IN MAKING a study of education and training of officers of the navies of England, Japan, France, Germany, and Italy and comparing their scope, methods, and requirements to ours, we find many points of difference as well as similarity.
All five of the countries included in the study maintain an institution for the training of officers corresponding to our Naval Academy. In all of these five institutions the entrance requirements seem to be based upon the educational system of the country. The widest variation from this is in England, where they take the Dartmouth entry at the age of twelve and one-half years. In the years following his entry the Dartmouth cadet is given practically the same education that he would receive in a public school. When he reaches the age of our entry he is joined by graduates of the public schools and given a course similar to that of our Naval Academy.
Practically every country except ours holds a nation-wide competitive examination followed by a personal interview before a board. Our entrance requirements are manifestly easier than those of the other countries studied. This is due to:
- Our requirements are based on what the youths of the nation are expected to know.
- There is no class of supereducated youths upon whom we could draw.
- Our system of appointments is such that stricter requirements might operate to exclude youths from certain sections of the country.
Naturally, our easier entrance requirements are reflected in our heavy losses of midshipmen during the period of training. This may be said to operate in two ways: (a) Lax requirements admit some inferior material; and (b) the probationary period is extended throughout the entire period of the midshipman’s training.
There is a feeling in other navies that once the cadet or midshipman is admitted into the service he has passed the hardest test of his career. No country except Italy comes anywhere near our loss of 43 per cent. England and Japan have losses of from 1 to 5 per cent and these are caused mostly by physical examinations.
The general opinion of those who have gone through our Academy and observed the foreign schools seems to be that greater emphasis is placed on instruction and practical demonstration at the latter. They seem to find that a greater effort is made to stimulate interest with little or no attention to an immediate mark or desire to find out just how much the student knows.
Naturally, at all such institutions there must be some urge in addition to the personal pride involved. This is usually expressed in terms of hope of reward or fear of punishment. The constant “bogey” of “bilging” is the greatest urge at our school, in addition to the hope of obtaining a high class standing. Unfortunately, the latter is not given universal attention and except with a few is seldom thought of. “Bilging” in the foreign schools has not the finality it has in ours. They all have a limit of endurance but they use a system similar to our civilian colleges and universities. England rewards success with something more tangible in the way of reduced time spent in the junior grades. They may reduce the time as a sublieutenant from thirty-six to thirteen months. In Italy the final class standing is not kept permanently, as it is in our service, but officers are returned to the academy as junior lieutenants and given an opportunity to improve their standing by their work in a general line course.
The primary training—that is, midshipman and cadet training—which in some countries extends through the ensign grade, is in all cases broader than ours. France, alone, has a two-year academy course but the entrance examination would require the knowledge of our second classmen. After graduation they send the ensigns to two schools, one of application and one of improvement, so their course may be considered as broad as ours.
Their secondary training, that is, their officer education and training in all cases except in Germany, covers as much ground as ours and seems to be more universal and mandatory. At the present time none of our officers is required to take any course, although if the plans of the Knox-King-Pye board are carried out all officers will have four periods of instruction. Following this plan our secondary education will be equal to that in any of the countries studied and will be better than in most of them.
With the consideration of secondary education comes the question of specialization. There are two general types of specializing, corps and line specializing. There is a very prevalent tendency in foreign navies to form a corps at the slightest provocation, England being the exception to the rule. There is much specializing by the corps method that seems superfluous. They all have an engineering corps and it is safe to say that there is not a satisfied engineer corps in the world. This surely justifies our method in that respect.
There is much line specializing in all navies. England does this to quite an extent. After becoming lieutenants, officers almost invariably specialize, although they are not required to. They may specialize in gunnery, navigation, torpedoes, radio, signals, or physical and recreational training. This means that their duties until reaching the commander grade are restricted to their specialty. A lieutenant qualified in gunnery is thereafter known as a lieutenant (g), qualified in torpedoes as a lieutenant (t), etc. A specialist is considered to have the better chance for selection to the rank of commander. They carry this specializing so far that nonspecialist turret officers are often senior to the specialist gunnery officer. All countries follow this method to some extent. Japan awards “brevets” to officers qualified in various branches.
It could be said that we are tending towards the same method. We have been sending officers on the average of a hundred a year, since the war, to take up some special course. This gives us roughly a thousand officers whose duties are restricted until the commander grade. This is exclusive of five hundred officers in aviation. While the British system is not recognized officially we are following it on a smaller scale. It has been brought about more by the need of increased knowledge along material lines than by a deliberate copying of the British method. There is a tendency both of the Bureau of Navigation and of the officers concerned to limit the time in the specialty to a minimum. The British system tends to have officers in the various positions who know their jobs, but it is not giving them the well-rounded experience that our method gives our officers.
Some navies attempt to give all officers of the line and corps the same background, as nearly as possible. Every officer in the navy in Italy spends some time at the naval academy. This seems to be a general policy in other European countries insofar as possible. There is also a tendency to have a paymaster’s school paralleling the naval academy.
The equipment of our Naval Academy is considered superior to any in the world. The facilities of our officers’ schools are not, as a rule, as extensive, but considering the use that we make of civilian institutions, we are at least equal.
The system in England is indicative of lack of faith in the methods used and a tendency to experiment with many methods. That of France shows the lack of an orderly program with a scattering of schools throughout the country. Many of their schools are without meaning or justifiable existence. Italy has a very definite program and is doing much to educate its officers. In order that all may gain necessary sea experience, they send squads of officers on the subsidized merchant-marine ships for short periods. The Japanese seem to have patterned their schools upon what they consider the best that the other powers offer. Their schools are numerous and include all fields of naval endeavor. They have carried theoretical naval education farther than any other nation and it would seem to be at the expense of the practical. They have more officers under instruction than any other nation in the world.
While our system may have its weaknesses it seems fundamentally sound, and should produce well-educated officers.