eing more difficult and important for instance in the
office of the commander-in-chief of a fleet, whose time and attention
have to be divided among multitudinous matters, than in that of
captain of a single ship. For this reason, _the higher one is in
position, the more imperative it is that he understand all elements
involved, and estimate properly their various weights_. The success
or non-success of a man in high authority depends largely on how
his sense of proportion leads him to allot his time.

But a matter fully as important as the allotment of time and attention
to the consideration of various matters by the various members of
the personnel is the allotment of money for the various items,
especially of the material; for, after all, every navy department
or admiralty must arrange its demands for ships, guns, men, etc.,
with reference to the total amount of money which the nation will
allot. For this purpose, only one good means of solution has thus
far been devised--the game-board.

The game-board, naturally, tries out only the units that maneuver
on the ocean; it does not try out the mechanism inside those units,
because they can be tried out best by engineering methods. The
province of the game-board is merely to try out on a very small
scale, under proper conventions or agreements, things that could not
be tried out otherwise, except at great expense, and very slowly;
to afford a medium, half-way between actual trials with big ships
and mere unaided reasoning, for arriving at correct conclusions.
When the game-board is not used, people conferring on naval problems
can do so only by forming pictures in their own minds, endeavoring
to describe those pictures to the others (in which endeavor they
rarely perfectly succeed) while at the same time, trying to see the
pictures that are in the minds of the others--and then comparing
all the pictures. The difficulty of doing this is shown by a little
paragraph in "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," in which Dr.
Holmes points out that when John and Thomas are talking, there
are really six persons present--the real John, the person John
thinks himself to be, the person Thomas thinks him to be, the real
Thomas, the person Thomas thinks himself to be, and the person John
thinks him to be. The conditions surrounding John and Thomas are
those of the simplest kind, and the conversation between them of
the most uncomplicated character. But when--not two people but--say