Selection, Security, And Morale

The congestion and humps which have threatened promotion and morale in the service have constituted a problem of the first magnitude for many years. Promotion by seniority guaranteed a great measure of personal individual security, but admittedly lacked the element of incentive and competition required to spur Navy personnel on to best efforts. “Plucking” and later, what amounted to “selection out” were resorted to in the hope of stimulating promotion. These mild measures still fell short of providing the desired flow of promotion, and finally we have arrived at a degree of selection theoretically based on the requirement that the records of candidates must show positive proof of superiority, rather than negative proof of mere good behavior.

War-time expansion added to the Navy list many officers not originally trained as such, and after the war many officers of this class were permanently commissioned in the service. Although the future effect on promotion was inevitable, the retention of those officers was considered desirable at the time, and the facing of the problem was postponed until another day. That day has arrived, and the service is now faced with a new problem of the most serious nature born of the very solution of a previous dilemma.

There is no doubt in the minds of thinking officers that selection is a necessity to guarantee to each group of officers an equal chance at promotion. Drastic selection is now the order of the day, and has become of such vital importance to individuals that in practically every Navy gathering, formal or informal, “selection” sooner or later becomes the topic of conversation and very frequently the subject of heated and bitter discussion. Among the very senior officers in the service, the opinion seems to prevail that although no system can be perfect, the present plan is a good compromise; officers of flag rank can take this detached view of the subject because they themselves can no longer be affected adversely by the system.

The captains and commanders may feel that the present system is still far from perfect, but they realize that selection to the next higher grade must necessarily be drastic and they can take some comfort in the knowledge that even in the event of failure of selection their retiring competence will at least prevent them from starving. To the ensigns and junior lieutenants, worry may still be in the dim , and distant future, but to lieutenants and, to a lesser extent, to the lieutenant commanders, the problem is a serious one in- ^ volving their own future and the future of their families. At this point it would seem advisable to set down some factors involved in the present promotion system'

I will make no attempt to classify them as unfavorable or favorable, either to the government, to individuals, or to groups. Where possible I will group my points in such a way as to enable the reader to compare different angles of the question:

(1) The number of admirals and captains is limited by the number of units and commands in the United States naval forces. This means that regardless of the volumetric content of the bottle, the size of the bottle neck is not going to change much. From this it may be inferred that drastic selection is inescapable (( in filling the two top grades of the Navy.

(2) In civilian life failure to become the president of a commercial institution does not automatically end a man’s usefulness. But in the Navy if an officer is not good enough to be promoted he is denied the opportunity t° continue work at the trade for which he has been trained for many years.

(3) To guarantee to each class or group an equal chance of promotion, the present selection percentages are necessary. There is no escaping the fact that at present a less rigid selection system would mean that no member of certain groups could possibly attain the next higher grade. It therefore appears to be indisputable that the present selection percentages cannot be avoided if there is to be any regular flow of promotion in the Navy.

(4) Improved armaments with their more numerous battle stations and the increased shore activities are demanding a greater number of officers to perform functions considered to be peculiarly the province of officers. These changing conditions have finally forced recognition of the fact that the line of the Navy must be numerically increased. Such an increase will exert a powerful influence in two directions on Navy personnel matters:

(а) It will result in even more drastic selection to the grades of captain and rear admiral because the quotas for those grades cannot increase appreciably, and

(b) This great increase in the lower grades must be filled from officer material as yet untrained, while valuable trained material is being retired.

(5) Many lieutenants and lieutenants (junior grade) would be retired under the present system with less money than they would have received had they enlisted and transferred to the Fleet Naval Reserve as chief petty officers. This not only fails to place any premium on commissioned service, but also presents some of those officers with an unfair problem. Consider the case of a lieutenant thirty-five years of age, with a good record, suddenly released from active service. In most cases he will have a family, he will have been trained from boyhood for no work except that of the Navy, he is still valuable to the Navy (although his commercial services will not be in demand); he has a pittance—an insultingly small pittance—given him. That officer must be replaced if the Navy is expanded, and the replacement will take time and money. Where is the ultimate wisdom behind such a procedure?

(6) Congress will most certainly raise the question as to why the Navy fires trained officers, pays them retired pay, benefits in no way from the experience of those officers, and demands an increase to the line of the Navy. Whatever the Navy’s arguments may be in favor of this procedure, it is conceivable to any officer who reads the newspapers that many members of Congress will say that the position is untenable and tell the Navy to work out something more practicable and less expensive to the United States.

(7) Morale has been a much-used and abused argument in discussions of selection. It is frequently stated, flatly and positively, and as an indisputable fact, that no officer who has been denied any future chance of promotion can perform his duties efficiently; it has further been accepted in some quarters that an officer in such a status would be an active enemy to the alertness and morale of the service. I venture to raise a question to that viewpoint: the corps of warrant officers in our Navy is a respected group of men in whom we place great reliance in mechanical matters, and yet officers of that group have for the most part reached the top of the ladder as far as they are concerned. Examine the effect on the warrant corps of this matter of no future promotion. They have financial security, and in many instances are accorded a consideration far beyond that extended to commissioned officers of the higher grades; few demands are made on them in the matter of keeping up official appearances with the result that they can select a mode of living within their means, and thereby possibly get a greater enjoyment of life than some of their shipmates of the higher grades. I am not at all convinced that after a few years’ practice, the analogy might not be applicable to officers who have been skipped and thereby denied future chance of promotion. An officer trained in the school of the Navy has a conscience and a sense of personal honesty; these traits are not dependent upon momentary success or position; and regardless of promotion or personal success, an officer imbued with those qualities would, in my opinion, perform his assigned duties honestly. Now, you may ask, why should he wish to remain in the service after failing of selection? Several answers present themselves at once; if he has growing children for whom he wishes to provide advantages comparable to or greater than those which he himself enjoyed, he may be willing to swallow personal pride and disappointment for the sake of a financial security which will at least permit him to live as he has lived and to keep up his life insurance payments as a protection to his wife and children. I might cite other reasons, such as an ingrained love of the service, for which I might be jeered from some quarters. The first reason, however, is a good one and needs no bolstering up.

I have pointed out some of the controversial angles of selection, and have briefly attempted to discuss them as they are discussed in private gatherings. Some of these points are winked at, and may possibly be purposely avoided, in official discussion because they savor of heresy. Nevertheless, my observations are founded on many frank and even bitter discussions with individuals affected and unaffected by the present crisis, and I feel that some of those opinions should be brought out into the open.

The Navy Department is not finished with the question of selection by any means, and there is a strong likelihood that our system will be subjected to sharp criticism with the possible necessity of radical change before it meets with the approval of the legislative branch of the government.

Criticisms and idle discussions alone will not produce corrective action; constructive suggestions are essential and the following scheme is offered for consideration and discussion. Should this discussion succeed in arousing interest and comment it will have served its purpose; I hope it may be subjected to a close enough scrutiny to confirm its good points while definitely condemning those that may be fallacious:

(1) Fix the percentage of officers in each grade based on the actual operating and industrial needs of the Navy.
Analysis. This has long been a cardinal principle of service personnel legislation, and no new principle is involved.

(2) Continue the system of promotion as provided in the Britten Bill.
Analysis. This will guarantee to every class or group an equal chance of selection, and will assure each individual of the opportunity to be considered for selection. The number of officers and the selection percentage basis would as at present be based on expected attrition. The chance of selection would be identical with one’s chance under the present system, and no change would be involved. Thus all the advantages of the present system are retained.

(3) Permit officers not selected to remain on active duty in the Navy subject to the usual requirements of conduct and physical requirements, until a time at which longevity increments will guarantee a living wage upon retirement.
Analysis. Among the warrant corps certain individuals have for the seven or eight years preceding the retiring age been permitted to remain on shore duty; the department holds that they are too old to go to sea, and yet retains them upon the active list. What the department can see its way clear to do for one group of officers can be done to a lesser degree in the case of officers failing of selection, but otherwise competent to perform the duties of their present grades.

It will certainly be found desirable to set an age limit for retirement in the cases of officers not selected; there are too many angles to that question to attempt to discuss it in this paper, but again the warrant officer analogy may be resorted to—if warrant officers can be retained upon the active list for limited duty the principle is either right and applicable to all groups of officers, or else the principle is wrong. On that point also I am unprepared to comment.

Provision should be made for voluntary retirement, subject to restriction based on the need the service may have for officers not selected. If for purposes of efficiency or economy, it is found by a personnel survey that officers should be retained on active duty, it should be the province of the department to rule accordingly. If however, it is economically possible to permit voluntary retirement by officers not selected, such a feature would probably react to the benefit of both the service and the individual.

Officers so retained will continue to give the benefit of their training and experience to the Navy, they will be able to pass safely through the trying years of their children’s schooling, and the government will be spared the wasted years and great expense of training reliefs who in turn must go through a similar useless cycle.

In conclusion, I feel perfectly secure in stating that the three chief elements of selection are, and always will be, the efficiency of the Navy, the security of the personnel, and the morale. Efficiency will depend in a great measure upon morale, and morale will most certainly be affected by the security of the personnel. It is therefore obvious that these three great factors in selection are closely interrelated, and must be considered as a group rather than separately. We of the service have always maintained that one of the great advantages of the service career lies in the fact that although we were denied the opportunity to build a fortune, we were guaranteed modest financial security by a government that treated its servants well. Without considering the government’s beneficence or lack of it, it must be recognized by the service at large that virtually all personnel legislation is formulated in the Navy Department and is usually adopted in a form generally acceptable to the department. That gives rise to an interesting point. When a boy enters the Navy with youthful confidence in the government’s paternalism he does not realize to what extent his fate may lie in the hands of the officers of his own service. I am too little acquainted with the statistical personnel analysis problem facing the Bureau of Navigation to speak with authority, but in view of the fact that naval officers have a hand in the formulation of personnel legislation, it may be fairly concluded that such effects of personnel legislation as militate against morale can in some measure be charged to ourselves. If that is true then it behooves every officer in the service to give this matter his close attention. Reasonable security must be guaranteed to service personnel or the efficiency of the Navy will certainly suffer by loss of morale. It is not merely a question of looking out for “number one”; it is a question that strikes at the very roots of our esprit and service ideals. Our modest financial security is supposed to be a cornerstone of our entire structure of integrity and freedom from outside influence. The service needs the best efforts and the zealous loyalty of its officers if the present peak of efficiency is to be maintained in the fleet, and such devotion can only be expected when men are financially unworried and so free to devote their every thought to their work. Security improves morale and morale is essential to loyal efficiency.