sort may be
had to the device of detaching a few vessels from the fleet and
making each represent a force of the enemy; one destroyer, for
instance, to represent a division, four destroyers four divisions,
etc. This scheme has the advantage that all the capital ships can
be handled together, and that, say three-quarters of the destroyers
can be handled without much artificiality on the assumption that
four-fourths are so handled; while for merely strategic purposes
four destroyers, properly separated, can represent four divisions
of destroyers very truthfully. This scheme is useful not only
strategically but tactically; for the reasons that the contacts
made are actual and visible, and that all the personnel on each
side are put to doing things much like those they would do in war.
The scheme is extremely flexible besides; for the number of ways
in which the fleet can be divided is very great, and the number
of operations that can be simulated with considerable accuracy
is therefore very great also. The training given to the personnel
of the fleet is obviously more varied, interesting, and valuable,
than in the first scheme; and the records of the solutions (games
played) will form instructive documents in the offices of the staff,
concerning situations which the first scheme could not bring out.
These records, naturally, will not be so simple as those under the
first scheme, because many factors will enter in, some of which
will bring up debatable points. For when actual contact occurs,
but only "constructive" hits by torpedo and gun are made, much
room for difference of opinion will occur, and many decisions will
be disputed.

To decide disputed questions must, of course, rest with the staff;
but those questions must be decided, and if correct deductions
from the games are to be made, the decisions must be correct. To
achieve correctness in decision the members of the staff must be
highly trained. To devise and develop a good scheme of staff training,
several years may be required.

_Third Scheme_.--The third kind of game is that in which the fleet
is divided into two parts, fairly equal in each of the various
elements, battleships, battle cruisers, destroyers, submarines,
aircraft, etc. This scheme gives opportunity for more realistic
situations than the other two, since each side operates and sees
vessels and formations similar to those that it would operate and
see in war; and it gives opportunity for games whi