training
in radio-telegraphy was established in each naval district, and when the
need for a central final training-school developed, Harvard University
offered the use of buildings, laboratories, and dormitories for this
purpose. The offer was accepted, and now the naval-radio school at
Harvard is one of the largest educational institutions in the country.
There is another final training-school at Mare Island, Cal. The navy
supplies the operators for the rapidly increasing number of war vessels,
and has undertaken to supply radio operators for all merchant vessels in
transatlantic service.

At Harvard and Mare Island the radio students are put through four
months' courses, which embraces not only radio-telegraphy and allied
subjects, but military training. Some 500,000 men have been undergoing
courses at these two schools alone.

When war occurred the Coast Guard was transferred from the Treasury
Department to the Navy Department, and the personnel now consists of 227
officers and 4,683 warrant officers and enlisted men.

In the work of examining and considering the great volume of ideas and
devices and inventions submitted from the public, the Naval Consulting
Board has rendered a signal service. Beginning March, 1917, the Navy
Department was overwhelmed with correspondence so great that it was
almost impossible to sort it. Letters, plans, and models were received
at the rate of from 5 to 700 a day. Within a year upward of 60,000
letters, many including detailed plans, some accompanied by models, have
been examined and acted upon. To do this work a greatly enlarged office
force in the Navy Department was necessary, and offices were established
in New York and San Francisco. While a comparatively small number of
inventions have been adopted--some of them of considerable value--the
majority has fallen into the class of having been already known, and
either put into use or discarded after practical test.

And thus the Navy Department is carrying on its share of the war, a
share significant at the very outset as one of our most important
weapons in the establishment of the causes for which the United States
entered the great conflict.

CHAPTER XVI

The beginning of the end--Reports in London that submarines were
withdrawing to their bases to head a battle movement on the part of the
German Fleet--How the plan was foiled--The surrender of the German Fleet
to the combined British and American Squadrons--Departu