uld be no doubt on such matters,
for inefficiency might in conceivable circumstances spell defeat.

Then there is the question of the personnel of the fleet. It would be
most unwise to allow the strength of the trained personnel of the Navy
to fall below the limit of reasonable safety, because it is upon that
trained personnel that the success of the enormous expansions needed in
war so largely depends. This was found during the late struggle, when
the personnel was expanded from 150,000 to upwards of 400,000, throwing
upon the pre-war nucleus a heavy responsibility in training, equipment
and organizing. Without the backbone of a highly trained personnel of
sufficient strength, developments in time of sudden emergency cannot
possibly be effected. In the late war we suffered in this respect, and
we should not forget the lesson.

In future wars, if any such should occur, trained personnel will be of
even greater importance than it was in the Great War, because the
advance of science increases constantly the importance of the highly
trained individual, and if nothing else is certain it can surely be
predicted that science will play an increasing part in warfare in the
future. Only those officers and men who served afloat in the years
immediately preceding the opening of hostilities know how great the
struggle was to gain that high pitch of efficiency which the Navy had
reached at the outbreak of war, and it was the devotion to duty of our
magnificent pre-war personnel that went far to ensure our victory. It is
essential that the Navy of the future should not be given a yet harder
task than fell to the Navy of the past as a result of a policy of
starving the personnel.

There is, perhaps, just one other point upon which I might touch in
conclusion. I would venture to suggest to my countrymen that there
should be a full realization of the fact that the Naval Service as a
whole is a highly specialized profession. It is one in which the senior
officers have passed the whole of their lives, and during their best
years their thoughts are turned constantly in one direction--namely, how
they can best fit the Navy and themselves for possible war. The country
as a whole has probably but little idea of the great amount of technical
knowledge that is demanded of the naval officer in these days. He must
possess this knowledge in addition to the lessons derived from his study
of war, and the naval officer is learning from the day that