Will to Win

First Honorable Mention, 1930

And all my life I must be striving, striving, until I am laid in the grave.—Paul Jones in Churchill’s Richard Carvel

THIS is not history; it is a story of the wills of three men—a story of our Navy. Although an amount of history will enter into the story, the telling of it is not our purpose. Rather, it is our aim to take fragments of the chronicle of our young but brilliant Navy; to piece them together without attempting to choose more than a few of the many that form the mosaic of its existence; and to show, when the pattern is done, that a single greatness runs through all—the will of a man to win.

In the year 1779, under a late September moon, a rotten and worn-out merchantman tacked to a westerly course and opened fire. There were other ships present; indeed, she was firing upon one of them which was among the finest frigates in His Majesty’s Navy, but it is this converted India trader that draws our eyes with the dramatic intensity of destiny, for she is being driven on by the relentless will of a single man— of John Paul Jones. There has been no other officer in our Navy or in any other navy who has shown more clearly and more persistently than this man the triumph of will. Without luck, without favoritism, politically hindered in promotion at home and tricked out of a squadron in France, without means—without anything but an unswerving, unyielding purpose, this man who made destiny was approaching the greatest test of his will, the greatest proof of its invulnerability.

Neglecting that will, the first broadside defeated him. The poor rotten old Bon Homme Richard was nearly blown from the water by the explosion of two of the three 18-pounder guns on the starboard lower deck. They were old cannon, anyhow, that Paul Jones had been able to haggle out of the French because they were condemned—and he had been glad to get even them. Condemned cannon in a condemned ship with a condemned crew! Has ever a more insane captain put to sea? The French commissioner must have laughed when the Bon Homme Richard stood out of harbor: in that ship Paul Jones would be coming back with loud excuses before the week was up. Or, if he did not, his eagerness was only a bluff, he would never dare to place that wreck under the guns of a British warship; the squadron, whose captains were free by their orders to disobey Jones, would not be hampered in its lucrative merchant-shipping chase by this strange and foolish crave to give battle to the English.

That commissioner would have laughed with amazed scorn to have witnessed the Bon Homme Richard laying in close alongside the Serapis. He would have shrugged his shoulders in pitying contempt could he have seen the old merchantman after the explosion. The lower deck was a slaughter house. Nearly all the crews of these two guns were killed or wounded. A huge hole was rent in the ship’s side. Above, through a jagged wound in the upper deck, the sky could be seen. The remaining men went topside and Paul Jones was left with a sloop-armed vessel having a broadside of seven 12-pounders and eleven 9’s, throwing a total of 183 pounds of metal a salvo, against ten 18’s, ten 9’s, and five 6’s, making a total broadside weight of 300 pounds for the Serapis.[1] But Paul Jones still stood on deck! Aye, Paul Jones still led and that indomitable will still nerved his soul. What mattered, then, this calamity? He would be in a far worse position many times before this fight would be over .... and never once would that will be broken, never once swerved from its course.

There is something awe inspiring in the will of this man, something that defies explanation by the mere terms courage and faith, something that causes us to look at his life and to know again that anything is possible to the will of a man.

He was going to win. He had set his will to that and had forgotten everything else in the world. It was as if he had set that one idea before him on the quarter-deck, had locked his mind to all other ideas, had thrown the key away, and had then marvelously turned his whole mind and body toward the achievement of that idea.

It was sheer will, nothing else. Time after time he was beaten. In an hour, according to Jones’s own account, the Bon Homme Richard “had received sundry eighteen pound Shot below the water, and Leaked very much. My battery of 12 pounders, on which I had placed my chief dependency .... were silenced and abandoned.”[2] Only a few 9-pounders left to combat the might of the Serapis!

He was beaten; and yet in that man’s mind there was still but one idea, still but a single purpose: he was going to win! A chance came. He was able to run his unwieldy and shell-stricken ship aboard the Serapis. And now there was no doubt: at a distance the Serapis might have sunk him; now, if the Richard sank, he would board the Serapis—or the two would sink as one, as an English writer makes Jones say while with his own hands this unbeatable man lashes the two ships together: “If my ship sinks .... she shall not sink alone.”[3]

But the ships were lashed so that the Serapis swung, and now her fresh starboard battery was brought to bear, making the situation of the Richard indeed desperate. Only two 9-pounders of her whole engaged battery remained in action, and even these were deserted when the officer in charge fell wounded. But Jones was everywhere, and where he was the battle was. He took his post at these two guns, rallied a few men about him, and with this remnant of a ship opened fire again.

Such steadfastness of will! It was magnificent—more than magnificent, it was awesome. It must have been this moment that inspired the following vivid passage in Richard Carvel: “To us hearkening for his answer his voice betrayed no sign of dismay. Seven times, I say, was that battle lost, and seven times regained again. What was it kept the crews at their quarters and the officers at their posts through that hell of flame and shot, when a madman could scarce have hoped for victory? What but the knowledge that somewhere in the swirl above us was still this unswerving and indomitable man who swept all obstacles from before him, and into whose mind the thought of defeat could not enter. His spirit held us to our task, for flesh and blood might not have endured alone.”[4]

It must have been then that Richard Pearson, captain of the Serapis, felt gathering about him the inevitable purpose of this man whose will had already pervaded the Bon Homme Richard. “Long before the close of the action,” Pearson says, “it became clearly apparent that the American ship was dominated by a commanding will of the most unalterable resolution, and there could be no doubt that the intention of her commander was, if he could not conquer, to sink alongside.”[5]

With the two 9’s and another that was moved from the opposite side, with muskets and hand grenades and combustibles— with every fragment of means and hope, Paul Jones fought and inspired his men to fight on. Where he was the battle was. “I myself was in the maintop . . . .” states one of his officers, “fifty or sixty feet above the quarter-deck, but I could hear distinctly, amid the crashing of the musketry, the great voice of the commodore cheering the French marines in their own tongue .... exhorting them to take good aim, pointing out objects for their fire, and frequently giving them direct example by taking their loaded muskets from their hands into his and firing himself. In fact, toward the very last, he had about him a group of half a dozen marines who did nothing but load their firelocks and hand them to the commodore, who fired from his own shoulder, standing there on the quarterdeck rail by the maintopmast backstay.”[6]

It was a will, Jones’s will, against the fire of the Serapis. Her shots tore away the sides of the Richard. Water rose in the old ship’s hold. Two ordinary men could endure no longer the awful carnage. The master-at-arms with another ran to strike the colors, but found them gone, fortunately shot away, Jones writes, so the two cried for quarter.

Captain Pearson heard the cry. In amazing words he tells of it: “Hearing or thinking that I heard a call for quarter from the enemy, I hailed to ask if he had struck his colors. I did not myself clearly hear the reply, but one of my midshipmen, Mr. Hood, did hear it and soon reported it to me. It was to the effect that he was just beginning to fight. This I at first thought to be mere bravado on his part. But I soon perceived it was the defiance of a man desperate enough, if he could not conquer, to sink with his ship alongside.”[7]

As he made his famous reply, Jones downed one of the two cowards with a pistol ; the other he drove back to his position. And now, surely, his mighty will has been tried enough, surely no more can be expected of it. But no! The battle rages on without let-up. For the second and third times the Alliance pours broadsides into the Richard. Water rises in the holds. Suddenly the sternest test of all comes when the master- at-arms, again losing control of himself, frees the hundreds of prisoners and they swarm up on deck from below in overwhelming numbers. Even Jones must have been appalled by this last disaster, for he writes in his official report: “Some officers persuaded me to strike, of Whose courage and good sense I entertain a high opinion. My treacherous master-at-arms let Loose all my prisoners without my Knowledge, and my prospects became gloomy indeed.”[8] At last he saw gloom; what could even his great will do now?

Churchill again gives a dramatic picture, as Richard Carvel speaks, of how the will of the man rose to supreme heights: “Those of us who had clung to hope lost it then…..The seventh and last time, and we were beaten, for we had not men enough left on our two decks to force them down again…..At a turn of the hand I should have sunk to the boards had not a voice risen strong and clear above that turmoil, compelling every man to halt trembling in his steps.

“‘Cast off, cast off! The Serapis is sinking. To the pumps, ye fools, if you would save your lives!’”[9]

They went back, except one who escaped to tell Pearson of the desperate condition of the Richard. The battle renewed for a time. But it is enough. Flesh and blood cannot endure against a will like this. It is enough; the man won. In a high, golden moon the British ensign fluttered to deck as from the sinking Richard boarders clambered over the side of the Serapis.

“I would not, however, give up the point….” continues Jones in the report cited above, “and the British colours Were Struck at half an hour past 10 o’clock.”[10]

A will had conquered a ship.

 

A generation passes. It is another September, thirty-four years later. The sun is approaching the meridian; before it sinks to the horizon the will of a man will have conquered again.

For six months Perry had been planning for this battle. Every minute of that time he had been working ceaselessly, completing the building of the vessels and the excellent organization Chauncey prepared for him. He had been given much, but leaping every obstacle, never hesitating, driving on under his restless will, he had accomplished far more than could have been expected of him. He had accumulated stores and arms and men; he had completed the ships necessary to give control of the lake; and with men, at last, to man the ships, by his own unconquerable will he had dragged them in the very face of the enemy over the harbor bar into the lake—Lake Erie, where would soon be fought one of the decisive battles of our history.

His, too, was a tireless will that drove him beyond the limits of believable endurance; and then drove him on again. Cautioned, restrained, insulted by his superior in command, weakened by months of fever, he had nevertheless got a fleet ready. For a flame was driving him on, the flame that must burn in the hearts of all great commanders: the will to meet and to defeat the enemy. It is a flame that cannot endure delay, but will not allow careless preparation; it is a will for battle and victory that glories in a chance for an engagement, but enters into it coolly with well-set plans and every resource ready.

Men to man his ships had been Perry’s greatest problem. Burning for a fight, he wrote to Chauncey, his superior officer, early in the summer: “Think of my situation, the enemy in sight, the vessels under my command more than sufficient and ready to make sail, and yet obliged to bite my fingers in vexation for want of men.”[11] By begging, by recruiting in the countryside, by any means possible, he had at last accumulated half the number of men Chauncey and he had agreed to be necessary. He wrote Chauncey that he would engage the enemy with such forces as he had. The reply was an admonition and a letter placing the entire responsibility for any action upon Perry himself.

Perry’s was a lesser will than Jones’s. John Paul Jones lived with but a single goal in his heart: to get at the enemy and to defeat him. That was the eternal cry of his great will, and to accomplish it he endured all things, even to insult and injustice. Nothing within himself or without could swerve him from this, his one great purpose.

Perry’s will was a little less great. Chauncey’s deep injustice to him in the midst of the strain of fever and unceasing toil and persistent requests of the army for action sheered him off from his purpose, caused him to send in a request that he be relieved of command. Is the will that had endured so much at last broken? Will the fighter give up for any reason, even an injustice, a chance to serve his country, a chance to give battle to the enemy? Injustice is bitter and rankles far worse than injury .... a man must be driven by a will almost god-like to hold to his purpose through it. Jones did to the end of the Revolution; Perry did, when he had cooled. It may be that he had not meant to resign; perhaps that was only a means he used to battle injustice—and to battle it is not a weakening of will; certainly he was glad the Secretary did not accept his request—and probably salved a bit, too, in pride; at all events, it was but a slight flaw in a will that was of the same deep fiber as that of Jones.

He was saved for his one great work. And so it was that thirty-four years after the victory of Paul Jones two long columns of ships came together under a meridian sun, and the same resistless will that had shone in the years before was a star leading our Navy again to glory.

Perry, through his energy, had built up a superior force; but as the sun dipped in the western sky he found himself fighting against odds. Part of his squadron had been left to the rear by his anxiety to engage; the Lawrence, his flagship, was suffering under the fire of the more numerous long guns of the British. He closed to carronade range. But his advantage there, too, was quickly overcome when the adversary of the Niagara, Perry’s other large ship, dropped down to bring her guns to bear on the Lawrence. The Niagara did not come to Perry’s aid; so for two awful hours the Lawrence was battered to ruin. Most of the crew were shot down—out of 103 fit for duty, 83 were killed or wounded in the fight; most of the guns were silenced, but still Perry held grimly on. The ship and her rigging were shot to pieces, but still over her floated a large blue flag waving the defiance of these immortal words of another will unconquerable even in death: “don’t give up the ship.”

Still Perry fought on. A lesser will might long ago have quit, for it seemed apparent the Niagara was not coming into the action. Still he fought, hopelessly outclassed, with his ship shattered, his crew wounded and dead, the victory flying swiftly to the enemy. Unless the Niagara came quickly the battle was lost. But the fight went on and she did not come. Then this man, who, too, made destiny, fired a last gun with his own hands, put the blue flag over his arm, and left his ship.

Was he himself disobeying the words of that roughly made flag; was he giving up his ship? Was he? ... . No! As he stepped into the little cutter carrying the blue flag of battle on his arm, he was executing one of the most daring and momentous decisions of our naval history. He was leaving the beaten Lawrence that he might cross to the unharmed Niagara and bring her into battle. It did not matter to him that the crossing was in an open boat, that musket balls filled the air, that the splash of cannon shot tore up the water about him. For a will that would never acknowledge defeat was driving him on, was striving to win as it had striven magnificently through the months. Death in the open boat, or victory —these were the two alternatives, and the only two that this unbreakable will allowed.

So, where another might have struck his flag for lack of a will that would not quit when it was beaten, Perry dared to victory. He won to the Niagara unhurt, of course— who does not win who dares! And the battle was finished, for this fresh strength could not be withstood. In a few minutes the victory was his and on the back of an old letter this jewel of history was inscribed to Harrison:

 

U. S. Brig Niagara, off the Western Sisters,

Head of Lake Erie         Sept. 10, 1813—4 p.m.

Dear Genl: We have met the enemy, and they are ours—two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.

Yours with greatest respect and esteem.

O. H. Perry[12]

But on the history of man a message was written in finer and bolder strokes: the will of a man had won again….

A will had conquered a fleet.

Evening, noon, morning—this is the order of our chronicle. Two generations had passed. Forty-nine years after Perry had won Lake Erie an old man was directing a desperate venture. In the still hour before dawn Farragut’s fleet was attempting what was thought to be impossible; a will was doing what it was said could not be done; the forts of the Mississippi were being passed.

And as an invincible will is a strange and supreme thing well-nigh past understanding, so is its appearance stranger when suddenly it shows for the first time in a man who is drifting into the twilight of his years. It was Farragut’s first chance. In over fifty years of service no other opportunity had come to him to prove the strength of which he was capable. So that if you look only at the battle itself, and his other great one, you are amazed at his sudden strength, at his resourcefulness, at his unexpected resolution of will; you are ready to say with the many cursory thinkers: “The man was a lucky genius made by fate for that one moment.”

But if you look at the years of his life that preceded, you realize that Farragut’s genius was not made by fate; he made it himself— he, too, made destiny. It is a common fallacy to regard an achievement of a great man as the result of a moment, of the sudden bursting forth of the powers which made the achievement possible. There is genius, no doubt—the possession of the will to win or the ability to develop it is a sort of genius —but ordinarily it no more leads suddenly to success than does a seed immediately leap into stalk and flower. Farragut’s road to fame was a long, hard one, as is that of most men who arrive to it, as was that of Jones and Perry. That giant will of Jones would not have had a chance to show how invincible it was in battle had it not driven him on through years of opposition and disappointment in America and France, holding true to the one aim of some day defeating the English. Perry would never have won Lake Erie had he not striven against what to most men would have proven insurmountable obstacles in getting his fleet ready. Farragut would not have won to New Orleans had he not been preparing himself during half a century in the Navy. Thus are these wills similar; nevertheless, they are not the same. Out of the brotherhood of constancy of effort each shines with a different glory. Jones’s will flamed supremest that September evening against the Serapis when it proved that with nothing but the flimsy fabric of a will a man can silence guns, crush an enemy, defeat a proud ship. Perry’s will achieved most in the months his fleet was being built, showing how little are obstacles, how important a will, in successful preparation. Farragut’s will burned with a steady luster against the hardest strain of all, demonstrating how through a lifetime of disappointments, of dry routine, of little daily tasks, a man can hold true to himself and to his aim.

There is no denying the strength of a man’s will that through fifty aimless years without a definite goal will not let him slacken from his ceaseless efforts to be prepared. That was Farragut’s aim: to be prepared. For what? He did not know; he only knew that he must be ready, must be equipped to lead when the call came for him, that he must strive, strive, strive, in order that he might give his best in answer to this call.

The waiting years of preparation were not easy for Farragut because his was not a plodding nature. He loved battle and was anxious to prove his ability. When he was hardly twelve, serving as a midshipman on the Essex, he commanded a prize, quelled a mutiny, and brought his ship safely to port. A few months later he wrote regretfully of a lost opportunity to engage H.M.S. Phoebe, and many days afterward, as the Essex was being shot to pieces by the Phoebe and Cherub, he set down a bit of his own nature in his journal, “. . . . it was perceptible .... that our case was hopeless. It was equally apparent that all were ready to die at their guns rather than surrender.”[13]

Thus eventfully began a career that was soon to be smothered in years of dull routine. Twenty, thirty, nearly forty years went by and no chance came to Farragut to distinguish himself. He could not have been blamed had he stagnated and lost hope. But his will would not let him do that; it would not let him cease in his endless efforts to prepare himself. The preparation might be wasted, a chance might never come; but he must be ready. That was the command of his soul….Something of its restless urge lives in these fateful words from a letter of Farragut’s to the Navy Department:

I . . . . had taken great pains to inform myself as to the local advantages in attacking the place, measured the depth of the water all around the fort, and marked the penetration of every shell from the French ships .... in so doing I had not at the time looked forward to a war with Mexico, but I had made it a rule all my life to note these things with a view to the possible future.[14]

Aye, in that last line the will speaks! The will to win that is not a sudden flash for use in battle alone. The peace days, the dull days, are hard days, but in them a man forms himself. He who will not rest through them will be ready when the opportunity of his life comes to him.

When Farragut wrote that letter the Mexican War was on. Plans were being made for the capture of Vera Cruz and he was submitting one of his own. Twenty years earlier he had thoughtfully watched the French take the city and he knew how it could be done. How his heart must have leaped: his chance had come at last! Yes, it had come; but instead of its being given to him he was put in command of a blockading ship off Tuxpan where, of course, nothing ever happened. There he was, shelved for the war, shelved probably for life, for he was getting old. What incentive was left to him? There was none. But there was his will. Through the months it sustained him off Tuxpan; into the border of old age it sustained him through the years of inactivity that followed.

This is not an attempt at a story of Farragut’s life. It is but to give a glimpse of him and the will that guided his star, to show why the events that followed at the passes of the Mississippi were not chance or luck but the strange will of the man culminating in the only end it could see: preparation, grasping of opportunity, battle, and victory.

Farragut was in his sixty-first year when he took command of the project against New Orleans. He was reaching the age when daring men become cautious and brave ones slow to action. But not age, nor the desperate character of the venture, nor restraining advice could hamper the will that through life had driven him on. Carefully Farragut prepared his fleet; haste now, when he had waited so long, would be foolish. Carefully he listened as men recounted the insurmountable dangers, as they pleaded that the forts be reduced or stormed before the fleet tried to pass, as they made prophecy of certain destruction. Carefully he listened, but he had not been preparing and learning for naught all his life, and on the morning of April 24, 1862, he took the fleet past the forts.

It was in the dark hours of the midwatch when men’s hopes are lowest and sentinels are sleepiest that the fleet got under way and in a long dark column slipped up the Mississippi. Farragut stood anxiously on deck watching the first division of light craft proceeding up stream. The die was thrown. He had done everything he could to get the fleet ready. He had not waited after it was ready. He was setting out now with a single purpose—to win past the forts.

As the first division reached the breach that had been previously made in the barrier of logs, chains, and ships across the river, they were discovered. Instantly the guns of the forts began firing, turning the banks into thunderous crashes of flame. And midstream the dark water reflected other flashes as the ships took up the challenge. Harder and fiercer raged this weird battle as the heavier vessels came into range and out of the darkness the Confederate ships charged down to join the melee. Just as the midwatch ended the crisis came. A strange and spectacular craft bore down on Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford. A blazing fire raft was being swept directly upon her. At that instant something of vast portent must have been felt over all that wild scene on the river. The decision of battle hung by a hair, for in turning to avoid the raft the Hartford had struck a shoal. Neither did she evade the raft, for too late the discovery was made that it was being directed by a tug. So, there, under the fire of the forts, aground, with the side exposed to the fire raft already bursting into flames, the fate of the Hartford was becoming desperate and with her the fate of the whole expedition. But the will of Farragut rode high above misfortune. His ship could not sink, nor bum, nor quit broken on a shoal, because he willed that none of these could be. Working furiously in leaping shadows the crew of the flagship drove the tug off into the night, the raft was pushed clear, the flames were extinguished, the Hartford was freed. The crisis was past. The battle lasted much longer, but the issue was no more in doubt. A will that through life could not be stayed had steered straight to victory. In a torn and flaming darkness a will had found its fulfillment, for, with the forts passed, on the morrow New Orleans fell.

Two years later in Mobile Bay his will was to be given a sterner test. Sure disaster impended ahead where one of his squadron had just sunk, torpedoed; possible disaster lay behind. But again this man’s will throbbed with a deep and mighty tenor as he grimly set his face and his heart ahead, as the will in him, seeing only its goal, cried sternly out:

“Damn the torpedoes! Four bells! Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed !”[15]

But the April morning that saw the fall of New Orleans marked the highest achievement of that will. The South’s greatest port was captured; the shattering of the backbone of the Confederacy was begun; possible European intervention in the blockade was prevented; perhaps, even, the Union was saved by this blow—all because a man had seen his goal, had understood it, and would not be turned from his purpose.

After half a century of striving, a will had won once more.

A will had helped save a nation.

So we come to the end of our chronicle, a chronicle of the power of the will to win. We have portrayed the wills of three of our most famous heroes; and, because those things that are longest past are seen in truest perspective, we have chosen them purposely from our earlier history. These three are not all the mighty wills of even the period covered by this chronicle—thank God! There are many more, but these were selected because the will of each bears a vaster import to the history of our country than the mere winning of a battle.

Neither has this attempted to detail history, nor to prove systems of tactics and strategy, nor to show the value in peace or war of boldness of offense, vigor of attack, tenacity of effort, carefulness of preparation. Indeed, its one purpose, as we set forth in the beginning, has been to reveal in the lives of three heroes the greatest of all qualities in a leader: the will to win.

The make-up of great men is not the same, neither in abilities nor vices nor lack of vices. We cannot go to their lives and place a finger on a certain characteristic and say: “This is the thing. Here is the one thing that makes all these men great.”

We cannot do that. Yet we could come very near to the truth if we should say: “They are brothers in achievement because they have the will to win in their souls.” A rare, scattered few may succeed merely because of luck or training or environment. But in the lives of most there appears predominantly an overwhelming, undeviating will which, when set to a purpose, cannot be battered or lured or persuaded from its determined course. Hence we can almost say that a man must have that will; he must be born with it or he must develop it. No matter how he acquires it, he must have it to succeed greatly. And he must have all the parts that combine to make it such a force: concentration, drive, and faith.

A man’s goal must fill his mind day and night. No other thing in life can become so important to him that it will cause him for one moment to set it aside. He must concentrate solely upon it. This does not imply that he will do nothing else, for life is made up of many parts and many needs; but it does mean that nothing shall ever become more important to him than his goal, that it and it alone will influence his every act, that in his mind he shall always be thinking, seeking, striving after it.

It must be the passion of his mind, whether it be an immediate goal or the great goal of his life. Yet this alone, this mere willingness and desire to think of it cannot carry him to it. Though it fill his mind, it will be but a dream floating through the years if he has not drive to press toward it. After he has seen the goal, drive is that quality in him that makes him press toward it with every energy in his body. It is the quality that makes him fight on when every hope is lost, when strength is gone, when ordinary flesh could endure no more. It is the force that rebounds from a momentary failure, for no failure this side of death need be permanent, to build out of it a new route to the goal. It is the force that never ceases, never slackens in its drive to win, that is not deterred from its purpose by anything under heaven. It is not a reckless drive, but a command to do. It demands that a man shall choose carefully and use every advantage, remembering that caution may rule one occasion, forwardness the next, but that in all moments of doubt he who is brave and attacks has not done wrong.

Above all, a man must believe in himself and in his goal. He must believe, must know, he will win. Whatever disaster or obstacle may come, the idea of winning must be the only eventuality he will accept. There can be no defeat for there is no thought of defeat. To win! to win! to win! not merely to say that and to seek it, but to believe it with all his soul—that is faith. And with faith he can do all things.

Such are the parts, the three great parts, that make up the will to win. If we look at the wills of the three men of our chronicle we see that each is made up of these same divisions: a strange, unlimited faith; an indomitable purpose; and the man’s whole being a single force bent on accomplishing that purpose.

It is this will to win that in war and peace should be the spirit of all who serve in the Navy. Those who make her history of the future, like those others who builded so nobly in the past, must be driven by it. . . . Those who will have it must say to their hearts the words Churchill puts in the mouth of the man who never heard of defeat— Paul Jones:

“And all my life I must be striving, striving, until I am laid in the grave.”