The world in turmoil about us has already uprooted man’s governments and will inevitably attack basic human relations.
We, who have prided ourselves on the unique character of American citizenship, are being told by serious thinkers that this, too, is in the trembling balance of world change and that account must soon be taken of its portent.
To one category of our citizenry—the naval officer whose profession extends his mental horizon and broadens his outlook — this is of special interest.
There can be no matter of more importance in the Fleet today than that of the commissioned personnel of tomorrow. Its focus centers upon the junior officers, for it is to the younger generation of Americans that the future presents an unmistakable challenge. This challenge has a particular significance to him who, by virtue of his commission, has been selected and trained to maintain the security of the nation itself. I bespeak, then, the interest of the junior officer in these views, trusting that they may prove of possible guidance to him in meeting acceptably the responsibilities of his high calling.
The naval officer sees about him a world in arms and, within our borders, a nation in distress. The physical and spiritual conditions which were vitally disrupted by the momentous struggle of 1914-18 are still impaired. So much damage was inflicted upon the basic fabric of our vaunted civilization that no one, even today, can say when humankind will recover what was lost or if, indeed, actual peace and normal happiness will ever be restored.
It is true that the United States, when drawn into the conflict, did deliver the decisive blow that brought an armistice to the hostilities of that hour. But what of the peace it portended?
In Europe, nations who gathered at the peace table of Versailles to deal with the subdued Central Powers are now at serious odds. New nations created out of that gathering are as insistent on maintaining their status quo as are determined the then enemy powers in redeeming lost territory. Other allies to whom Versailles brought no spoils of war are now demanding additional lands wherewith to satisfy expanding sovereignty. With imperial gesture the vanquished have swept aside treaty provisions and, in costly strength, are asserting that their national honor shall be at stake no longer. Civil war, spurred on from without, is destroying a people whose influence once spread to the distant Indies and whose language is spoken by thousands under our own flag. Orderly processes of established government are disappearing and new forms are menacing the continent.
Across the Pacific, the unfolding of a great drama is being accelerated.
An insular power, risen above the Eastern horizon in a generation, has been transformed into a dominating industrial factor of the world’s commerce. Her islands cannot furnish the materials required to meet this new status nor can they support her constantly increasing population. Continental expansion is in progress and other ancient peoples, still in the backwash of history, are being dragged forth and converted into nationals of modern communal republics maintained by the sword.
What, one asks, has all this to do with us who, from our distant shores, behold the ominous storm clouds that lower upon the rest of the world?
The United States is decidedly an interested party in the disturbance about us. Moreover, clouds spread rapidly as they change their location.
Our splendid gesture of 1917-18 confirms the international obligation expressed by Theodore Roosevelt who, in an appeal for Americanism, said: “We hold here in our hands the fate of the world.”
This was after the war period with Spain wherein we had incurred responsibilities for peoples and territory far beyond our continental borders. We were now a world power. Another President, Herbert Hoover, in the precarious days following the World War voiced this opinion: “A strong America is the highest contribution to world stability.”
From all directions, American influence has been sought and American funds obtained in a concerted effort to rehabilitate a devastated world. Then, the humanly selfish national needs became the paramount expression. To these have since been added national aspirations and demands for their recognition. They are becoming more insistent.
In the minds of many outsiders America is believed to be able to furnish the panacea for peace of which but a shred remains abroad. They go far beyond the altruism of the founders of the republic in the belief that America is the El Dorado which can and must relieve the distress of all the world. True, we were destined to be a refuge of the world’s oppressed where man, in his freedom, might labor and enjoy the work of his hands. Ours then was the only free citizenship in a world circumscribed by autocratic government; true, today, that ours is the only government where the rights of the individual are written into the fundamental law.
We have only to consider what marked changes have occurred in an ancient world during the brief period since Washington appeared on the American scene. “His greatest glory,” said President Alfaro of Panama when he spoke upon an observance of Washington’s birthday, “consists of having set examples and standards that will last as long as justice and righteousness, honesty and wisdom, disinterestedness and patriotism, rule over the destinies of free people.”
Who can question the role for which the United States is cast in our present drama of civilization? Yet there are beyond our borders those who have given thought to the American system of government and who believe that it is not workable, that there is nothing of itself within it that can energize it into producing the results predicated by the founders. Others, studying the history of our national experience, prophesy dire things of our future. The democracies of the past, they say, have disappeared. Macaulay, the English historian, wrote of us:
Your republic will be pillaged and ravaged in the twentieth century just as the Roman Empire was by the barbarians of the fifth century, with this difference, that the devastators of the Roman Empire came from without while your barbarians will be the people of your own country and the products of your own institutions.
Now is the twentieth century and here is the challenge: Can we as a nation accept it? What is needed? Turn our eyes inward, we who have been challenged, and let us consider our forces.
In peaceful conditions only can world restoration be effected. Progress goes hand in hand with peace; that has been proved. We are committed to peace, yet somehow we have had more wars in the period of our existence than other nations. Why?
Primarily because we are not the strong America that was intended; we have never learned the lessons of war which disrupt us; we, as a people, do not accept the responsibilities of that free citizenship which is ours alone.
A valiant soldier and honorable citizen, General Harbord, said: “If we seek peace
We must be stronger than those who seek war.”
Admiral Harrington, of distinguished career, said:
I have always accepted the statement that there ls a jaw obvious, universal, and inevitable in its application that among free and independent nations weakness means war.
What is the strength to which the soldier referred and the weakness that the sailor had in mind?
The answer to the first is encompassed m the words of the president of a great railway system:
Self-government is dependent upon a strong and virile electorate trained in the habits of self-help and self-reliance.
General Harbord knows, as every thinking man realizes, that human means in a most human world must continue in use for the protection of human rights; that force has to be maintained in order to punish crime and to deter the transgressor, but force is not enough because crime and transgression persist. Guns and ships and armaments are not enough. Treaties and international agreements have proved pathetically inadequate. There is something over and above all of this—a citizenship, strong and virile and self-reliant.
What then do we see within our borders? strength? Or do we see that weakness which inevitably means war and national dissolution?
Ours, the most favored of nations and to whom the world still looks for succor as it did when the conflagration swept over Europe, is herself deep in distress. Millions are unemployed in a land where labor made possible all that human happiness holds; other millions are concerned with their dwindling worldly possessions. The feeling of security which a man must have that what he produces today will still be safe on the morrow is lacking. Instead too many of our citizens, leaning heavily on the central government, are lulled into a false sense of lasting emancipation from effort engendered by the thought of “something for nothing,” wholly un-American.
Amid these abnormal conditions, wherein self-help is missing, citizenship is being looted. Crime is rampant and glorified. The press and the broadcast feature it, thus stirring distressed and unsettled minds to emulate what they read and hear. The sanctity of the law is ignored and defied, which of itself converts self-government into anarchy; the sacred regard for public justice which the first President considered essential to the perpetuation of this republic is derided. Rackets in every activity prevail. Citizens and innocent children walk the streets with bodyguards to prevent being forcibly taken and held for ransom by immunized bandits who flourish elsewhere only in remotest Asia. Looseness in living, debasing the human body, violation of decent human relations are proclaimed from the housetops; the romance of living has been dragged into the mire of sensuous publicity, and chivalry is gone.
Up and down the streets of the land so- called Americans are decrying the narrowness of our out-moded nationalism and preach insidious doctrines—much of it a racket, of course, with ample remuneration assured—but it has its effects upon youth. Seeking thus to undermine our institutions, efforts are being made to dis- affect many who are earnestly concerned with world peace. A glowing, nebulous millennium is being presented to the distracted citizen who is trying to pick his way among the troubles immediately under foot.
Does this make for that strength which is the prime factor of world stability? On the contrary, the weakening effect of debased ideals is fast producing the barbarian of Macaulay, and widespread fallacies are giving him the strength wherewith to crush us instead.
There is the fallacy of equality that brooks no leadership; that is, no moral leadership, for the mob variety everywhere prevails. We will have none of rulers, one says, whereas thousands of our people are, in reality, victims of self-appointed dictators who have boldly usurped the freedom of individual action. These dictators preach the fallacy of freedom— for themselves. They say “we are a free people to do as we please.” Is this far removed from anarchy?
Nothing can be more abhorrent to us sworn to defend and protect the liberties of a people who have been so greatly favored by a beneficent Providence.
All the more reason, then, that we give heed to our share of that individual responsibility which was envisaged by Thomas Jefferson when he declared that: The basic principle of American citizenship is that he who enjoys its rights and privileges must assume responsibility for their preservation.
This means that the citizen must perpetuate his citizenship if he is to remain free. Critics of our form of government hold, also, that this burden is too great, that too much is expected of the individual and that the fiber of such citizenship must eventually disintegrate.
In the face of this challenge, what is our duty? We must accept it, for by statute we are required to be “good examples of virtue, honor, patriotism, and subordination”; we who, if we are good naval officers, must be good citizens. In order to attain such example, leadership is entailed. But, you say, leadership cannot be taught. True, but leadership can be readily identified by its attributes. For us, the field of research is rich because we easily recognize these attributes in the careers of successful naval officers. American history is replete with so many examples that they have become the traditions of our service. Striving, then, to uphold traditions we progress toward leadership.
The analysis of the careers of outstanding naval officers reveals at once that the basic element of success is that of character, true of every successful career, military or otherwise.
We will find, also that the initial characteristic in the development of leadership is loyalty. With devotion to the cause in which you are embarked, loyalty looks upward to superior authority and downward to the subordinate who depends on you for his share of the accomplishment of the mission. The junior officer of today may count upon the unquestioned loyalty of an enlisted personnel of the highest quality, successors of men who have ever demonstrated their wholehearted allegiance to the service afloat and to the flag it bears.
The homely qualities of honor, simplicity, earnestness, common sense, and enthusiasm, all are apparent in the makeup of success. The energy of John Paul Jones who, in the face of impending defeat, had not begun to fight; the singleness of purpose of Macdonough on Lake Champlain; the self-control of Farragut as he led his squadron through the mined waters of Mobile Bay; the perseverance of Peary who, in his fifth attempt to reach the Pole, declared he would find a way or make one; the decision of Dewey at Manila Bay— all unmistakable qualities of leadership. Underlying all of these attributes is faith: belief in the thing that you are doing and reliance on the tools with which to do it. Faith is the most important element of success and, with us, it must be faith both to stand and faith to go forward.
The story of the aviation pilot who, forced down in Fleet maneuvers hundreds of miles from land and separated from the Fleet which had given up search for him, maintained himself for five days until rescued is an outstanding example of dependence on the equipment furnished him.
His was a single-seated fighting plane, without wireless, which had lost contact with the other planes of the section in gaining altitude through heavy cloud banks. A search above the clouds was in vain. The pilot then descended and conducted a standard rectangular search without result—the Fleet had already searched that area. His gas becoming exhausted, he landed on the surface of the sea and broke out his equipment, item for item. He filled the flotation bags beneath the lower wings of the plane and inflated his tiny rubber boat. In a tropical downpour at midnight his plane took a dangerous list. He launched his boat and, placing his equipment in it, secured it to the plane. At dawn, the plane was sinking. He cast off. All that day it rained and he added to his water supply with an outspread neckerchief. He beat off the sharks and dolphins which playfully rubbed against his boat, spinning him dizzily about. At night he used his signal pistol in an attempt to attract the attention of a passing steamer. Throughout the second day a blazing sun started the seams of his frail boat. For hours, he used the repair kit which had been furnished him. All the next day he hailed water into the boat in order to safeguard the other seams. The succeeding day was uneventful. His last signal was fired in an attempt to stop a ship whose engines he could hear and he threw the pistol overboard to save weight. At daylight, weakened and nearly unconscious, on his knees in his boat, he held up his tiny signal flags to attract the attention of another steamer towards whose course he had painfully rowed until his strength failed—and then he was saved. Faith in the tools given him for the purpose and a confirmation of the efficacy of the training that had put them to proper use in his hands saved the life of a potential leader.
The story of a submarine salvaged from the ocean floor is just another example. Struck suddenly at night by a merchant man while proceeding to sea, this submarine sank into waters deeper than those from which submarines had ever been salvaged. The salvage companies said that it could not be done; the Navy Department held the same opinion. But so earnest was the belief of a commandant of a near-by naval district that the ship could be raised, he was given authority to proceed and all available facilities were placed at his disposal. This faith was transmitted to the commanding officer of the submarine base 40 miles away who was placed in charge of the actual operations. The naval divers who were to be employed were assembled and made familiar with the structure of a sister-ship of the one sunk. The civil employees at a navy yard far removed from the scene were firmly convinced of the value of the special type of caisson they were building to meet the requirement for raising a 1,000- ton ship from such depth. An electrical concern enthusiastically developed lamps that would withstand the necessary pressure so that divers might see as they worked.
The wreck was located, the divers stopped the leaks from within, a long, hard job. Then the autumn gales descended and the expedition had to withdraw to the shelter of the base. At the first sign of abatement, again they went to the job and then began the slow, grueling task of passing the hogging chains beneath the hull. Divers with fire hoses started dredging tunnels beneath the ocean floor through which the chains were to be hauled. Tunnels caved in, divers were driven back, but turned again to the task before them. They were not to be denied. Finally the chains were in place and secured to the caissons. Then the lift began and the submarine, skillfully slung between the caissons, started her long journey to the navy yard where she was safely docked. The faith in that undertaking was vindicated. And, more than this, every man in the crew of that submarine was found at his post of duty.
These, and all examples of leadership to be found in our naval history, are marked by the highest order of devotion to duty and complete disregard of self in the effort to achieve victory, whether of peace or of war.
It has been well said of such unselfish leadership that:
If we call the roll of the sons of greatness, we shall see that they are also the sons of self-sacrifice.
Amid the turbulence and uncertainty of the day, how stimulating are the traditions of our service; traditions which transmit to us the attributes of a leadership stamped with the genius of this American soil—a leadership that is the Navy’s contribution to the well-being of the Republic.
In the days of sailing ships frequently the only course to safety was dead to windward. Rocks and shoals beset narrow channels and resisting seas mercilessly pounded against wooden hulls. Every ounce of strength was applied to every inch of gear so that the ship could sail as close to the wind as possible. Yards were braced sharp up and sails hauled flat aft. No slack was allowed. “Hold Everything!” was the order as the good ship, steady on her course, cleared the dangers.
Today, our Ship of State is standing down a similarly circumscribed channel toward the open sea beyond whose horizon lies our destiny.
The course is uncertain because some of the buoys that marked safe waters have gone adrift; others have dragged into dangerous shallows. The helmsman needs must be alert and his grasp on the wheel firm. As members of that ship’s company, our duty is to be keen and instantly ready for any call. It is mandatory that we “Hold Everything!”
Be assured that,
“’Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales, That determines the way it goes.”
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The Government has clothed the officer with a mantle of authority, which if properly exercised will result in the forming and molding of real man-of-war’s men from the men placed under his command. The very thoughts of an officer will color those of his men, his actions will be guide- posts for theirs. He is to his division or ship what a father is to his family; he must teach them, discipline them, console them, sympathize with them, share their hardships and judge their actions.
The naval leader is not merely well trained and impressive in his physical appearance, he must know the whole business of going to sea in ships—the more of it the better. Continued leadership is impossible without thorough knowledge of the matters in which the leader directs.—Bureau of Navigation, Talks on Leadership.