he quick decision followed by quick action
that characterizes the seaman everywhere, the British instituted
a series of reforms, and prosecuted their efforts with such wisdom
and such vigor, that, in the brief space of ten years, the British
navy has been almost revolutionized. As in all such movements,
the principal delay was in bringing about the necessary mental
changes; the mental changes having been accomplished, the material
changes followed automatically.

The change whereby the German and Japanese navies became preceptors
to their preceptor is like changes that occur in every-day life, and
is one of many illustrations of how a young and vigorous individual
or organization, endowed with proper energy and mentality, can
appropriate whatever is valuable for its purposes from its elders,
and reject whatever those elders have had fastened on them by
circumstances or tradition, and develop a superior existence. It
is a little like the advantage which a comparatively new city like
Washington has over an old city like Boston, in being started after
it was planned, instead of being started haphazard, without being
planned at all.

The United States navy was started not like the city of Washington,
but like the city of Boston. It was modelled on the British navy;
but since the United States has never taken an interest in its
navy at all comparable with that taken by Great Britain in its
navy, and since our navy has been built up by successive impulses
from Congress and not in accordance with a basic plan, the lack of
harmoniousness among its various parts reminds one of Boston rather
than of Washington. Owing to the engineering and inventive genius of
our people and the information we got from Europe, inferiority has
not occurred in the units of the material: in fact, in some ways
our material is perhaps the best of all. Neither has inferiority
been evidenced in the personnel, as individuals; for the excellent
physique and the mental alertness of the American have shown themselves
in the navy as well as in other walks of life.

In strategy, however, it must be admitted that we have little reason
to be proud. We do very well in the elementary parts of the naval
profession. In navigation, seamanship, gunnery, and that part of
international law that concerns the navy we are as good as any.
But of the higher branches, especially of strategy, we have little
clear conception. How can we have? Strategy is one of the most
co