Source Material and Fundamentals
IN SEEKING material for a discussion of command, one is struck with the absence of literature on the subject deriving from the pens of the great military commanders and leaders of history. There have been successful military commanders who have been writers of note; who have, for instance, been excellent historians, and it is not uncommon to find able discussions by the best of the world’s military leaders on the principles of war, on certain tactical theories, on many of the abstract features that go to make up the profession of arms. Rarely, however, does one find in such writings a direct reference to the actual technique of command. Certainly there is no standard work on the principles of command written by any one of the outstanding geniuses whose lives we study and whose exploits we analyze with a view to finding out what made them what they were. It is as if the exercise of the art of command was an essential manifestation of their personality, recognizable, to be sure, by themselves and by others, but irreducible to the terms by means of which knowledge is transmitted from the comprehension of one mind to the comprehension of another. All great art partakes somewhat of this intangible characteristic, but whereas the great painter may expound with clearness the method of handling colors and brush, or the great writer, the method of marshaling ideas, the leader of men, in attempting to communicate his methods of command, is confronted with a myriad of variables, the setting down of which transcends human ability.
Just, however, as mathematicians, although finding it difficult to devise or solve practical problems of the fourth dimension, are able, by means of theoretical concepts, to place before us in an illuminating way certain of the properties of what is neither length nor breadth nor thickness, while in the same category with all three, so students of command, by analysis of those methods of performance which are apparent in the successful operations of great commanders or in the successful attainments of those who have been greatly commanded, may arrive at a comprehension of what to do and what to avoid doing in exercising authority over others. For, after all, that is what successful command resolves itself into in the final analysis—to exercise authority over others properly. And we are using the word “properly” in its basic sense of befitting one’s nature, one’s qualities—in short, one’s self. To exercise authority over others, then, as befits the nature of the commander on the one hand, as befits the nature of the commanded on the other, is to attain success in the exercise of command.
An officer, in the military or naval sense, is one who holds a position of authority or command. From the moment that one becomes an officer one begins to exercise some of the functions of command. By observation, by reading, by imitation, through training, not infrequently from pure imagination, one derives one’s initial conception of what an officer is. In that conception one’s first command is given. It reacts on the giver and on the receiver. In the degree of this reaction lies the extent of the difference between the first command and the second, the first exercise of authority and all subsequent exercises of the art of command. Each successive manifestation produces its own peculiar and individual reaction. We are concerned here primarily with the reaction on the giver of the command—the commander. If he be self-willed and opinionated, the reaction is small. If he be open- minded and receptive, the reaction is great. To succeed he must be receptive. In other words, he must not only comprehend the reaction upon himself, which is an act of the inner consciousness, often involuntary, but he must be alert to perceive the reaction upon the commanded. So by a process of trial and error—that is, by practice—he acquires technique. Nor can this process be avoided. In the art of command, practice is essential, as in all the arts. Study helps, reflection helps, judgment helps, but practice perfects. And in this elementary stage the natural leader is as helpless as the ungifted. The former may travel the road to high command faster and proceed along it farther, but initially’- he must practice the giving of orders and experience over and over again the frictional contact that is represented by the imposition of one’s will upon the will of another whether the latter will be acquiescent, indifferent, or opposed. Only in that way can he learn to reduce that friction, can he approach that point where he acquires the power to impose his will on others as he imposes it upon himself; where, in other words, obedience, cooperation, and loyalty are yielded as a matter of course.
It has been pointed out that technique in the art of command is acquired by a process of trial and error. One begins to practice command, one learns from experience, where initially little harm results from defects in theory or practice. Such authority as is exercised derives from the orders or instructions of superiors. In exercising this minor form of command, one is manifesting obedience. Obedience is a form of self- command. It is the placing of one’s will at the disposition of a superior; it is the making his will one’s own.
In the military or naval profession, improvement in the technique of command is usually followed by advancement in authority. While increase in rank takes on somewhat of an automatic aspect in the military services, especially in the lower grades, it is in reality based on sound and logical premises, the major one of which might be set down very tritely as “practice makes for perfection.” Now this acquisition of the technique of command is usually a gradual process. One’s path to the exercise of high command is hedged about with restrictions. There are customs and traditions to guide one. There is deliberately imposed training on the part of outside authority. There are stereotypes to follow. Undoubtedly there are those who get off the road, either because they choose to leave it or because their forte lies elsewhere. But the way is clear and the guides are many, until one enters the realm of high command.
High Command in Theory and Practice
High command is the function of enjoining obedience upon others that derives from the authority vested in officers of high rank. An officer of low rank cannot exercise high command, unless he be vested with the authority of high rank. In other words, high rank and high command are correlative. One does not exist without the other and it is liable to lead to error and confusion of thought, if we conceive of high command as the exercise of authority in a special and peculiar manner. Indeed, there are discussions of high command that appear to be based on some such fallacy.
Perhaps the outstanding characteristic of high command is the presence in it of a greater or less degree of absolutism. That is, the orders of high command originate largely in the will of the commander of high rank and do not represent, as it were, the paraphrase of the will of another. We know certainly that such orders are based often on general instructions or broad policies, understood or implied, but nevertheless the responsibility for their issue is in a much higher degree absolute than is the case in the issue of orders by subordinate commanders, whose performance of duty is hedged about with many more specific and detailed regulations and instructions than pertain to the exercise of high command. One has but to glance at the regulation books of the military services in our own or in foreign countries to note the detail that surrounds the exercise of command by, say, the captain of a ship, and the ever broadening generalities that guide the higher commanders in the exercise of their authority.
Now this freedom from restrictive consideration in the exercise of high command carries with it very grave responsibilities. In the exercise of subordinate command, especially in time of peace, corrective influences are always at work tending to limit the effect of errors in judgment or performance. In the realm of high command, these influences, these checks and balances, are fewer and less effective. Mistakes in high command, errors in its administration, are far-reaching, multitudes are affected, desired results are compromised; in war, battles may be lost or their issues rendered doubtful, and nations may be imperiled, their liberties placed in jeopardy. Naturally, then, the power to exercise high command should be delivered into capable hands, and he who is honored with such a trust should consider no effort too laborious to fit himself for his task.
Officers in the military and naval profession, however, are very human. Carrying on in an atmosphere where readiness of material and preparedness of mind are professional fundamentals, they are a class trained to a higher average of professional attainment than are those pursuing the peaceful professions. It is well known, however, that, until a comparatively recent date, great military leaders were conceived of as men born with a genius for command and it was held quite unquestioningly that war leadership could be learned only in the presence of the enemy.
It was the results which flowed from a study principally of the Napoleonic campaign by officers of the Prussian Army after Prussia’s humiliation at Jena in 1806 that effectually shook this fallacy from the minds, first, of the French militarists (for it appeared doubtful whether Austria really comprehended the underlying causes of the 1866 debacle) and gradually from the minds of all earnest students of the “dreadful and impassioned drama” of war. Without question, many officers in the past had perceived the need for a study of the art of command, especially of high command. Undoubtedly many individuals, abandoning the task of attempting to influence others to study the art of command, had set themselves resolutely to learn all that history and biography had to teach of this essential military accomplishment. Others, without a very clear realization of the goal toward which their efforts were directed, sensed the value to be derived from a study of what others had attempted or accomplished in the waging of war and hence absorbed, in the pursuit of this interest, correct theories of the art of command, which later they were enabled to put in practice with the effect of inspiration. Napoleon himself not improbably falls in this class. Caesar certainly was deliberately self-taught, acquiring his supreme knowledge of the art of command and of leading armies after he had passed the age of forty.
With the crushing defeat of the French in 1870 by the Prussian-trained German armies following so closely after the German victory over the Austrians four years before, it became evident that the high command of the German war machine was deserving of the closest study. As a matter of fact the expression “war machine” has passed into current speech as typifying an organization so skillfully built up and so efficiently administered as to take on the characteristics of a piece of well-designed machinery. It required only cursory investigation of German military writings to ascertain that their theories were derived from methods which had proved successful in past wars, irrespective of traditional military ideas or concepts. It is one of the odd failings of the human mind that it tends to be unreceptive to what may be called displacing concepts. The mind may be entirely open to ideas which are additional to the sum total of its knowledge, but it resists with a certain perverse stubbornness those ideas which, if accepted, displace or change the aspect of knowledge already motivating its actions. So it was that the French, who had every reason to analyze the methods which made Napoleon successful, who had the writings of the distinguished Jomini as a text, came to have the bitter knowledge that the Great Emperor had taught his enemies, through the experience of their many defeats at his hands, the theory of his success, even as Hannibal had done for the Romans. It rested with the Prussian general staff to put these theories into practice, with what results we know. We know too that it rested with the American Admiral Mahan to indicate the underlying principle of the greatness of Nelson’s career before the world at large grasped the true theory of naval leadership.
Now it was Marshal Foch, as head of the École de Guerre, who expressed the thought that practice flows from theory, and that theory gets her lessons from genius. For the theory then of exercising command of armies and fleets we should get our lessons from the most successful military and naval leaders. Unfortunately the command methods of the very greatest of these leaders are practically unknown, with the happy exception of those of Napoleon and Nelson. We know, however, that Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon, Nelson—all had one quality in common—the ability to place themselves humanly in close contact with those whom they commanded, to identify themselves, in the fullest sense of the term, with their commands. They appear to have established this relation wholly without loss of dignity, with no suggestion, certainly, of ingratiating themselves, and without the slightest loss of control. This quality of being at once intimate and aloof, enshrined in the hearts of those who served them and yet never regarded with familiarity is essentially godlike. In other words, it is a transcendent quality that defies complete analysis and yet is known to be the common attribute of great leaders of men in every field—not alone in that of arms. There have been some successful military leaders who have lacked it or have possessed it in a minor degree. Wellington is a notable example. But it is a quality that stands out conspicuously among the attributes of practically all of the leaders who have attained any outstanding degree of success. It is so specific an attribute of greatness that there are numerous instances where the admirers of men of small attainments have deliberately set out to establish for their heroes a reputation for the possession of this latent quality.
Undoubtedly prestige enhances the power that some leaders exercise over their followers. A reputation for victorious achievement, even when undeserved, begets in the mind of subordinates an attitude of devotion which tends to set up what might be called an inertia of success, but prestige and reputation are far from fundamentals in the exercise of command, whereas ability to identify one’s self in a greater or less degree with one’s command is one of the basic elements in successful leadership. The greatest leaders have possessed it in the highest degree. Leaders of lesser magnitude have never been without it and remained successful. We all know the classic story of Alexander’s rejection of the helmet full of water during his pursuit of Darius, basing his refusal to drink on the plea that his followers needed the water more than he. “Such things endear a leader to his men beyond the telling.” Speaking of Hannibal’s later campaigns in Italy when, against tremendous odds, he held his own for thirteen years against the best of Rome’s generals, Colonel T. A. Dodge writes: “The Roman Army was superior to his own in all but one quality—the strange influence which a great man exercises over men.”
This ability to impress one’s self on one’s command, so characteristic of the great military leaders generally, begets in the command the same will to endure, to fight, to win that animates the leader himself, and arouses to their fullest exercise in each individual all of those moral factors—the common possession of mankind, from the highest to the humblest—which contribute to a successful issue. The will to succeed, however, cannot alone make a successful leader. There must be ability and knowledge acquired by training and study. There is no escape from the hard work and painstaking effort of preparation, if one is to exercise command effectively. Nor can this period of drudgery be confined to a limited span in one’s lifetime—to the years of youth when the expenditure of energy ordinarily requires the least effort. Effort must be continuous. Not that study of the art of command should be uninterrupted; not that training for exercise should be unchecked; but one’s routine of living should be habitually shaped toward the acquisition of those attributes of mind and heart and those features of bearing and physique, and toward a grasp of those essential facts of human knowledge that contribute, each and severally, to the attainment of successful leadership. Above all things must one dismiss the idea that none but innate geniuses have attained real success in the exercise of high command. Spartacus, the Thracian shepherd and slave to Rome, was not born a genius, but as a robber chief in his native Thrace he studied the art of war and was enabled of that knowledge to lead a temporarily successful revolt against the organized power of Rome. Toussaint l’Ouverture, a full-blooded negro, was no intuitive warrior, but a student of French methods and one who applied them in practice better than his opponents who had access to the same fields of knowledge. Alexander and Hannibal were thoroughly schooled by their respective fathers, both military leaders of note.
Thus does investigation reveal no open sesame to success in the art of high command. Thorough training, exacting study, keen observation, all of which mean hard work; that compound of kindliness, selflessness, and sympathetic understanding, which constitutes humanness and which, by effort, can be cultivated; good judgment and self-command or poise, with utter absence of pose; intelligence, not necessarily of that variety denominated high, but that which is characterized by the ability to grasp quickly—these, with executive ability and health and strength, are indicated as desiderata. To these essentials, which lie measurably within the capacity of attainment of every officer in the military or naval service, there must be added opportunity, as it were, a flux. Under the hammer of a dominating will, beating into cohesion the elements we have noted as emanating from self-cultivation, there emerges the leader— a man derived of study and meditation and self-denying toil; a principal under no mistaken conception that he has been born to command and, in consequence, free from what some one has called the “laziness of mind or the impudence of ambitious ignorance, which says to itself that after all it will find perhaps at the critical moment the so-called inspiration to direct with a sure hand the complicated movements of masses of a million men.”
Theory demands that every unit, every element, of an army or fleet shall respond to the will of the commander as does he himself. We have seen that the greatest commanders have in the highest degree possessed what many writers have chosen to denominate a “latent quality” of impressing each his own personality upon his command, of animating his command with his own fighting spirit, his own will to win. The more thoroughly we study authentic records of these distinguished leaders, however, the more we are struck with the thought that this impressing of personality was accomplished in definite and understandable ways. In other words, we find that, from Alexander to Napoleon, on land and sea, the great leaders transmitted their ideas to their commands by the use of wholly practical methods of communication. Where commands were small, the leader addressed himself to his officers and men en masse. This method is tremendously effective, because it places the personality of the commander, as revealed in the spoken word, in direct contact with that of each individual of the command.
As forces grew and units multiplied, the commander was forced to resort to the transmission of his ideas to his command by conferring with the leading unit commanders. So did Nelson with his captains, and so did Napoleon, in his later campaigns, with his marshals. This method is less effective than the one of direct contact, but improves in effectiveness in the degree in which the commander is able to indoctrinate the subordinates with whom his contact is immediate. As commands continue to magnify, even a personal contact with the higher unit commanders becomes often a matter of difficulty, and the commander in chief is left with the necessity of so impressing himself on his staff that the administration of his command in all its minutest details shall reflect the spirit which animates the leader. It is often in the small, the tiny details of the exercise of command that a failure properly to respect the individual— his aspirations, his hopes, his vexations, his trials—begets a spirit of unrest, fosters a spirit of discontent and criticism and lukewarm loyalty. Alexander’s rejection of water in the desert is known where the form of civil administration he set up in Babylon is forgotten. A faulty “by direction” imposition of some minor task out of one’s turn or in conflict with one’s approved program is remembered where a supremely excellent operation order for the carrying out of a fleet exercise passes promptly out of mind.
It becomes apparent that, in the practice of command and most especially of high command, and in the administration of armies and fleets, the ability to communicate becomes of the highest importance. The greater the inherent difficulty that exists in the ability to communicate, the simpler the methods of communication must be made. If persons of different tongues would converse, they must employ an interpreter, or one must learn the language of the other. If an untraveled American meets an untraveled Englishman, a free communion of ideas is difficult, until each has grasped the idiom of the other. Even in different sections of our own country, certain nuances of speech, certain modes of expression, must be made the subject of more or less reflection before intelligent communication is established. So it becomes of critical importance in the exercise of high command that the form of orders, the mode of their construction, the manner of their expression, and the choice of words employed in them shall be, in as many particulars as possible, standard, in order that communication may be swift, simple, and incapable of misinterpretation. Highly essential, then, in the courses of the various war colleges and schools of command is the training in “speaking the same language” and in formulating ideas be willing to follow the same thought processes, until such methods of thought become automatic.
Having established standard or accepted and well-understood methods of communication, it would appear that success in the practice of high command is governed largely by the power to communicate ideas. In the simpler manifestations of command, it is doubtless enough merely to issue the order or to state the plan. The reason for issue is obvious or is found in custom or doctrine or established routine. In the exercise of high command, however, the subordinate, in order to act intelligently and to use initiative, must not only be told the task he is to accomplish, but the reason why. As Marshal Foch puts it: “The power to command has never meant the power to remain mysterious, but rather to communicate, at least to those who immediately execute our orders, the idea which animates our plan.”
In theory, the command of an army or a fleet is exercised by one man. In practice, the actual orders which issue to govern the administration of an army or fleet may frequently not emanate from the mind of the commander in chief at all, but may simply reflect his policies or evolve from instructions approved by him. It is therefore of basic importance that he look to his methods of indoctrination, his manner of communicating his ideas. Where, in the past, due somewhat to the size of armies or fleets, but largely to the external simplicity of life, there was very direct contact between commanders and their commands, now, with the increase in size of military and naval establishments and the highly complicated processes of modern life, the personality of the commander in chief tends to become more and more obscured. Imperfect indoctrination of his staff, of those who immediately surround his person and are presumed to reflect his will, may result in injustice being done or serious evils perpetrated in his name. His major policies may be carried out, but the personal touch may be utterly lacking. He may become a mystery through mere inadvertence, through a failure to realize that the collective attributes or qualities of his staff, his aids, the sum total of the characteristics peculiar to each, hover about him amorphously, as it were, until shot through with the directive force of his own personality, until transmuted into homogeneity of thinking and acting, until, in short, the medium through which the will of the leader projects itself to the farthest reaches of his command takes on a crystal transparency through which is manifest always the animating will of the commander in chief. Again this means work, effort, toil, for him who would succeed in command. “We must rid ourselves,” says Professor Suzallo, “once and for all of that fallacy which insinuates that education is to be completed for any person within a given set of schools…We are made by the whole length and breadth of life.”
The student of leadership, then, must, if he would learn how best to exercise command of armies and fleets, give close attention to the organization and functions of a staff.
A military or naval staff, in the present conceived meaning of the term, is a very modern product indeed. Generals and admirals have provided themselves with aides- de-camp and orderlies from time immemorial, but before the sixteenth or seventeenth century there was no suggestion of staff officers in the modern sense. The aides and orderlies were what their names imply— minor helpers, secretaries, messengers, who responded directly and without perceptible initiative to the spoken commands of their chief. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, however, it was found necessary from tactical considerations and the size and variety of army groups to designate an officer to set the army in battle array in accordance with the plan of the general in command, thus relieving the latter of that tactical detail and permitting him to devote his attention to the consummation of his plan and to such modifications of it as might be desirable in the course of the action. The officer so designated was a superior aide— one who at first had no direct authority in his own right,—who because he performed what had been one of the commanding general’s or “captain-general’s” most important duties had of necessity to be an officer with expert tactical knowledge. He was called the “sergeant-major-general,” later “major general,” and was in some cases given direct authority in his own person to command the foot soldiers. He was, of course, supreme over the aides and orderlies and was the first example of the modern chief of staff. In fact, the term “major general” in its original significance was applied to the chief of the French general staff as late as 1870. From this beginning of responsible assignments of duty to the general’s aides, the staff idea slowly developed. Massenbach, who might be called the father of the modern staff idea, was unable to employ successfully in the art of command this instrument which he understood so well in theory. But Scharnhorst revamped the essentially sound ideas of Massenbach and, after fifty years of Prussian peace, the staff principle, with its fundamental tenets of “unity of command,” “unity of doctrine,” and “the initiative of subordinates,” vindicated itself in the campaigns of 1866 and 1870.
Since that time, writer after writer has analyzed the general staff idea and nation after nation has applied general staff principles to the administration of its military establishments and especially to the conduct of its armies and fleets. Variations from the Prussian system are common and adaptations suitable to long established methods of administration have been essential. Everywhere, however, the underlying principles are similar, inasmuch as they are derived from a historical study of the art of command as exemplified by military and naval leaders who have been placed in positions where the exercise of high command involved the highest issues of state.
High Command Afloat
A staff organization afloat should aim at accommodating itself to our own existing departmental and shore station and fleet administrations, while preserving within itself the fundamental requirements of interpreting to his command the ideas, policies, and intentions of the commander it serves, of supplying him with the information essential to the discharge of his high functions, and of affording him the means by which he can impose his will promptly, understandingly, and unquestioningly on all of his subordinates.
It would be an error, under existing popular conditions in our country, to formulate an ideal organization for a supreme general staff, except as an academic diversion. Rather we must take what we have under the law and formulate the organization of our staffs afloat to conform to the restrictions so imposed.
The ultimate object of a military or naval commander is the defeat of an enemy in battle. To accomplish his object he must have a weapon, ability to use it, and a plan for its use. In naval warfare, his weapon is the fleet and the personnel who man it. His ability to use it depends not alone upon himself, but upon those who are to him as are the brain impulses motivating the individual warrior—the directive forces of the weapon under the controlling decisions of the mind—in other words, his staff. His plan for using his weapon, after assuring himself that it is a fit weapon, must be based on a knowledge of his opponent and a knowledge of conditions attendant upon the weapon’s use. In high command, this assurance and this knowledge are beyond one man’s capacity, and again the staff is indicated. The weapon must be a fit weapon. Therefore service functions having to do with upkeep, repair, replacement, and supply of personnel, material, and funds must be represented on the staff. Knowledge of ourselves and of our possible enemies and knowledge of possible theaters of action are essential. Therefore the staff must have an information branch. With such knowledge, the commander is enabled to make detail plans, based on the basic war plans issued by the Office of Naval Operations. The weapon being fit and there being, based on due information, a plan for its employment, provision must be made to insure ability to use it—the fleet must be operated. The operations function of the staff is the culminating function, to which all other functions contribute. The exercise of this function is dependent upon the power to communicate. If the staff cannot communicate, it cannot function.
The staff of the naval commander—the brains of the fleet—if it is to accomplish the functions outlined above, must be so organized then as to provide in a broad way for maintenance, information, plans, and operations.
If the mind working through the brain finds the nervous system paralyzed, it cannot impose its will upon the body. The mind of the commander functioning through his staff—the brains of the fleet—imposes his will by means of: Communications. There must be for the commander and his staff—the mind—brain organization—a memory and recollection branch, where records are made and kept, where the results of past and current experience are set down for consultation and reference. In short, the staff must provide for: Secretariat. The human mind is prone to reason by analogy. This method of reasoning must be used guardedly, however, lest analogy run away with logic. The mind-brain-body allegory for picturing the relations between commander, staff, and fleet cannot be pursued too far, but it lends itself to clarity of thought in certain important particulars, and has been employed here, with a view to escaping from the diagrammatic, right-line method of picturing organization, which tends to implant the idea that the different divisions which may be depicted are coordinate and function with a certain measure of independence of one another, except as liaison is established by or through the chief of staff or his immediate assistant.
Every naval staff should provide for covering the following:
Maintenance.—To include upkeep, supply, and inspection of material; provision of funds; supply of personnel; education; health, including medical inspection; welfare; morale.
Information.—To include (a) intelligence in the ordinarily accepted meaning of the term, it being noted that this function would expand in time of war to comprise all possible information of enemy forces, plans, and dispositions; espionage and study of ciphers; censorship and press control. To include also a somewhat new function (b) information of our own force, as collected, sifted, and collated from general and special reports, reports of target practice, inspection of ships and special inspections, the specific object being to provide some means of following up, on the part of the high command, weaknesses or defects noted on inspections, and, under our present system, not again made a matter of information to the high command until the next inspection; of pointing out specific improvements that are necessary for increased military efficiency.
Plans.—To include the preparation in peace time of schedules for operations, maneuvers, and exercises, with special reference to the basic war plans; tactical, strategic, and logistic problems; the preparation of detail war plans for the fleet, especially logistic plans, conforming to the Navy Department’s basic war plans; in war time, the preparation of plans of campaign and plans of action; estimates of the situation.
Operations.—To provide for converting the expressed will, intentions, or policies of the commander into orders and instructions, including necessary details; preparation of operation orders and tactical and logistical instructions; directing movements of ships; military inspections of ships and their personnel; keeping a record of own ships’ positions and movements, and, in war time, those of the enemy so far as can be ascertained from “Information,” and of own merchant ships; also, in war time, the handling of convoys and escorts and the safeguarding generally of marine mercantile traffic.
Communications.—To provide for the receipt and transmission of orders, instructions, reports, and information generally throughout the fleet organization.
Secretariat.—To provide for the preparation, reception, and distribution of correspondence, including the circulating of papers within the staff; filing or the preservation of correspondence and the records of correspondence.
It is believed that every feature of fleet activity, both in peace and war, coming within the purview of the commander is covered by an organization of his staff which provides for the six functions just mentioned. These functions are in no sense coordinate. They are very definitely correlative, but the relations between them are not identical. The relation existing between the first four is a culminating relation. The fleet must be maintained in a fit condition; it must be informed of the conditions under which it may be called upon to act; it must have a plan of action; finally it must be used as an instrument of force, it must act, it must operate. The fifth function is a pervasive function, an animating function, the enlivening principle of staff activity. In other words, communications conveys to the command the results of staff work and informs the staff of the fleet’s reaction to the will of the commander. The sixth function is introversive. The secretariat, by providing for the preparation, reception, and ultimately for the custody of correspondence, affords a mirror, as it were, in which the work of the staff and of the fleet is seen reflected in such a manner as to afford a check on the past, an immediate image of the present, and a guide for the future.
In the actual organization of a staff, the tendency to set up these functions as coordinate functions of staff activity must be rigidly guarded against, nor must one function be subordinated to another. Irrespective of the rank of the officers who may carry on the six essential functions and irrespective of the extent of the personnel engaged in the performance of work in the various spheres of activity, the functions themselves have no rank. They have an intimate interrelation which no right-line diagram can depict to the eye and any attempt to convey such interrelation graphically may readily lead to decided confusion of thought. The brain of the fleet is no more to be considered as a rigidly coordinated assemblage of independently functioning divisions or sections presided over by the chief of staff than is the human brain to be regarded in the discredited phrenological sense as an assemblage of special organs or loci through which the individual faculties of the mind are manifested under the predominant control of the human will.
There must be a clean-cut differentiation of the duties to be performed in each of the six spheres, along with intensive inculcation of the thought that the liaison between the spheres must be as complete and unequivocal as human nature can compass. The grave defect in our fleet staff organizations today appears to be the adjusting of the organization to give vent to the peculiar and special talents of the individuals with whom the unit commanders surround themselves. It is as if our unit commanders, having in mind the generally accepted staff titles, sought out the best available engineer, gunnery man, radio expert, paper-work specialist, War College graduate, and so on; and with this assemblage of really talented and efficient officers set about the forming of his staff, the functioning of which becomes immediately dependent upon the characteristics of strong-minded and able men, rather than upon correct basic conceptions of what a staff is intended to accomplish. Such a staff is a personal rather than a functional organization.
As a point of departure for what the writer refers to as a functional organization of a fleet staff, let us take what we actually find in certain fleet publications to which we have present access and fit the titles and duties there set forth as nearly as practicable to the functional organization suggested in this paper.
We have these actual titles:
Chief of staff
Assistant chief of staff
Flag secretary
Flag lieutenant
Tactical officer
Gunnery officer
Engineer officer
Radio officer
Aviation officer
Surgeon
Paymaster
Constructor
Athletic officer
Personnel officer
Marine officer
Chaplain
We have set forth for us these divisions, the word being employed to connote groupings of duties and not sub-organizations of the staff organization:
Operations
Training
Personnel
Material
Finance and supplies
Inspections
Morale, Athletics, and discipline
Intelligence
Staff administration
Communications
We strongly question the propriety of designating “staff administration” as a major division of staff activity, but we include it, because it is so set down. We add, however, because its omission is clearly indicated as involuntary, inasmuch as it is covered in the detailing of duties, the division of “planning.” In segregating the above titles and divisions or work groups under the functional organization proposed, we are governed by the detail assignment of duties set forth in the “Staff Instructions,” of two of our major fleet organizations. It will be noted at once that there are numerous repetitions of titles, because our present staffs tend habitually to combine in the person of one officer maintenance and operation duties, plans and administration, and so forth. These repetitions may serve to point the way to future changes. They at least suggest that our present staff organization is not altogether sound. We have then as a basis for a functional organization the following grouping, which, of course, does not look encouraging and is not to be commended, but which does give us a practical starting point, inasmuch as a staff having the titles and work groups here set forth did actually administer one of our largest forces afloat:
Maintenance.—Engineer officer, gunnery officer, radio officer, aviation officer, surgeon, paymaster, constructor, athletic officer, personnel officer, marine officer, and chaplain, who handle personnel (including education or individual training), material, finance and supplies, inspections (of material), and morale, athletics, and discipline.
Information.—Marine officer (or other designated) who handles intelligence, and all staff officers who handle inspections.
Plans.—Chief of staff, tactical officer, engineer officer, gunnery officer, aviation officer, constructor, marine officer, who handle planning.
Operations.—Assistant chief of staff, tactical officer, engineer officer, gunnery officer, aviation officer, flag lieutenant, who handle operations (in the restricted sense of the circulars consulted), training (of the fleet), inspections (military), staff administration.
Communications.—Flag secretary, flag lieutenant, radio officer, who handle communications.
Secretariat.—Flag secretary who supervises what is not specifically denominated a secretariat in the circulars consulted, but which is essentially such from the nature of the duties attaching thereto.
It is believed that the mere perusal of this list of titles and these divisions or groupings of duties now obtaining will indicate a need of considerable readjustment before we can hope to arrive at a well- balanced functional organization. Our own Navy Regulations are particularly vague on the subject of staff organization. They insist on an operations division in staff organization, of which an assistant chief of staff shall be the head. They imply that a flag secretary and flag lieutenant are presumed to be on every staff. Beyond these features of organization, expressed or implied, they are hardly specific. They do intimate that the Navy Department may prescribe divisions other than the operations division “for the proper administration and operation of the fleet during peace and war,” but so far no additional divisions have been prescribed. It is noted that our Army differentiates sharply between the planning and operating functions on the one hand and the technical and administrative functions on the other. Operations and administration, however, are too closely allied in naval work afloat ever to lend themselves to a differentiation which would facilitate rapid and effective staff work. It must be borne in mind constantly that the purpose of the staff is to provide an efficient means for the commander to impress his will upon the fleet. It must function rapidly and to the point. The chief of staff, who is the immediate adviser of the commander, the officer with whom the commander habitually consults, the one to whom he looks directly as his executive for the carrying out of the policies of the high command, must himself be freed from the necessity of consulting too many officers. To be sure, the chief of staff’s touch with staff work must be intimate and all-pervasive; he must insure that the plans of the high command are harmoniously executed; he must supervise and coordinate the work of the staff as a whole. But he can more speedily and thoroughly do these things, if the enormous and increasing range of staff activities are grouped under a minimum of divisions, each presided over by a competent and specially trained officer who himself is thoroughly cognizant of the basic functions of staff work and fully indoctrinated in the principles of command.
Let us see what can be done along functional lines without changing the total number of officers so far considered, viz., sixteen. Primarily, we shall consider that the chief of staff, in acting as the executive in carrying out the policies of the commander and in supervising the work of subordinate staff officers, besides performing certain personal duties which have mainly to do with relieving the commander of details with which otherwise he personally would have to charge himself, such as supervising the navigation of the fleet or such portion of it as may be in company, providing for an appropriate adjustment of the administration of the fleet flagship to the presence of the staff on board, setting uniform, making certain calls, and so forth—we shall consider, we say, that he is best freed from immediate direction of any one particular function of the six functions of staff activity we have previously listed, in order that he may more fully labor for that degree of harmony and liaison in the staff which shall cause it to exercise its functions as a perfectly coordinated whole.
In proceeding to the first functional division, that of maintenance, which, in our conception, has to do with rendering the fleet, in a broad physical sense, fit for fighting as distinguished from fit to fight, which latter phrase connotes training and skill, in addition to physical readiness, we at once find it desirable to break away from some of our familiar staff-officer titles and consider a sub-organization of the staff which shall be charged with the supply and upkeep of personnel and material. Considering the fifteen officers whom we now have available, since the chief of staff is duly assigned, let us choose, without regard for his present title, the engineer officer. Let us assign him the highly important task of looking out for the physical maintenance of the fleet, being particular that both his ability and his rank are commensurate with the major task imposed. His assistants are, on the personnel side, the officers now assigned the titles of personnel officer, surgeon, marine officer, and either the athletic officer or chaplain (one, not both; because we have other employment for the additional officer). On the material side, he may be served by the officers now assigned the titles of radio officer (who may be assigned certain personnel duties), constructor, paymaster.
For information, we use the extra officer we have obtained by combining athletic, welfare, and other associated or related duties under one officer under maintenance. One officer may possibly be sufficient in peace time, provided he has proper clerical assistance. He handles and collates intelligence data and the information of our own forces furnished in inspection and other pertinent reports. He must work in intimate liaison with plans.
For plans, we use the tactical officer whose duties would be much more extensive than at present and would be largely unrelated to the duties assigned to the present officer of that title. He should properly be an officer of wide experience, thoroughly cognizant of the physical condition of the fleet —its fitness for operating, and of national and international conditions, as well as conditions in general in the naval service. His duties comprise not only the fleet’s development of the basic war plans, but the preparation of programs of employment, including overhaul and docking, and plans for fleet maneuvers and exercises. This division of staff activities would be considerably expanded in time of war.
To operations, supervised by the assistant chief of staff, would be assigned the gunnery officer and the aviation officer, but not necessarily with these titles. The assistant chief of staff, whether or not he retained that particular title, would be called upon to have the same general attributes as at present. The gunnery officer, however, whatever his knowledge of gunnery, would be called upon to have somewhat the point of view of the leading officers in the Division of Fleet Training of the Office of Naval Operations. He would be concerned with engineering competitions as well as gunnery competitions. He would have no immediate duties regarding the armament condition of the fleet, in the material sense, that being a function of maintenance. The aviation officer would not necessarily, in his capacity as an assistant in operations, be so entitled. It would appear well in the present state of aviation development to have an aviator on the staff, but his duties need not be narrowed down solely to aviation. He should be a real assistant to operations in general, with his consultative knowledge of aviation always available.
Communications would preempt the services of the flag secretary and the flag lieutenant. The personal aid features of the latter’s duty are, of course, extraneous to communications, but are essential and can be performed without reference to the functional organization herein outlined.
The secretariat function, although distinct from that of communications, is allied to it objectively in obvious ways, and can readily be supervised in peace time by the flag secretary.
It is apparent, in using our sixteen officers as above outlined, we have been influenced by staff corps considerations in assigning a preponderance of officers to maintenance. This phase of staff organization is a difficult one. The Army makes a distinction between the general staff of a command and the technical and administrative staff. This distinction does not reduce the total number of officers assigned to staff duty, which is the great desideratum in any staff organization suitable to the restricted physical limits of a vessel afloat. It is conceivable that, if squadron staffs were provided with surgeons and paymasters, no surgeon or paymaster would be essential on the staffs of higher organizations of the fleet. Thus the poorly officered information and plans divisions might each be afforded another officer at the expense of maintenance. There appears to be a real place for the fleet marine officer, so long as marines are carried afloat and marine landing forces of considerable proportions are a possibility. The need of force or squadron marine officers is not so great. It is, of course, not essential that the legal duties of the staff be performed by a marine officer. On account of the small size of the Construction Corps and the desirability of having some constructors always at sea, there appears to be reason for having a constructor in such forces as habitually operate separately and unite only infrequently for maneuvers or the like. A fleet chaplain, as such, has no place. The title smacks of church hierarchy and has no legitimate reason for being included in a naval staff organization. If a member of the Chaplain Corps is particularly fitted to supervise welfare, athletic, and associated activities, as they have place in the functioning of a staff there would appear to be no objection to his assignment to such duty. The same considerations might apply to a medical or supply officer, but the duty would be assigned such an officer independent of staff-corps consideration. This assignment to staff- corps officers doing duty on a naval staff afloat of duties independent of or in addition to staff-corps functions appears justified by the success which marks the work of staff-corps officers at the Naval War College, where their specialties are not given particular consideration. The tendency of a staff organization which stresses too much staff titles and cannot become accommodated to giving any but medical duties to an officer of the Medical Corps or any except supply or disbursing duties to an officer of the Supply Corps is especially unfortunate.
If, instead of permitting any staff-corps considerations to affect other than mediately the duties to be assigned to members of a naval staff organization afloat, we take a number of officers not exceeding the total number assigned to, say, the Battle Fleet, where we find twenty-two officers all told performing staff duty, and, with this number, we organize on the basis of our six functions, we could arrive at an organization similar to the following:
Chief of staff—Line officer of command or flag rank.
Maintenance—Six officers, at least three to be line officers.
Information—Two officers, at least one to be a line officer.
Plans—Two officers of the line.
Operations—Five officers of the line, including one aviator.
Communications—Five officers of the line, including the flag secretary and the flag lieutenant.
Secretariat—One officer.
The staff organization above outlined covers functionally, in a balanced manner, all possible duties that a naval staff may be called upon to perform. The number of personnel may be increased or decreased at will according to the burden of work or the size of the naval force under the commander concerned, without the arbitrary readjustments of duties not uncommon in existing staff organizations, when personnel is changed. The secretariat function, when personnel considerations demand it, can be combined with communications. Likewise information and plans can be combined. Still further combination might warrant the linking together of information, plans, and operations, in which case we might expect the chief of staff to perform the normal duties of the assistant chief of staff, in addition to his own, the latter title not appearing on our staff roster. It is in the small staffs especially that staff-corps officers would most advisedly be assigned duties outside of and in addition to their particular specialties. If the practice of assigning such additional duties should become commonplace, there would be no more criticism of it than we now accord the practice of burdening the average line officer in a small staff with all manner of multifarious duties. Such a practice would enable our necessarily small destroyer squadron staffs or light cruiser division staffs to function with greater efficiency.
It is believed that the faultiness of our present staff organizations afloat lies largely in a failure to visualize the basic mission of a naval staff. Evolving as they did from the original flag lieutenant and flag secretary of a small force, in which the flag officer himself was able to and did perform personally all of the important functions of command, they have grown gradually to such proportions as to warrant thorough examination and analysis, lest they take on the aspect of a bridge so weighted with the means of transportation as to impede the progress of those for whose use it is designed. This exhaustive examination and analysis have not been made. There has been at times a tendency to attempt the application of Army staff organization to naval staffs. Such an attempt is doomed to failure as long as the Navy is without a supreme general staff, nor is it probable that, even with such a supreme staff, the organization of naval staffs afloat would follow
Army lines. In land warfare, in its purely objective and material aspect, there is no real counterpart to the fleet. Consequently what we have denominated maintenance in our discussion of naval staff functions will always demand a conspicuous place in the exercise of high command afloat. The sharp differentiation made in the Army between war staff duties and what are classed as technical and administrative staff duties is not at all in harmony with present naval organization nor with commonly accepted naval concepts of organization. Insofar as possible the fleet must be fit for fighting at all times. The commander therefore must have at hand the agency for keeping him in intimate touch with this phase of his exercise of command. In other words, maintenance in any conception of naval staff organization is primary and elemental. As expressed before, it is the function of making and keeping the weapon ready for use. It is therefore the foundation function. With the essential aid of information, we are enabled to draw up appropriate plans to conduct our operations, which, through communications, culminate in action, the reaction of which is reflected in our secretariat.
Whether or not the basic functions of a naval staff have been correctly deduced in this paper, it is at least apparent that our present naval staffs, efficient as they may be in their activities, are heterogeneous in composition and possess generally only such organization as the particular personal talents and characteristics of their members dictate, which organization is not standardized and is primarily non-functional. The remedy for this condition lies within the power of the Navy itself to prescribe and administer. The results to be obtained in increased fleet efficiency by the administration of the proper remedy are incalculable.