery; he may be a good linguist or a mathematician, and yet discover no aptitude whatever for the work of planning naval campaigns. Nevertheless, in every instance, conscientious application to the War College course has broadened the officer's mind and vastly increased his capacity for higher tactical command. Hence the double necessity for passing the greatest possible number through the mill; first, to prepare the many for the higher commands which will come to them in their professional career; secondly, to discover the few fitted to fulfill the requirements of the Office of Naval Operations.
20. The Spanish War forced into existence the semblance of a raff under the name of "The War Board."
21. An outgrowth of the war board of the Spanish War is the present General Board which was designed originally to perform all the functions of a naval general staff and to have nothing whatever to do with materiel.
22. The navy regulations of 1909 provide that the General Board "shall coordinate the work of the Naval War College, the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Board of Inspection and Survey." (Chap. I, Sec. 2, par. 5). This provision of the regulations effects a complete change in the character of the college. It diverts it from its original purpose as an educational institution; converts it into a part of the organization of the Navy Department, and imperils the plan for the higher education of officers which was the main object in the establishment of the college.
23. To sum up: it is quite clear from the foregoing that the true function of the Naval War College is educational, not executive. It is not a war board, nor a naval general staff. It forms no part of the working organization of the Navy Department, but supplies the material wherewith to construct such an organization. It devotes itself to the study of naval history, naval strategy and tactics, the law of nations, and academic discussions of all conceivable types of naval problems of war; it supplies the alumni from which to select officers competent to command our fleets as well as those able to solve correctly the actual problems with which a naval general staff is bound to be confronted, a duty generally of a nature so confidential as to prevent its being delegated elsewhere, and which should be the sole function of a board sufficiently strong and able to constitute, both in peace and in war, the backbone of the Department of the Navy.