discharged by the general staff, nothing correspondent to
which was to be found in our Navy Department. It is evident that the
constitution of a general staff, or of any similar body called into
being for such purpose, will be more broadly based, and sounder, as
knowledge of the subjects in question is more widely distributed among
the officers of the service; and that such knowledge will be imparted
most certainly by the creation of an institution for the systematic
study of military operations, by land or sea, applying the experiences
of history to contemporary conditions, and to the particular theatres
of possible war in which the nation may be interested.

Such studies are the object of the Naval War College, which was
established upon the report of a board of officers, at the head of
which was the present Rear-Admiral Stephen B. Luce, to whose
persistent initiative must be attributed much of the movement which
thus resulted. The other members of the board were the late Admiral
Sampson, and Commander--now Rear-Admiral--Caspar F. Goodrich. Luce
became the first president of the institution, for which the
Department assigned a building, once an almshouse, situated on
Coaster's Harbor Island, in Narragansett Bay, then recently ceded to
the United States government. It remained still to get together a
staff of instructors, and he wrote me to ask if I would undertake the
subjects of naval history and naval tactics. The proposition was to me
very acceptable; for I had found the Pacific station disagreeable,
and, although without proper preparation, I believed on reflection
that I could do the work. During my last tour of shore duty I had read
carefully Napier's _Peninsular War_, and had found myself in a new
world of thought, keenly interested and appreciative, less of the
brilliant narrative--though that few can fail to enjoy--than of the
military sequences of cause and effect. The influence of Sir John
Moore's famous march to Sahagun--less famous than it deserves to
be--upon Napoleon's campaign in Spain, revealed to me by Napier like
the sun breaking through a cloud, aroused an emotion as joyful as the
luminary himself to a navigator doubtful of his position.

"Then felt I as some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific."

Following this I had written by request a volume on the Navy in the
War of Secession, ent