Any man can only do so much work a day as a steady job. Of course, in times of emergency, he can spurt up and put forth a big increase in output. It cannot, however, be sustained. He is calling on his reserves of energy built up by work, recreation, and rest. He can work for twenty-four hours for one day or even, perhaps, for two days, but then the work comes to a standstill until time for recuperation is allowed.
Naval officers, sad to relate, do not recognize this axiomatic truth, as they place no limit on their hours of work. They tend to burn up needlessly their own energies and, unfortunately, that of hundreds of those under them. They do not recognize that there is a time to work, a time to play, and a time to rest.
While the principal responsibility for the above condition rests on some officers in high command, the actual abuse of time of work is committed by officers on their staffs. This condition is a result of the staff organization and lack of supervision over the activities of the individuals of the staff. It is also probably caused in part by the fact that staff officers’ places of work and abode are one and the same and they are continually in the environment of their work.
The staffs are organized practically on a war footing and are, consequently, very large. The routine duties of peace do not provide enough work.to keep them fully occupied at all times. But if they apply themselves in study and analysis of their own jobs there is enough work to keep them occupied during working hours. Also, there are many inspections of other ships that they could make to keep themselves informed of what is actually going on and the degree of preparation that is being accomplished in the command for which their admiral is responsible
First, however, staff officers do not confine their work to what are commonly regarded as working hours.
For long periods of time at sea and at anchor in isolated sports they regulate the hours of their work more or less to suit their personal convenience. As there are many such officers working at odd times they naturally tend to interrupt one another’s work at frequent intervals with desultory talk, often for long periods of time. Consequently, many of them are forced to put off their work until night when they are free from interruption.
When in port the majority of officers off duty leave the ship after working hours but there is always one staff officer left on duty. Now, frequently, this officer, knowing that he has to stay on board such and such a day, is apt to put off work to do after working hours on those days. Or other officers may go ashore in the afternoon only for recreation and come back to spend the evening on board. These evenings are often used to do work that should have been accomplished during the day. This condition is natural where they are not bodily transferred from their place of work after working hours. Habit is strong. The desk is in their rooms and calls for work.
What is the result of this spreading of the work to suit the individual’s convenience? As a rule, it results in a sheaf of dispatches being sent during the evening and nigh. Many of them may have to do with work to be undertaken the first thing in the morning, for which some preparation or organization is necessary. This causes the commanding and executive officers of the vessels under their admiral’s command to be interrupted or awakened throughout the night and requires them to make impromptu provision in the middle of the night for carrying out any orders requiring work to be done early the next morning.
Imagine the feelings of an executive officer upon being awakened at 2:00 am to be shown a signal requiring a working party of two carpenters and twenty enlisted men in charge of a boatswain’s mate, first class, equipped with carpenter’s tools, two crow bars and two axes, and supplying six 2x4’s 12 feet long and 300 board feet one-inch planking, to leave the ship at 0600, taking their dinners with them, to repair a target raft. This is not absurd fiction, but an actual signal.
Scarcely a night passes in port that some executive officer, or head of department having the duty, is not waked up in the middle of the night for the delivery of a dispatch requiring execution early the next morning. He puts on a dressing gown, sends for the morning order book confers with the officer of the deck, and then leis awake for several hours turning the situation over in his mind and wondering if the provisions he has made cover fully the requirements. This method of doing business in the navy has been felt and commented upon by every officer who has ever been executive or commanding officer.
Let us suppose that the U.S. Steel Corporation conducted its business in this manner. Suppose that the executives talked and interrupted each other all day, but at night began to think of what they had to do to carry on the work and justify their existence: that they then began to man the local and long-distance telephone or send a batch of telegrams to lesser executives, managers, and foremen. How long does the reader think they would hold their jobs and what would the stock-holders think if they heard of such methods being in common practice?
Very little action is required by the admiral or chiefs of staff to stop such abuses. When the writer became chief of staff to the Commander Battleship Divisions he was given each morning a sheaf of dispatches that had been sent and received during the night. Only a casual inspection showed that the majority of these dispatches had been sent by the several “duty” staff officers in the fleet. Many of the dispatches should have been sent several days earlier, but had been deferred until the exigency of the situation demanded immediate action that could only be put into effect by a dispatch. The staff officer, no doubt, felt virtuous because he had attended to the matter.
As far as the ten staff officers under me were concerned a short order forbidding any dispatch, except in case of emergency, requiring action to be taken before 8:00 a.m. the next morning, being sent after 4:00 p.m. each day from Monday to Friday, inclusive, and after noon on Saturday until Monday morning, effectually stopped the abuse of regulating the work of the battleships to the convenience of the individuals on the staff.
Of course, it was realized that the staff officers’ desire to work should not be dampened and that at night signalmen and radio operators need work to keep them awake and in practice to increase their efficiency. Consequently, night messages, not requiring immediate action were encouraged, but they were required to be marked “nite” and were not to be delivered until 8:00 a.m. the next day.
Secondly, the custom of staff officers working at night has been conducive to the growing habit of their making very few inspections to get first-hand information but, instead, confining their activities principally to “paper work.” It is much easier to write out a dispatch or dictate a letter requesting information than it is to go aboard the ship to get it. However, interpreting the exact meaning of either the writing or the dispatches is generally imperfect, resulting in lack of sufficient information being received in answer. This, in turn, requires further dispatches or letters with further answers thereto until we have a continuous avalanche of “paper work.”
Thus, the custom of conducting practical business by means of a plethora of correspondence has created an insidious disease in our navy, called by the Romans, scribendi cacoethes, or scribblers’ itch.
When a British battle cruiser was in San F ran cisco Harbor an inquisitive officer, who, no doubt, had been sorely tried by our propensity for correspondence, investigated and reported that the British ship carried 4 automobiles and 2 typewriters while our flagship carried 72 typewriters and 1 automobile. Upon hearing this the executive of our flagship, who was noted for his picturesque language, said: “The trouble with our flagship is that she has twelve 14-inch guns and fourteen 12-inch communication officers (staff officers).”
This condition of affairs is believed to be directly traceable to failure to work during working hours, when work can be done by inspection and conference. At night the work can be carried on only by dispatches and letters. If work is done at night it should be confined to planning for the next day.
Besides its being an inefficient method of carrying on business, the reader is asked to consider its effect on the naval officer’s health. An insurance officer once stated to the writer that a naval officer’s “risk” was greater than the average man’s in civilian life. Inasmuch as naval officers are subjected to strict elimination for physical defects from the time they are inducted into the service until they retire, this appeared to be a startling statement.
Could it be that this constant strain, day and night, imposes such a load on the nervous system that it results in impairing the general health of naval officers? Certainly the health of many of our senior officers is none too good for active men of their age. This is food for thought.
At any rate the navy is a business—big business—enterprise, and should follow the customs of any other well-regulated business and confine its executive work to working hours.