DISCUSSION
Amalgamation and Specialists vs. Corps
(See Page 1209, Whole No. 222)
Lieut. Comdr. Kenneth C. McIntosh (S. C), U. S. Navy.—As the late Friedrich Nietzsche would have remarked, "Controversy is foreign to my nature." I have no doubt that there are many other officers who are going to make reply to the article named above, and probably more conclusively than I; but there may not be, and a few points brought out (if not made) are worthy of a voice from the other side.
Commander Fisher states baldly at the beginning of his thesis that the only reason for the establishment of corps is a desire for power on the part of some specialists, and declares that all authority now enjoyed by these segregated corps specialists has been in some way craftily stolen from the line, or commanding corps. Now it is a fact that every corps, not excluding the line, has its normal percentage of scatterwits; and I have during the past sixteen years heard the idea advanced that staff officers under certain conditions should have more absolute control than they now have; sometimes these recommendations being carried to the absurd limits which have apparently stirred up Commander Fisher to write about it. It is a rash proceeding at best, however, to judge the value of any large body of workers from the noise made by their inevitable foolish five per cent. There may be some staff officers who are rabid for "power"—I cannot think of any just at present, but I can remember some now happily no longer with us. But of the staff officers who are regarded by staff and line as efficient, I cannot think of one who has any other ambition than to be the best possible servant of the navy. To accomplish this ambition, a certain amount of administrative authority is at times requisite, but there is a vast difference between administration and command, a difference apparently unrecognized by Commander Fisher. In fact, the difference is so marked that in many cases I have personally encountered, the ability of the line officer in command has been actually diminished if not nullified by circumstances which forced an undue amount of administration and administrative duties on his already overloaded shoulders. As far as this administrative authority is concerned, it is necessary and desirable only for one reason, and that a compelling one—you cannot hold a man responsible for anything over which he has no authority. Would Commander Fisher expect the commanding officer to reconcile his ship's statement of differences from the treasury? The best answer to this assertion as to the "only reason for corps" is to deny it absolutely as erroneous. In my own case, which is the one about which I naturally know the most, there is no line officer who can truthfully state that I have ever attempted to usurp one iota of his authority although there are many who have at times honored me with special duties entirely outside my normal ones involving a high degree of administrative authority and at times actual if not theoretical command. I do not base any assumption that I would amalgamate into a decent line officer on these circumstances, and I would combat anyone who attempted to use them as argument for amalgamation. I haven't time to be a good line officer, although I am an 8 to lo knot navigator, was at one time one of the most successful spotters in the navy, have trained guns' crews who wore E on their sides, and have been powder division officer and have stood watch at sea and in port. I realize that these duties are but excrescences on the duty of the line, which is command and winning battles. That Commander Fisher is viewing only the similar excrescences of staff duties is witnessed by his remark about "specializing in disbursing pay."
The paper states that corps make for laziness in the line. Perhaps. But I have never seen a successful, lazy line officer. Nine times out of ten, when the line officer isn't actually working with his tools and his hands, he is studying how, or talking shop or thinking along his lines—in short he is putting all his time in on his profession. So are we of the staff. Naval duties are not stationary. The duties of my corps no more resemble their duties of fifteen years ago than a flying boat resembles an Old Town canoe. This very feature makes the three-year detail ridiculous. Is there any line officer who would contemplate leaving his profession for three years without qualms about the difficulties he will encounter on coming back? So with all of us. A supply officer whose detail ended in March, 1920, now back at line work would have a hard time. In March, 1923, when he returned to supply duties he would have a worse one, for the greatest bloodless revolution in history has taken place in the finances of the U. S. Government and every word, comma and semicolon in the Budget Act has an immeasurable effect on all fiscal branches. The accounting system has undergone changes no less vital, the storekeeping system has been overturned; and why? Simply in order that fiscal officers may be better and more economical servants of the country which in our case means the navy; and to the supply corps, "the navy" translates into all other corps, headed by the line, all enlisted men and civilian employees. I think I am able to learn new things with fair rapidity average at least. It takes all my time keeping abreast of current advances in the art and science of my profession. If I left it for three years or one year, I could never get back to it satisfactorily.
The ranking officers of the supply corps are not, as the paper states, "doing administrative work similar to that performed by line officers," etc. They are doing administrative work which is far removed from that done by line officers or ever done by line officers. They are doing commercial work adapted to military needs and there is no conceivable psychology more unfitted to commerce than that of the kind of line officer who is a successful commanding officer. And the converse is also true—that is why no amount of study could make anything but a makeshift line officer out of the truly successful staff officer—his mental processes swing in different orbits, around the common center, operations of the navy. And while the officers attached to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery do not spend their days writing prescriptions, a little investigation will convince Commander Fisher that the senior officers of that corps at hospitals are doing a very great deal of "specialist" work as consultants and as operators.
Which brings me to the assumption of the article that all authority now exercised by the staff has been taken from the line. This can also be flatly denied, since the issuance of G. O. No. 53. No authority in any line which the line ever handled is now in the hands of the staff. The rendition of fiscal and financial returns by the commanding officer cited, ceased when the fiscal officer became an officer. The captain once rendered returns because the purser was not in the navy nor the government service in any capacity but was simply a civilian contractor.
A great many of the arguments used are now rapidly disappearing, for instance the accounting duplication. Naval accounting has got past the bookkeeping stage and is now a science as well as an art. There seems to be no obvious reason for the detail of an officer of the supply corps to each bureau—does it matter in which room your servant works, as long as your work is done? The "control of various appropriations" is a fleeting matter—Soon the number and diversity of those appropriations will begin to melt away, and eventually, as sure as rent day, there will be but one navy appropriation with a few limiting provisos.
One thing which is forecasted is that the supply corps will soon and inevitably demand its own enlisted personnel. This is a rather startling conjecture to me at least. I have always had best results in training men who had been taught discipline first by the men who specialize in discipline—the line. Moreover, I would hate to think that the time will ever come when I will find it impossible to have a yeoman broken back to his former deck rating of sea. 2c., when he needed it, without discharge and reenlistment. An enlisted man who has been handled and brought up by good line officers is the only material really worth spending time on in supply departments afloat or ashore—but it takes more than an occasional three-year detail before an officer is fit to train him in a supply department rating.
Navigators, gunnery officers, engineers and first lieutenants have this thing in common, which is the logical reason for their all being line officers their business is to get the ship into battle, to fight her in battle and to win the battle, and their every activity of discipline, cleanliness, shooting the sun or overhauling the condensers is toward that object. Pay, commissary, clothing, accounting, issue of supplies (not requisition, except as regards the final, legal form required by statute. Vous autres chevaliers de la garde must ask for what you want) are all different, from each other and from the dozen or more other unmentioned duties of the supply corps. BUT, they are all commercial and fiscal, and so must be together.
Paragraph 23 of the article reads: "No bureau wants to be the indirect cause of increasing the number of officers in a corps, centering in some other bureau, and thereby decreasing their own relative authority…" Brothers, brothers! Are we like that? Most of us? Any of us except the fool five per cent? I had thought the Act of August 29, 1916 stepped on that really treasonous self-seeking between corps
"The power to direct and control flows only to the man who by general experience knows how." Right, a thousand times right! And the corollary is that the man who tries to direct and at the same time retain cognizance of all the details better left to specialists cannot direct. The best commanding officer under whom I have ever had the honor to serve—and I have been unusually fortunate in regard to commanding officers—once told me that "the hardest thing about my job is to remember that I am no longer the executive, and when I was executive it is a wonder the engineer didn't poison me for the way I interfered." That particular commanding officer is the only line officer of my acquaintance who had studied supply work sufficiently to direct details—and he is also the only one who consistently and inevitably never did so direct the details but left them entirely to me, his specialist, saying nothing when things went right, "crawling my hump" if they were only right, instead of best. A specialty which demands all of one's waking, working, studying time cannot be made a detail; and the specialist officer is like a virgin in one respect—he's entirely specialist or he is none at all! The days are past when "getting by" will do in anybody's job in the navy; and the man who must "get assistance from others who have"—which means, be educated by his yeoman—can never hope to do more than just barely "get by."
"Line officers have, in the past, controlled the navy…" yes, and thank the Lord they still do! Never, I hope, will the main mission of "getting there fustest with mostest ships" be subordinated to any form of theoretical control! But when a line officer has to lose sight of his main mission, even for a brief period, he is as bad as the staff officer who loses sight of his mission—deadwood, a hybrid, a salary-drawer. Command us and we serve, gentlemen of the line. But when it comes to the comptroller, or the auditor, or manufacturing, or cost accounting or purchasing or storekeeping or transportation or chartering or curing dysentery or planning a balanced ration or locating raw materials or keeping within statutory limitations of appropriations and still getting the work done—unless you put in all your time at it, you must do it in something less than the best and most economical and efficient way. Your job is too vital to the nation to have its non-fighting details hamper your attention.