Promotion in the Navy
(See Page 7, Whole No. 215)
Captain J. S. Taylor (Medical Corps), U. S. Navy.—Lieut. Commander Vossler's able paper commands universal attention. To combine the three methods of promotion is perfectly feasible. At the first reading I thought it supplied the solution for the whole matter; at the third I realized that to combine the various systems might result, not in neutralizing the inherent defects of each, but in giving us instead three sources of possible errors due to the almost ineradicable element of human weakness. Is it not true that almost any scheme would be satisfactory if it could be operated with absolute fearlessness, by people fully informed and free from personal bias?
The statutory boards for promotion by seniority were intended to promote only the fully deserving. That is undoubtedly what the law contemplated. If they had maintained a higher standard and had made more comprehensive estimates of fitness there would have been no need for plucking boards except to accelerate elimination of the undesirable. Was not the plucking system, ostensibly to increase the flow of promotion, an outgrowth of the shortcomings of the examining boards? Seniority was intended to furnish the opportunity not the assurance of promotion. If there had been real uncertainty, real uneasiness about ability to qualify under the old system would it have fostered "perfunctory and indifferent performance of duty" and offered "no greater reward to efficiency than to inefficiency"?
By a plucking board we stultify ourselves. We admit that our examinations are a form: that "once in the service always in the service" unless some gross misdemeanor disqualifies. If from lieutenant to rear admiral every examination jeopardized our hold on a life job there would be inducements to endeavor, corresponding to the desperate competition that compels people in civil life to "deliver the goods." The law contemplated that boards of officers and gentlemen under oath to determine physical, moral and professional attainments would determine both fitness and unfitness and require no other board to come along and "mop up" for it.
That is the way it looks to the outsider and we must consider the outsider not only because he makes the law and holds the purse strings but because we are his trusted agents. We have other duties to the country besides defending it against the enemy of the moment. If we are to constantly prepare ourselves and our successors to display self-sacrifice and devotion so as to be victorious in every form of peril that assails our country we must maintain for ourselves and the country the highest standard of honor and integrity. Promotion by seniority, as we used to have it, did not come up to specification. Men were promoted that should not have been promoted. There were two reasons. Sometimes we were in doubt about the justice of throwing a man out into the cold world. We were always loath to do it. We did not do it. The task was too hard. Selection came in and now among the men who are not selected there are certainly a few who have no reason to growl because, instead of being selected up, they should have been selected out, only we don't tell them so. The honest, straightforward thing is to select out when incompetency presents itself for promotion by seniority. But to relegate old shipmates and friends to penury and starvation is flatly beyond us. This is the essential weakness of promotion by seniority. Another and very real obstacle to efficient working of the seniority system lies outside the service. We know full well that if examining boards made wholesale eliminations there would be a howl from the public and enormous pressure would be brought to bear to obtain re-examination and reinstatement, etc. This seems to me a less obvious but most valid objection to attempting to bolster up the seniority system which I had always strongly favored up to the time of being asked to discuss this paper. Promotion by seniority must go by the board unless the government can relieve us of the executioner's duty by making at least a modest provision for the wholly disqualified, basing it on length of service.
Promotion by seniority did not put the best man at the top of his grade. This is desirable if we can determine his superiority. To do this we must have a totally different sort of fitness report. It should be constructive, devised entirely without reference to previously employed records, limited to reports of special, peculiar and specific commendation for unusual excellence. If "selection" is to be combined with "seniority" it should not take a man out of his grade but merely place him at the top of it. Otherwise the asset of experience is liable to be wholly sacrificed.
Whether an improved "selection" supersedes other systems or is retained as a feature of a composite one, heroism should not be an unqualified passport to promotion. I admire, I venerate the young doctor who can paint iodine on a wound or apply a first-aid dressing under fire and tremble to think that I might not make good in such a contingency. He deserves medals, honors, money, etc., but coolness under fire in doing a simple thing does not argue competency for difficult and highly technical performances under other circumstances—surgery, diagnosis, treatment of serious cases, administrative ability, all the enlarged opportunities conferred by promotion. The man who plunges into an engine room full of live steam deserves a medal of honor but he is not thereby proved competent to have charge of an engine room on a full-speed trial or in the hour of battle. He might inspire his division but hazard the ship and turn the scale against us in an even fight.
The word "may" in Lieut. Commander Vossler's proposed enactments introduces a serious element of weakness. Why should the board have an option in weeding out the undesirables if they can be discovered? Why have a numerical limitation of the men to be eliminated? It seems contrary to business principles to say: "We authorize the board to remove, if it chooses, some of the undesirables but not all." Have we not in these restrictions a door for the entrance of favoritism, personal bias, outside influence? There are six incompetents. The board for its own tacit reasons does not reach the sixth man or decides, more prudently, to eliminate none. Whose friend is he? Whose protégé?
I do not understand the technical requirements for reasonable flow of promotion but it is a safe rule that good practice depends on sound principles. It is a sound principle that: (1) All men of reasonable deserts should be promoted in time; (2) that no undeserving man should be promoted and if not good enough for promotion he should be eliminated; (3) that the few of universally recognized and exceptional merit should get on faster than others. The regular statutory examining board for promotion ought to be so strengthened and helped (one method of doing this has been suggested above) as to be competent to accomplish (1) and (2) or else be abandoned. Selection can accomplish (3) if it be provided for on an entirely new system of determining merit.