NOW THAT selection for promotion in all grades from lieutenant (junior grade) on up is an accomplished fact, the retired list of the Navy is well on the way to becoming overburdened with retired officers of the lower grades who are comparatively young, physically fit, and in the majority of cases thoroughly capable. They have failed of promotion not because they are inferior officers but because of the necessity of clearing the way for the promotion of brilliant officers who would not otherwise reach the top, due to stagnation of promotion and service in grade limitations. Officers so retired are a select group in themselves inasmuch as natural selection due to choice of candidates for the Naval Academy, the weeding out process at the Naval Academy, and the still further elimination process, physically and professionally, incident to years of service afloat and ashore, has operated to bring this selection about.
In accordance with the present scheme of things, these officers are often dropped from active service at their age of greatest usefulness to the Navy, and our government accepts a total loss of the years of valuable experience of these officers and the really considerable amount that has been invested in them.
In other days the Navy offered a definite career to the young men entering Annapolis. As long as they performed their duty capably, efficiently, and in manner becoming officers and gentlemen, they were assured a life-time career and attainment of creditable rank. In return, they sacrificed the right to attain financial or business success and accepted a modest but assured standard of living whose guaranteed security allowed them to devote all their time and attention to their duties. It is different now. Regular-run officers of good reputation can expect to be retired as lieutenants after 21 years of commissioned service and 25 years of actual naval service. A certain percentage must expect to face civil life at the age of 45 or above and adjust themselves to an entirely new scheme of things for which their years of devotion to duty in the service actually has unfitted them. The attainment of creditable rank is denied these officers (in the lower grades) and they go into civil life where they encounter numbers of lieutenant commanders and above in the Reserve Force, whose background of service and experience cannot begin to compare with that of the regular officer of lower rank. All the foregoing, with many other ramifications not necessary to mention here, does not present a very inspiring picture to the junior officer. It is not the picture as painted to him years ago when as a candidate he threw his whole heart and soul into the business of becoming a naval officer.
It is a thoroughly disheartening matter for junior officers to contemplate retirement from the Navy with total severance from their chosen careers and in particular retirement in a relatively inferior rank. They did not enter the Navy those years ago for jobs and the pay entailed but rather in the hope of attaining rank and position for service well and faithfully rendered. They can face the prospect of making a living in civil life with equanimity (their wants are few at the most) but the matter that fills them with black despair is their forced detachment from the service they have grown to love even more than life itself, and the denial of opportunity to forge ahead in that service.
It can be said without fear of contradiction that the Naval Reserve could well use the services of experienced naval officers now on the retired list or expecting to be retired. Furthermore, regular officers of the line who are now being retired could and would serve their country well in the Naval Reserve in ranks corresponding to their more fortunate classmates who continue on in the regular service.
Would it not be a step forward in our naval policy to formulate legislation necessary to the end that, instead of retiring officers as is now being done, such officers as are duly qualified should be promoted with their class and transferred into the Fleet Naval Reserve. They could then carry on their duties in the Reserve in accordance with existing legislation and be promoted in the Reserve, paralleling their classmates in the line up to and including the rank of captain. At age 64 they could be retired as commodores unless actually retired physically before reaching the retirement age.
Certainly, the assignment of such officers would materially benefit the morale of the Naval Reserve and their years of experience could not help but result in increased efficiency of the Naval Reserve. It follows that the government would not lose its investment in these officers but would benefit by their services and the retired list would not reach the staggering proportions for which it is now headed. Also the individual officer who now faces the prospect of never attaining the rank for which he has fondly hoped and stoutly worked would be given the opportunity to realize his ambition even though it be in the Naval Reserve.
Doubt not that in time of national emergency our country will need these officers. And it will need them in the ranks their classmates have attained in the regular line, up to and including captain, provided the reserve officers have kept themselves fit and have prepared themselves for such rank by long and conscientious service in the Naval Reserve during the intervening years.
“The faculty of deciding at once, and with certainty, belongs only to him who, by his own experience has tested the truth of the known maxims and possesses the manner of applying them; to him alone, in a word, who finds beforehand in his positive acquirements, the conviction of the accuracy of his judgments. Great results can only be obtained by great efforts. ‘Upon the field of battle,' says the great Napoleon, ‘the happiest inspiration is most often only a recollection.' ’’ Quoted from Archduke Charles by Mahan, Naval Strategy.