The United States Navy and Its Functions

I AM GOING TO DISCUSS, as briefly as I can, the United States Navy and its functions. I use the word “briefly” to assure you that I am not going to talk you to death, for you will concede that there is a temptation to be long-winded on this subject. The Navy is my own principal interest, both personally, and, as it happens, officially. And sea power has been from the earliest recorded times the principal influence in the destiny of nations.

The development of sea power, and its bearing upon the aspirations of mankind, are fascinating studies. The earliest states around the Mediterranean basin were local in importance until they ventured upon salt water. Once their national ambitions committed them to the sea, sea power became the decisive factor in their careers. The student may trace its effects in the struggles between the Greeks and the Persians, and in the protracted wars between Rome and Carthage. It was an element in the expansion westward of the Mohammedan conquest, and in the rise and fall of the Italian republics. The progress of the three one-time great sea nations, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, and the Dutch, was based on sea power. Most striking of all is the influence of sea power on the history of the British Empire; and less than 20 years has passed since the most impressive struggle for sea power that there has ever been: the victory at sea in the World War.

The term sea power means, essentially, the influence that a nation can exert to secure its rights and uphold its interests on the seas and oceans of the world both in peace and war. In times past it has had other and wider meanings: command of the seas, sovereignty of the seas, freedom of the seas; these have all lain within its implications. But today we recognize that no nation has the right, even if it were practicable, to claim exclusive control of the seas as a whole, either in peace or war. In times of peace, the principle is generally recognized that the seas are free to all nations for every lawful use; and in time of war, the most to which a belligerent aspires is to keep the seas open for its own and friendly shipping, and to deny them to the enemy. The thing a neutral wants is that his shipping be free to proceed on its lawful occasions in security. The term sea power further implies, as a matter of course, the ability to protect the coasts of a nation from aggression.

The situation of the United States, in the light of these principles, reduces to simple terms. Following our destiny from the strip of Atlantic seaboard colonies in which we had our beginnings, we now occupy the best third of the North American Continent, with a coast line, on two oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, of more than 21,000 miles. Linking ocean to ocean, and as vital a part of our transportation system as our transcontinental railroads, is the Panama Canal, 2,500 miles from New York, more than 3,000 miles from San Francisco. Within the continental limits live 125,000,000 people, complexly industrialized, enjoying the highest standard of living in the world, and vitally dependent for their prosperity upon free and unrestricted trade and intercourse with the rest of the earth. Outside the continental limits, we have certain insular and over-seas possessions, toward which our obligation is definite. We are committed, further, in the Western Hemisphere, to the Monroe Doctrine. For the safeguarding of these coasts, for the protection of our over-seas trade and all its interests, and for the security of our possessions overseas, we maintain the Navy. We desire to maintain it, and it is our obligation to maintain it, at sufficient strength to meet the responsibilities that I have outlined above. If we maintain it at a lower standard, we might as well abolish the Navy.

I may mention here, with gratification, that our people today appear thoroughly to realize the need for a navy, to evaluate its functions, and to acquiesce, in large majority, in those measures necessary for its maintenance. It has not always been like that. We have had plain lessons on sea power in our own history, but we have not learned from them with that readiness which might have been expected. We began our war for independence without a sea establishment, and the slender force which we built in the course of that struggle, in spite of John Paul Jones and other heroic captains, would have failed to supply the lack of a navy, had not the diplomacy of Franklin brought to our aid the sea power of France, thereby making possible the defeat of the British naval campaign in 1783, and the surrender of Cornwallis at York town. A generation later, Americans suffered the humiliation, and the staggering monetary loss, of seeing their flag barred from the seas by the belligerents of the Napoleonic Wars. We fought our second war with Great Britain, and an unofficial war with France, over the matter—although we had to build a navy first. It was fortunate for us that England had her hands too full of Napoleon to give us her complete attention; in those years we were knocking together a few frigates, to get our merchantmen safely in and out of harbor.

In the Mexican adventure of 1846, it was the Navy which made possible Scott’s landing at Vera Cruz, and the subsequent decisive stroke of the war. In the great civil conflict which presently convulsed the Union, there was savage and prolonged fighting on land; but once the grip of the Union fleets fastened upon the Confederate seaports, the defeat of the South was inevitable. Nor should another incident be forgotten: while we were engaged in the Civil War, the French Emperor set an Austrian archduke on the throne of Mexico, supporting him with a French fleet and a French expeditionary force, acting on the reasonable assumption that the American Union was too busy committing suicide to bother about the Monroe Doctrine. But as soon as we had set our house in order, we turned South to discuss the matter. And Napoleon the Third, observing that we had in being a large, victorious army, and a very handy fleet, both possessing by 1865 considerable combat experience, took his people home, and left poor Maximilian of Hapsburg to face the ultimate firing squad at Queretaro.

These incidents multiply themselves. President Cleveland and the Venezuela incident come to mind. Recently we celebrated, in Arlington, the memorial exercises for the men who lost their lives in the Maine. The Navy, for good or ill, has been the great instrument of our expansion to world prominence. It has always been, to the limit of its powers, the agent of our foreign policies.

As to these foreign policies, it is not the province of the Navy to make comment. The American people are sovereign in this land, and they, through their chosen representatives, establish not only the national policies, but the size and the scope of the naval establishment which is to support them. The size and character of the Navy is, therefore, determined by the Congress, and its employment is directed by Congress and by the proper executive branches of the government.

We come now to another subject, fascinating to the student, and that is the evolution of the modern naval unit. It is a long time since the Punic Wars, when we read how Roman admirals and naval constructors transformed growing forests into fleets of war within a few months. Those were before the days of specialties. Up to the edge of modern times, a ship was a ship, and you used her for war or trade as the occasion indicated. The thrifty English kings, particularly the Tudors, who created the beginnings of the British sea power as we know it, built ships-royal at the public charge, but chartered them at profitable rates to private merchants between their wars; and in emergency, chartered private ships for naval use. Most of the English fleet which fought the Great Armada in 1588 were private vessels, hurriedly requisitioned and altered for war, while the Great Armada was pointing up to the Channel. In our own time we have seen fast merchantmen taken over by the Navy, armed with flinch guns, and sent to sea under the rating of auxiliary cruisers. And we will see it again.

Modern war, however, like every other feature of modern life, has become vastly mechanical and increasingly technical. The nucleus of every navy today is the force of combatant ships built and maintained exclusively as vessels for war, manned by officers and men who are, of necessity, trained specialists in the military branches of the sea profession. Battleships are the most complicated mechanisms imaginable. Years are required for their building. The highest technical skill is exacted in their design and their construction. Naval science progresses in step with the other modern sciences, and a battleship must be brought up to date, and kept up to date during her useful career. And it goes without saying that a battleship is expensive to build, to operate, and to maintain. These considerations, as much as any other, have brought under special scrutiny the size and extent of the naval establishment that a nation is justified in keeping up.

The decade before the outbreak of the World War was marked by extraordinary naval expenditures on the part of the several sea powers, and the term “naval race” had in those years a grim and pressing significance. For every keel your neighbor, over there, lays down, you will lay down one of your own—or even two. The world has never seen such a growth of naval armaments; and those, some of them, were the ships that fought at Jutland. From the World War emerged again the thundering enunciation of the principle: that a second-best navy is no better than a second-best poker hand, when called.

Therefore it seemed not unreasonable that the seafaring nations, enervated by bloodshed, broken by destruction, and (even the victors) uncomfortably near bankruptcy, should cast about for an escape from the burden of expenditure for armaments. Out of their deliberations rose the limitations agreements under which the navies of the principal powers are now organized. In those deliberations, the United States, although victorious, with undrained man power, and with unshaken credit, gladly joined. Indeed, the United States took the lead in them, with the hearty approval of all other parties, because only the United States had material things to surrender: the other parties were dealing in intentions. The United States had, built and building, in 1922, the most powerful Navy that the world has ever seen. The German Navy no longer existed, but the age-old British supremacy on the sea was threatened by the growing power of the West. The United States agreed at Washington in 1922, in concert with the other powers, to limit her capital ships to a mutual ratio; and in London in 1930, she further agreed to the limitation of cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers, and submarines. To meet the stipulated limits in these categories, the United States had actually to scrap capital ships already in commission and nearing completion. This she did, to much foreign applause for her altruism, and to the accompaniment of long hosannas from the pacifists, who now hailed what they saw as the first great step to world peace through world disarmament.

But there were other features: in certain categories of ships, notably cruisers, submarines, and aircraft carriers, the United States possessed less than the ratio stipulated in the several treaties. England and Japan, the other vitally interested signatories to the treaties, proceeded industriously to build their navies up to these ratios. The United States, however, did not build, having, no doubt, other things to think about. If you care for the tonnages, I can give them to you. Under the treaties with Great Britain and Japan we had 351,000 tons of ships to build, divided as follows: aircraft carriers, 55,200 tons; heavy cruisers, 30,000 tons; light cruisers, 87,000 tons; destroyers, 138,000 tons; and submarines, 40,730 tons. Of this total tonnage, required to place our Navy in the relative strength of 5-5-3, with Great Britain and Japan, respectively, we laid down, during the 11 years between 1922 and 1933, 173,700 tons, less than half the tonnage of which we were short. Over the same period, the British built 394,000 tons, and the Japanese, 360,770 tons. This means that the British and Japanese navies are, and were by 1933, approximately built up to their treaty limits. We were not.

As I said before, our people now appear to be fully alive to their naval requirements, and to accord a general support to those measures necessary to provide and maintain an adequate naval establishment. Under the stimuli of a marked unrest in world conditions, and of a very evident increase in land and naval armaments all over the earth, this public interest began to translate itself into action three years ago. In 1933, the Congress provided for the laying down of 101,000 tons of ships: 2 aircraft carriers, 1 heavy cruiser, 4 light cruisers, 8 destroyer leaders, 16 destroyers, 4 submarines, and 2 gun boats. In 1934, a total of 66,660 tons were laid down, and in 1935 contracts were awarded for our last aircraft carrier, 2 light cruisers, 15 destroyers, and 6 submarines, again aggregating 66,650 tons. In other words, with the award of the 1935 contracts, all aircraft carriers, heavy cruisers, and light cruisers allowed to the United States Navy under the existing international treaties are either built, building, or contracted for. We are still deficient in destroyers and submarines, to the extent of 35 destroyers and 13 submarines, or 71,000 tons, but if the present program is carried out, they will have been built and received into the fleet by 1942. Let’s hope that nothing happens before 1942.

What I have described is a spasmodic plan of building, but it was made necessary by years of neglect. Naval building should follow orderly and balanced lines, in the interests of economy and efficiency, as well as for national security.

Let us glance now at the fleet in being, the naval establishment as it exists.

There are two principal branches: the ships at sea, that is to say, the fleet; and the shore establishment.

Under the Navy Department’s plan for the employment of forces, the Navy is organized for operation in either or both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, so that expansion will only be necessary in case of national emergency. Under this general plan our principal body afloat is designated as the United States Fleet, now based on the west coast of the United States. The Asiatic Fleet is stationed in Far Eastern waters, basing on Manila and Shanghai. The Special Service Squadron is stationed in West Indian waters, based on the Canal Zone. The Naval Transportation Service is. the loose name for those units which ply from our east coast ports to the west coast and the Far East, making the rounds of the shore stations and the organizations afloat for the transportation of personnel and supplies. To these may be added, in effect, the Training Squadron, operating generally on the Atlantic coast, and available for the special training of the regiment of midshipmen at Annapolis, and for the exercises of the Fleet Marine Force.

The United States Fleet was formed following the World War, by combination of the former Atlantic and Pacific fleets. It is our largest and most important force afloat, indeed, the largest and most powerful naval force that we have ever assembled under one command. It has within itself all the tactical components of a complete naval command, battleships, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers, submarines, repair ships, supply ships, hospital ships; in short, all the elements which make it self-sufficient and self-sustaining. The first of these units, in size and importance, is the Battle Force, containing 14 battleships. We have 15 battleships in commission, but the oldest, the Arkansas, is in the Training Squadron. The Battle Force includes also the aircraft carriers and tenders: the old Langley, a converted collier, the first of our carriers and still useful and honorable of reputation; the Lexington and Saratoga, which were altered after the Washington conference from hulls designed for battle cruisers, and the new carrier Ranger. There is also the Wright, an aircraft tender. Distributed according to their tactical missions are the heavy cruisers, now 15 in number, although one or more of them is generally detached from the fleet on special service; the Force’s quota of light cruisers, of which there are 10 in commission; and the destroyers, of which we have, with the fleet and elsewhere, 105 on the active list. There are the submarines, mine layers, patrol vessels, and a large number of auxiliaries, most of the latter serving in the Fleet Train (Base Force). The Fleet Train is separate from the Battle Force; and likewise distinct is a unit made up of light elements, known as the Scouting Force. Each division, squadron, or other subdivision is under its admiral, and over the whole is the Commander in Chief.

The United States Fleet as it was made up for the 1935 maneuvers, held in Alaskan and Hawaiian waters, contained more than 200 vessels, 500 planes, and some 50,000 officers and men. The United States Fleet as it cruises at sea is too widely dispersed to come within the eye at once. You might see it all only from a plane, at a great altitude and on a clear day, for it will occupy many hundreds of square miles. With radio communication, independent of fog or darkness, crowded formations are neither necessary nor desirable to modern ships. Back in the center of it somewhere the battleships roll along, great, deliberate monsters, with guns that shoot across the curve of the world, armor so thick that only another battleship, of all surface craft, can meet them on an equal footing. Each is the floating home of more than a thousand officers and men, and each, in military value, is analogous to a division of infantry in a land army. The battleships are the striking arms of the fleet. Their function is to fight other battleships. Their very existence, in efficient commission, is the basic fact of the Navy.

Oriented on the battleships, as disposed by the Commander in Chief, proceed the aircraft carriers. They are also large vessels—we are building our new ones smaller —fast, and of unusual appearance. They have formidable batteries and carry a considerable anti-aircraft armament. Their protection lies in their speed and high mobility rather than in their gunfire; and their great offensive value in the fact that they house hundreds of planes and pilots, available for aerial scouting, for attacking and driving off enemy planes, and for bombing and torpedo assaults. The development of the airplane has vastly increased the force in the hands of the naval commander. It has enlarged his field of vision literally by hundreds of miles.

Scouting far ahead, or to the flanks, go the formations of light craft: the cruisers and destroyers. Following, in their secret way, are the submarines. In the rear steam the many and important types of auxiliary ships that are floating forges and repair shops, refrigeration plants, supply bases. Finally, there are the mine layers and the tenders. Certainly the fleet, as it passed in review before the President two years ago, and as it came into Honolulu at the end of its maneuvers last spring, is one of the most impressive things in the world. To me it expresses the unselfishness and devotion of patriotism, and also the beauty of order and discipline for the sake of a thing believed in and carried high.

The Asiatic Fleet is charged with the interests of our nationals, in their business and travel, in the Far East. It is composed of a cruiser (the flagship) and of certain destroyers and river gunboats. It divides its time between Manila and the treaty ports of China, and shows our flag in the strange harbors of the Western Pacific. Also under the order of the Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet, are a battalion of marines at the Embassy in Peiping and a regiment of marines in Shanghai.

Like the Asiatic Admiral, the Commander, Special Service Squadron, flies his flag from a cruiser, and has a number of destroyers at his disposal. Based in the Canal Zone, his principal service in these times is the cultivation of friendly relations with our neighbor republics to the south. I have already touched upon the missions of the Training Squadron and the Naval Transportation Service. And I would mention, finally, submarine stations with tactical missions in the Canal Zone, in Honolulu, and in Manila.

During the past year, the Navy had in commission and operated at sea a total of 305 ships. In addition to 15 battleships, 15 heavy cruisers, 10 light cruisers, 105 destroyers, 54 submarines, 4 aircraft carriers, 1 mine layer, 4 light mine layers, 13 patrol vessels, 83 auxiliaries of various types, and 1 lighter-than-air ship, 156 small craft were operated in the naval districts and stations, making a total of 461 vessels in service.

Aircraft becomes of increasing importance every year, as its development makes it possible for wider functions to be assigned to it. I have referred to the four carriers now with the fleet; and two more, named the Yorktown and the Enterprise, will be launched in 1936. Last year the Navy had 974 service airplanes on hand, and 472 on order. Outside the continental limits of the United States, there are air bases at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands, and at Coco Solo in the Canal Zone. Planes of the fleet are also assigned such missions as duty with the Aleutian Island Survey, which difficult but highly useful work is now engaging naval units.

There is also the Marine Corps, a force trained to operate either ashore or afloat. It is their claim that they were the first federal combatant service organized, dating their birthday from the period when both the army and navy were the affair of the individual colonies, not yet assembled in confederation. Certainly their service record is long and honorable, and it is with reason that they are perhaps the most class-conscious people under arms in the world. Every capital ship carries a guard of marines, organized as the nucleus of the ship’s landing force, and assigned also duties in connection with the secondary batteries, the anti-aircraft guns, and the general service of the ship. Smaller detachments serve aboard the cruisers. Every naval shore station has a guard of marines. In recent years there has been organized, and placed under the orders of the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, a unit called the Fleet Marine Force, specially trained and equipped for landing operations from the fleet. The marines will provide on short notice infantry, machine gunners, artillery, signalmen, cavalry, bakers, aviators, or practically anything else for which there is a need. Their principal bases in the United States are at San Diego on the west coast and Quantico on the east coast. They function under their own Major General Commandant as a unit of the naval service. The strength of the Marine Corps is, by general precedent and custom if not by law, 20 per cent of the strength of the Navy.

I have not begun to touch upon the exceedingly diverse activities of the Navy afloat. Just the other day we rushed a destroyer, the Tattnall, with a supply of serum to a California state school ship off the Central American coast in the Pacific, because the ship was stricken with a meningitis epidemic aboard. A naval squadron of patrol planes made a service flight, from San Francisco to Honolulu, in the way of service, with neither excitement nor ballyhoo. A group of marines supervised a Central American election, not so long ago. A Navy balloon entry won the National Balloon Race in 1934. You will find the higher mathematician, the engineering expert, the navigator, the ordnance man, the radio specialist, the butcher, and the plumber, all plying their trades daily upon every ship in the service. A 4-striper commanding a battleship administers a $30,000,000 plant and the population of a small village, for a yearly wage which is—in proportion to his responsibility to the taxpayers for public property in his charge—not impressive, to say the least. What I mean is, that the Navy does an exceedingly wide variety of things, and does them with a high average of competence.

Behind the Navy afloat stands the Navy ashore, the navy yards, naval bases, ammunition depots, laboratories, and experimental centers that maintain the ships at sea, and are responsible for maintenance, repair, and new construction. The present building program is divided between private shipbuilders and the naval shore establishment on a 50:50 basis: that is, the Navy is building one-half of its new ships in its own yards. At this time, it makes all of its own guns. It also manufactures hundreds of articles, the use of which, outside the Navy, is so limited that civilian concerns do not bid upon them. It employs some 66,000 civilians. It undertakes, as requested, considerable work for other government departments.

There are other activities in which the Navy Department is interested. The Naval Observatory has been in continuous operation for 91 years. It has made substantial contributions to the study of astronomy, and can repair anything from a wrist watch to a battleship’s range finder. The Hydrographic Office is concerned with safe navigation for vessels and for aircraft, and its work is of vast importance to both commercial aviation and to the merchant marine, as well as to the naval service. The Navy administers, through regular officers, the governments of the islands of Guam and American Samoa, both of which favored locations have remained untroubled by the economic conditions which have distressed the rest of the world in recent years.

I have been talking to you about the navy plant: its ships and depots and material. What the Navy is particularly proud of is its personnel. This year (1936) we have 88,000 enlisted men and 6,186 officers. This is not sufficient to give the ships their authorized complement, even in peace time, and puts officers and men alike under considerable strain. Legislation is pending, however, to provide increases in both officer and enlisted personnel as the new ships come into commission.

The Naval Academy is practically the only source of naval line officers. The naval profession is too technical and too specialized for appointees from civilian life. Four years in the Naval Academy bring a young man merely to the threshold of his calling, and he is all his life learning his business. In order to stimulate ambition, to offer tangible reward to the energetic and able, the system of promotion by selection is now judiciously applied in all ranks of the officers’ corps. Its purpose is to bring to high command officers of proved ability who are still in the prime of life. Yet the Department, while having in mind the efficiency of the whole establishment, studiously endeavors to safeguard the rights and the morale of the individual. The Navy is a very human institution, and has to be. Whatever excellence is in us proceeds from the patriotism and devotion and loyalty of our splendid officers and men.

I have not touched in detail upon the matter of expense to the taxpayer. Viewed superficially, a modern navy is a costly proposition. Our appropriation last year was $472,520,340.91. For 1936 it will be a little more. If the Navy had enjoyed the benefit of a balanced and orderly program for construction and replacement, such emergency expenditures would not be demanded, but we can do nothing now about what is past: we can only hope that the lesson will be applied to the future. Another circumstance to be considered in this connection is that this expenditure has been helpfully tied in with relief measures, by keeping alive the private shipbuilding industry, and by giving employment to a wide range of skilled and unskilled labor. Even so, it runs into money to provide and maintain a navy.

But I would suggest to you that there are other things more expensive, both financial and otherwise. If my memory serves me, our 18 months of participation in the late World War cost our taxpayers more than $30,000,000,000 and we were numbered among the winners—not the losers—of that war. There is highly respected opinion in this country and abroad, that if our military and naval establishments had been of adequate size and power in 1914, the European belligerents would have thought better of provoking us to the extreme of hostilities. Money spent on the army and the fleet would now be regarded in the light of a handsome investment. That is the way I, and many thoughtful men with me, now consider the current army and navy appropriations. Investment in national security is the same thing as fire insurance for the individual; any premium is cheaper than a fire.

OUR trust is not in the services of material equipment, but in our good spirit for battle.— Pericles.