Chapter 10

DESIGNING THE MACHINE

The most important element connected with a navy is the strategy which directs it, in accordance with which all its plans are laid--plans for preparation before war and plans for operations during war. Strategy is to a navy what mind is to a man. It determines its character, its composition, its aims; and so far as external conditions will permit, the results which it accomplishes.

It is possible for certain features connected with a navy to be good, even if the strategy directing it be faulty; or for those features to be faulty, even if the strategy directing it be good. Experience has shown, however, that, in any organization the influence of the men at the top, and the effect of the policy they adopt, is so great that the whole organization will in the main be good or bad according to the kind of men that control it, and the methods they employ. The better the discipline of the organization, the more completely the quality of the management will influence the whole, and the more essential it becomes that good methods be employed. Good discipline means concentration of the effort of the organization; and the more concentrated any effort is, the more necessary that it be directed aright. The simplest illustration of this is seen in naval gunnery; for there the effect of good fire-control is to limit the dispersion of the various shots fired, relatively to each other; to make a number of shots fired simultaneously to bunch closely together, that is to concentrate; getting away from the shotgun effect, and approximating the effect of a single shot. Obviously, if the fire-control and the skill of the gunners are so great that the shots fall very close together, the chance of hitting the target is less than if the shots did not fall close together, if the range at which the guns are fired is incorrect. A mathematical formula showing the most effective dispersion for a given error in range was published in the _Naval Institute_ by Lieutenant-Commander B. A. Long, U. S. N., in December, 1912.

So, we see that if the strategy directing a navy is incorrect, we can accomplish little by improving the discipline, and may do harm; when unwise orders have been given in the past, those orders have sometimes been disobeyed with beneficial effect. Neither would it avail much to improve the details of the material or personnel, or to spend much money; for there is no benefit to be derived from building fine ships, if they are to be captured by the enemy. If the Russian fleet sent to Tsushima had been weaker than it was, the loss to Russia would have been less.

Inasmuch as strategy, however, includes all the means taken to make a navy effective, it is obvious that a good strategical direction will be more likely to result in good discipline and good material than would a poor strategy. But this is not necessarily so, for the reason that a strategy may be in the main faulty, and yet be good in certain ways--especially in attention to details, for which a high degree of mentality is not required. In the same way, an individual who is short-sighted and imperfectly educated may be a most excellent and useful member of society, provided he is not permitted to use power in matters beyond his vision. An illustration of how an incorrect point of view does not necessarily injure, but may even benefit in details is shown by certain militia regiments, which are able to surpass some regiments of the regular army in many details of the drill, and in general precision of movement.

In fact, a very wise strategical direction has as one of its most important functions the division of study and labor among various lines of action, and in deciding which lines are important and which not: and for this reason may--and often does--limit labor, and therefore perfection of result, along lines which a less wise strategy would not limit. Illustrations of the casting aside of rigid and difficult forms of drill during the past fifty years in armies, and the substitution of more easy methods are numerous. This does not indicate, however, that a wise strategy may not encourage rigid forms of drill, for the army which is directed with the greatest strategical skill is the German, and no army has more precise methods, not only of procedure, but of drill. The Prussian army of Frederick William which Frederick the Great inherited was not more rigidly drilled in some particulars than the German army of to-day, fought by Frederick the Great's great-great-great-grandnephew, William II.

So we see that a wise and far-sighted strategy does not necessarily either frown on or encourage attention to details; it merely regulates it, deciding in each case and for each purpose what degree of attention to detail is best.

The most obvious work of naval strategy, and therefore the work that impresses people most, is in directing naval forces against an enemy in war. But it is clear that before this can be done effectively strategy must first have made plans of preparation in time of peace; and it is equally clear that, previous to this, strategy must first determine the units of the force and their relation to each other: it must, in other words, design the machine.

Evidently, therefore, _the work of strategy is three-fold: first, to design the machine; second, to prepare it for war; and, third, to direct its operations during war_.

A navy being a machine composed of human and material parts, it is clear that the work of designing it correctly should take account of all the parts at the outset; and not only this--the whole design should be completed before any parts are made and put together if the best results are to be obtained. This is the practice in making material machines in manufacturing establishments--and no other practice there could be successfully pursued. It is the outcome of the experience of tens of thousands of men for many years--and the result of the expenditure of tons of money.

This remark as to manufacturing establishments does not include the development of new ideas, for which experimentation or original research is needed; because it is sometimes necessary, when venturing into untrodden fields, to test out by mere trial and error certain parts or features before determining enough of their details to warrant incorporating them in the drawing of the whole machine. Similarly, some experiments must be made in the methods, organization, and material of the naval machine; but in this, case, as in the case of manufacturing establishments, the experimental work, no matter how promising or alluring, must be recognized as of unproved and doubtful value; and no scheme, plan, or doctrine must be incorporated in the naval machine, or allowed to pose as otherwise than experimental, until successful trials shall have put it beyond the experimental stage.

The naval machine consists obviously of two parts, the personnel and the material; these two parts being independent, and yet mutually dependent, like the parts of any other organism. Obviously, the parts are mutually dependent not only in the quantitative sense that the more numerous the material parts the more numerous must be the personnel to operate them, but also in the qualitative sense that the various kinds of material determine the various kinds of personnel that must be provided to operate them with success. Gunners are needed to handle guns, and engineers to handle engines.

In this respect, personnel follows material. In the galley days only two kinds of personnel were needed--sailors to handle the galleys (most of these being men merely to pull on oars)--and soldiers to fight, when the galleys got alongside of the enemy. Ship organization remained in a condition of great simplicity until our Civil War; for the main effort was to handle the ships by means of their sails, the handling of the simple battery being a very easy matter. Every ship was much like every other ship, except in size; and in every ship the organization was simple and based mostly on the necessities of handling the ship by sails.

The first important change from this condition followed the departure of the Confederate ironclad _Virginia_ (_Merrimac_) carrying 10 guns and 300 men from the Norfolk Navy Yard on the 8th of March, 1862, and her sinking hardly two hours afterward the Union sloop of war _Cumberland_, carrying 24 guns and 376 men; and then destroying by fire the Union frigate _Congress_, carrying 50 guns and 434 men. The second step was taken on the following day, when the Union _Monitor_, 2 guns and 49 men, defeated the _Merrimac_. These two actions on two successive days are the most memorable naval actions in history from the standpoint of naval construction and naval ordnance, and perhaps of naval strategy; because they instituted a new era--the era of mechanism in naval war.

The next step was the successful attack by the Confederate "fish-torpedo boat" _David_, on the Union ironclad _Housatonic_ in Charleston harbor on February 17, 1864; and the next was the sinking of the Confederate ironclad _Albemarle_ by a spar torpedo carried on a little steam-launch commanded by Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S. N., on October 27, 1864.

These four epochal events in our Civil War demonstrated the possibilities of mechanism in naval warfare, and led the way to the use of the highly specialized and scientific instruments that have played so important a part in the present war. During the half-century that has intervened since the _Monitor_ and _Merrimac_ ushered in the modern era, since the five brave crews of the _David_ lost their lives, and since Cushing made his amazing victory, a contest between the sailor and the scientist has been going on, as to which shall be deemed the ultimate master of the sea. As in many contests, the decision has gone unqualifiedly to neither; for he who sails the sea and braves its tempests, must be in heart and character a sailor--and yet he who fights the scientific war-craft of the present day cannot be merely a sailor, like him of the olden kind, but must be what the _New York Times_, a few years ago, laughingly declared to be a combination quite unthinkable, "a scientific person and a sailor."

Each year since the fateful 8th of March, 1862, has seen some addition to the fighting machinery of navies. Some appliances have been developed gradually from their first beginnings, and are to-day substantially what they were at first--but of course improved; among these are the turret, the automobile torpedo, the telescope-sight, the submarine, and the gyrocompass. Many other appliances found favor for a while and then, having demonstrated the value of what they attempted and did perform, were gradually supplemented by improved devices, doing the same thing, but in better ways; in this class are many forms of interior-communication apparatus, especially electrical. Still other appliances are adaptations to ship and naval life of devices used in civil life--such as the telephone, electric light, and radio.

Each of these appliances has required for its successful use the educating of men to use it, and frequently the creation and organization of entirely new branches of the service; an illustration is the radio corps in each of our large ships. At the present time the attitude of officers and of the department itself is so much more favorable to new appliances that a clear probability of a new device being valuable is a sufficient stimulus to bring about the education of men to use it; but a very few years ago many devices were lost to us because they were considered "not adapted naval use." Now we endeavor to adapt them.

The present complexity of our material is therefore reflected in the complexity of the organization of our personnel; and as it is the demands of material that regulate the kind of personnel, and as a machine must be designed and built before men can learn to use it, it follows that our personnel must lag behind our material--that our material as material must be better than our personnel as personnel.

It may be answered that all our material is first invented, then designed, and then constructed by men; that men create our material appliances (though not the matter of which they are composed), that the created cannot be better than the creator; and that therefore it is impossible for our material to be better than our personnel. But to this objection it may be pointed out that only a very small proportion of our personnel are employed in creating; that most of them are engaged merely in using the material with whatever degree of skill they possess, and that, if a man uses an instrument with perfect skill, he then succeeds merely in getting out of that instrument all that there is in it. A soldier's musket, for instance, is a very perfect tool--very accurate, very powerful, very rapid; and no marksman in the world is so skilful that he can shoot the musket with all the accuracy and speed of which the gun itself is capable.

This indicates that the personnel of a navy is harder to handle than the material, and that therefore the most effort is required to be expended on the personnel. The strength of any system depends on the strength of its weakest part; in any organism, human or material, effort is best expended on the weak points rather than on the strong.

Recognition of this principle is easy, but carrying out the principle in practice is most difficult. One reason is the difficulty of seeing always where the weak spot is; but a greater difficulty is due to the fact that the principle as above stated must be modified by the consideration that things which are important need attention more than things that are unimportant. A weak point in any organism deserves attention more than a strong point of the same order of importance, or than a strong point in the same class; but not, necessarily more than a strong point of a higher order of importance, or a strong point in another class. It may be more beneficial, for instance, to drill an ineffective turret crew than to try to reduce friction in a training gear already nearly frictionless; or it may be more beneficial to overcome the faults of a mediocre gun-pointer than to develop still more highly the skill already great of another gun-pointer; but, on the other hand, it may be less beneficial to drill boat crews at boat-sailing, even if they need it, than to drill them at landing as armed forces on the beach, though they may do that pretty well; or it may be better not to have boat drill at all and to get under way for fleet drill, even though the ships are very expert at it.

It is true that in any endeavor where many things are to be done, as in a navy, it is important that nothing be neglected; and yet, under the superintendence of any one, there are some things the doing of which requires priority over other things. The allotting of the scientifically correct amount of time, energy, and attention to each of the various things claiming one's attention is one of the most difficult, and yet one of the most important problems before any man. It requires an accurate sense of proportion.

Naturally the problem increases in complexity and importance the higher the position, and the greater the number of elements involved--being 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 a dozen or more, are considering highly complicated questions, such as the House Naval Committee discuss when officers are called to testify before them, no two of the twenty congressmen can form the same mental picture when an officer uses the word--say "fleet." The reason is simply that very few of the congressmen hearing that word have ever seen a fleet; none of them know exactly what it is, and every one forms a picture which is partly the result of all his previous education and experience; which are different from the previous education and experience of every other congressman on the committee. Furthermore, no one of the officers uses words exactly as the other officers do; and the English language is too vague (or rather the usual interpretation put on words is too vague) to assure us that even ordinary words are mutually understood. For instance, the question is asked: "Do you consider it probable that such or such a thing would happen?" Now what does the questioner mean by "probable," and what does the officer think he means? Mathematically, the meaning of "probable" is that there is more than 50 per cent of chance that the thing would happen; but who in ordinary conversation uses that word in that way? That this is not an academic point is shown by the fact that if the answer is "no" the usual inference from the answer is that there is no need for guarding against the contingency. Yet such an inference, if the word "probable" were used correctly by both the questioner and the answerer, would be utterly unjustified, because the necessity for taking precautions against a danger depends not so much on its probability or improbability, as on the degree of its probability; and to an equal degree on the greatness of the danger that impends. If the occurrence of a small mishap has a probability say of even 75 per cent, there may be little necessity of guarding against it; while if the danger of total destruction has a probability as low as even 1 per cent, we should guard against it sedulously.

The more complicated the question, the more elements involved, the more difficult it is to settle it wisely by mere discussion. The effort of the imagination of each person must be directed not so much to getting a correct mental picture of what the words employed describe, as to getting a correct picture of what the person using the words desires them to describe. Any person who has had experience in discussions of this character knows what an effort this is, even if he is talking with persons whom he has known for years, and with whose mental and lingual characteristics he is well acquainted: and he also knows how much more difficult it is when he is talking with persons whom he knows but slightly.

It may here be pointed out how greatly the imaginations of men differ, and how little account is taken of this difference in every-day life. In poetry and fiction imagination is recognized; and it is also recognized to some extent in painting, inventing, and, in general, in "the arts." But in ordinary life, the difference among men in imagination is almost never noticed. Yet a French proverb is "point d'imagination, point de grand general"; and Napoleon indicated a danger from untrained imagination in his celebrated warning to his generals not to make "pictures" to themselves of difficulties and disasters.

The difference in imagination among men is shown clearly by the difference--and often the differences--between inventors and engineers, and the scarcity of men who are both inventors and engineers. Ericsson repudiated the suggestion that he was an inventor, and stoutly and always declared he was an engineer. This was at a time, not very long ago, when it was hardly respectable to be an inventor; when, even though men admitted that some inventors had done valuable work, the work was supposed to be largely a chance shot of a more or less crazy man. Yet Ericsson was an inventor--though he was an engineer. So were Sir William Thompson (afterward Lord Kelvin), Helmholtz, Westinghouse, and a very few others; so are Edison and Sperry. Many inventors, however, live in their imaginations mainly--some almost wholly. Like Pegasus, they do not like to be fastened to a plough or anything else material. Facts, figures, and blue-prints fill their souls with loathing, and bright generalities delight them. The engineer, on the other hand, is a man of brass and iron and logarithms; in imagination he is blind, in flexibility he resembles reinforced concrete. He is the antipodes of the inventor; he despises the inventor, and the inventor hates him. Fortunately, however, there is a little bit of the inventor in most engineers, and a trace of the engineer in most inventors; while in some inventors there is a good deal of the engineer. And once in a while we meet a man who carries both natures in his brain. That man does marvels.

Despite the great gulf normally fixed, however, between the engineer and the inventor, most of the definite progress of the world for the past one hundred years has been done by the co-ordination of the two; a co-ordination accomplished by "the man of business."

Now the inventor and engineer type do not exist only in the world of engineering and mechanics, though it is in that world that they are the most clearly recognized; for they exist in all walks of life. In literature, inventors write novels; in business life, they project railroads; in strategy, they map out new lines of effort. In literature, the engineer writes cyclopædias; in business, he makes the projected railroads a success; in strategy, he works out logistics and does the quantitative work.

In that part of strategy of which we are now thinking--the designing of the naval machine--the inventor and the engineer clearly have two separate lines of work: one line the conceiving, and the other line the constructing, of strategic and tactical methods, and of material instruments to carry out those methods. Clearly, these two lines of work while independent are mutually dependent; and, if properly carried out are mutually assistant. The coworking of the inventor and the engineer is a little like that coworking of theory and practice, which has been the principal factor in bringing about the present amazing condition of human society commonly called "Modern Civilization."

The shortcomings of human speech are most evident in discussing complicated matters; and for this reason speech is supplemented in the engineering arts by drawings of different kinds. No man ever lived who could describe a complicated machine accurately to a listener, unless that machine differed but little from a machine with which the listener was acquainted. But hand a drawing of even a very complicated machine to a man who knows its language--and the whole nature of the object is laid bare to him; not only its general plan and purpose, but its details, with all their dimensions and even the approximate weights. So, when the forces representing a complicated naval situation are placed upon the game-board, all the elements of the problem appear clearly and correctly to each person; the imagination has little work to do, and the chance for misunderstanding is almost negligible. Of course, this does not mean that the game-board can decide questions with absolute finality. It cannot do this; but that is only because conditions are represented with only approximate realism, because the rules of the game may not be quite correct, and because sufficient correct data cannot be procured. The difficulties of securing absolute realism are of course insuperable, and the difficulties of getting absolutely correct data are very great. The more, however, this work is prosecuted, the more clearly its difficulties will be indicated, and therefore the more effectively the remedies can be provided. The more the game-board is used both on ship and shore, the more ease will be found in getting correct data for it, and the more correctly conclusions can then be deduced.

These remarks, while intended for tactical games, seem to apply to strategical games as well; for both the tactical and the strategical games are simply endeavors to represent actual or probable situations and occurrences in miniature, by arbitrary symbols, in accordance with well-understood conventions.

War games and war problems have not yet been accepted by some; for some regard them as games pure and simple and as academic, theoretical, and unpractical. It may be admitted that they are academic and theoretical; but so is the science of gunnery, and so is the science of navigation. In some ways, however, the lessons of the game-board are better guides to future work than "practical" and actual happenings of single battles: for in single battles everything is possible, and some things happen that were highly improbable and were really the result of accident. After nearly every recent war there has been a strong move made toward the adoption of some weapon, or some method, that has attained success in that war. For instance, after our Civil War, many monitors were built, and the spar torpedo was installed in all our ships; after the battle of Lissa, the ram was exploited as the great weapon of the future; the Japanese War established the heavily armed and armored battleships on a secure foundation; and the early days of the present war caused a great rush toward the submarine. Yet, in most cases, the success was a single success or a very few successes, and was a little like the throw of a die, in the sense that the result was caused in great measure by accident; that is, by causes beyond the control of man, or by conditions that would probably not recur.

The game calls our attention to the influence of chance in war, and to the desirability of our recognizing that influence and endeavoring to eliminate it, when reasoning out the desirability or undesirability of a certain weapon or a certain method. Of course, every thoughtful person realizes that few effects in life are due to one cause only, and that most effects are due to a combination of many causes; so that, if any weapon or method succeeds or fails, it is illogical to infer from that one fact that the weapon or method is good or bad. A common illustration is the well-known fact that a marksman may hit the target when his aim is too high or too low, provided that he has erroneously set his sight enough too low or too high to compensate; whereas if he had made only one error instead of two, he would have missed. "Two wrongs cannot make a right," but two errors can compensate each other, and often do. The theory of the Probability of Errors recognizes this. In fact, if it were not true that some errors are plus and some minus, all errors in gunnery (in fact in everything) would be additive to each other, and we should live in a world of error.

The partial advantage of the game-board over the occurrences of actual war, for the purpose of studying strategy, lies largely in its ability to permit a number of trials very quickly; the trials starting either with identical situations, or with certain changes in conditions. Of course, the game-board has the tremendous disadvantage that it presents only a picture, and does not show a real performance; but the more it is used, and the more fleets and game-boards work together, the more accurate the picture will become, and the more correctly we shall learn to read it.

One limitation of the game-board is that it can represent weather conditions only imperfectly--and this is a serious limitation that mayor may not be remedied as time goes on. The theory of the game-board is in fact in advance of the mechanism, and is waiting for some bright inventive genius for the remedy. Until this happens, the imagination must do the best it can, and the effect of a certain kind of weather under the other conditions prevailing will have to be agreed upon by the contestants.

The term "war game" is perhaps unfortunate, for the reason that it does not convey a true idea of what a "war game" is. The term conveys the idea of a competitive exercise, carried on for sport; whereas the idea underlying the exercise is of the most serious kind, and has no element of sport about it, except the element that competition gives. A war game may be simply a game of sport--and sometimes it is so played; but the intention is to determine some doubtful point of strategy or tactics, and the competitive element is simply to impart realism, and to stimulate interest. When two officers, or two bodies of officers, find themselves on different sides of a certain question, they sometimes "put it on the game-board," to see which side is right.

This statement applies most obviously to tactical games; but it applies to strategic games as well; for both are inventions designed to represent in miniature the movements of two opposing forces. The main difference between strategic and tactical games is the difference in size. Naturally, the actual means employed are different, but only so different as the relative areas of movement necessitate. In the strategic games, the opposing forces are far apart, and do not see each other; in the tactical games, they operate within each other's range of vision.

War games when played for the purpose of determining the value of types of craft and vessels of all kinds, may take on almost an infinite variety of forms; for the combinations of craft of different kinds and sizes, and in different numbers, considered in connection with the various possible combinations of weather, climate, and possible enemy forces, are so numerous as to defy computation.

In practice, however, and in a definite problem, the number of factors can be kept down by assuming average conditions of weather, using the fairly well-known enemy force that would appear in practice, and playing games in which the only important variable is the kind of vessel in question. For instance, in the endeavor to ascertain the value of the battle cruiser, games can be played in which battle cruisers are only on one side, or in which they are more numerous, or faster or more powerful on one side than on the other. Naturally, the games cannot be as valuable practically as they otherwise would be, unless they consider the amount of money available. For instance, if games are played to ascertain the most effective number and kinds of craft for which to ask appropriations from Congress at next session, the solution, unless a money limit were fixed, would be impossible. In other words, the amount of money to be expended must be one of the known or assumed factors in the problem.

As this amount can never be known, it must be assumed; and, in order that the whole value of the games may not be lost, in case the amount assumed were incorrect, it is necessary to assume a number of possible sums, the upper limit being above the probable amount to be received, and the lower limit below it, and then work out the answer to the problem, under each assumption.

Of course, this procedure would be laborious, but most procedures are that bring about the best results. Suppose that such a procedure were followed for, say, a year, and that a number of plans, all worked out, were presented to Congress when it met: plan No. 1, for instance, consisting of such and such craft showing (according to the results of the games) the best programme, if $100,000,000 were to be appropriated for the increase of the navy; plan No. 2, if $90,000,000 were to be appropriated; plan No. 3, if $80,000,000 were to be appropriated, and so on. Each plan being concisely and clearly stated, and accompanied by drawings, sketches, and descriptions, Congress could easily and quickly decide which plan it would adopt.

This scheme would have the obvious advantage over the present scheme that the professional questions would be decided by professional men, while the financial question would be decided by Congress, which alone has the power to decide it. At present, the laymen on the House Naval Committee spend laborious days interrogating singly, and on different days, various naval officers, who naturally do not always agree. Finally, the House Naval Committee decides on a programme and recommends it to the House. The House discusses it most seriously (the professional points more seriously than the financial point), and decides on something. Then the Senate Committee, using the House decision as a basis, recommends something to the Senate, and the Senate then decides on something more or less like what the Senate Committee recommends. Then the whole question is decided by a Conference Committee of three senators and three members of the House. It is to be noted that this committee decides not only how much money the country shall spend on the navy, but also what kinds of vessels navy officers shall use to fight in the country's defense; how many officers there shall be, and how they shall be divided among the various grades!

Attention is requested here to the _ease_ with which a decision can be made, _provided one does not take into account all of the factors of a problem, or if he is not thoroughly acquainted with them_; and attention is also requested to the _impossibility_ of making a _wise_ decision (except by chance) unless one understands _all_ the factors, takes _all_ into consideration, and then combines them _all_, assigning to each its proper weight. From one point of view, every problem in life is like a problem in mathematics; for if all the factors are added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided correctly (that is, if they are combined correctly), and if correct values are assigned to them, the correct answer is inevitable. In most of the problems of life, however, certainly in the problems of strategy, we do not know all of the factors, and cannot assign them their exactly proper weights; and therefore we rarely get the absolutely correct answer. The best that any man can do is to estimate the factors as accurately as he can, judge as correctly as he can their interaction on each other, and then make his own conclusion or decision.

When a man can do this well in the ordinary affairs of life, he is said to be "a man of good judgment"; when he can do it well in a certain line of work--say investments in real estate--he is said to have good judgment in real estate. The use of the word "judgment" here is excellent, because it expresses the act of a judge, who listens patiently to all the evidence in a case and then gives his decision. And the act of the judge, and the act of any man in coming carefully to any decision, consist mainly in estimating the relative values of all the factors, and their relations to each other ("sizing them up" is the expressive slang), and then perceiving with more or less correctness what the answer is. Some men do not have good judgment; some men highly educated, brilliant, and well-meaning, seem never to get quite the correct answer to any problem in life. They are said to be unsuccessful and no one knows why. Perhaps they lack that instinctive sense of proportion that some men have--a sense as real as an "ear for music"; or perhaps they lack a willingness or a capability to think about a situation with sufficient intentness to force a clear picture of the situation with all its various features upon the mental retina.

The ability to make a mental picture, be it of a machine, of any group of material objects, such as the various units of a fleet organized as such, or of any other situation, varies with different men; but like every other kind of ability, it can be strengthened by practice, and assisted by appropriate means. In the engineering arts, the practice is gotten by observing and remembering actual machines; and the assistance is given by drawings of different kinds. In strategy, the practice is given by observing and remembering the movements of actual fleets; and the assistance by means of drawings of different kinds, and by war problems, and the game-board. The game-board represents a number of successive pictures, and is not very different in principle from moving-pictures. In fact, the suggestion has been made repeatedly for several years and is now in process of development that the various situations in tactical games might advantageously be photographed on films and afterward projected in rapid succession on a screen.

One of the curious limitations of the naval game board, both in tactical and strategic games, is that it takes no account of personnel; that it assumes that all the various units are manned by crews that are adequate both in numbers and in training. Of course, it would be impracticable to test say the relative values of kinds of vessels, unless all the factors of the problem were the same, except the two factors that were competing. Therefore the limitation mentioned is not mentioned as a criticism, but simply to point out that the game-board, in common with most of the other means of discussion in naval matters, has gradually led people to think of naval matters in terms of material units only. That such an unfortunate state of affairs has come to pass can be verified by reading almost any paper, even professional, that speaks about navies; for one will be confronted at once with the statement that such and such a navy consists of such and such ships, etc. Since when has a navy consisted of brass and iron? Since when has the mind and character of man taken a place subordinate to matter? At what time did the change occur whereby the instrument employed dominated the human being who employed it? That this is not an academic point, or an unimportant thing to bear in mind is evidenced by countless facts in history. In order not to tire the reader, mention will be made of only one fact, the well-known fight between the American frigate _Chesapeake_, and the British frigate _Shannon_ to which I have already referred. These two ships were almost identical in size and in the number and kinds of guns, and in the number of officers and crew, and the battle was fought on June 1, 1813, in Massachusetts Bay, under circumstances of weather and other conditions that gave no advantage to either. If material and numbers of personnel were the only factors in the fight, the fight would have continued very long and ended in a draw. Did these things occur? No, the _Chesapeake_ was captured in a little less than fifteen minutes after the first gun was fired, and nearly half her crew were killed or wounded!

It would be tiresome to recount all the battles both on sea and land, in which smaller forces defeated forces numerically greater; but it may not be possible by any other means to force the fact on the attention--even sometimes of naval officers--that material vessels, guns, etc., are merely instruments, and that the work gotten out of any instrument depends not only on the instrument itself, but on the skill with which it is employed. Usually, when thinking or speaking of the power of any instrument (or means or method or organization) we mean the power of which it is capable; that is, the result which it can produce, _if used with_ 100 _per cent of skill_. Possibly, we are subconsciously aware that we assume perfect skill; but whether we are or not, we have become so accustomed to the tacit acceptance of the phrase, "other things being equal," that we have come to forget that other things may not be equal at all; and that they certainly will not be on the day of trial, if we forget or undervalue those other things, while our antagonist does not.

Let us always remember, then, that the effective work gotten out of any means or instrument is the product of the maximum capability of the means or instrument and the skill with which it is used; that, for instance, if two fleets fight, which are numerically equal in material and personnel, but in which the skill of the personnel of the A fleet is twice as great as the skill of the personnel of the B fleet, the A fleet will be twice as powerful as the B fleet.

It may be objected that it would be absurd to assume the skill of the personnel in one fleet as twice as great as that of the personnel in the other fleet, but it can easily be shown that even so great a disproportion is not impossible, provided the skill in one fleet is very great. The value of superior skill naturally becomes important where the difficulties are great. A very simple illustration is in firing a gun; for even if the skill of one marksman be greater than that of another, it will be unimportant, if the target is so large and so close that even the inferior marksman can hit it at each shot. The probability of hitting a target--so far as overs and shorts are concerned (or deviations to the left and right)--varies with the fraction _a/y_, where _a_ is the half height (or width) of the target, and _y_ is the mean error. The greater the size of the target, and the less the mean error, the greater the probability of hitting. The size of the two targets being fixed, therefore, the smaller the mean error the greater the probability of hitting. The probability of hitting, however (as can be seen by the formula), does not increase greatly with the decrease of error, except in cases where _a/y_ is small, where the mean error is large relatively to the width or height of the target. For instance, if _a/y_ is .1 in one case, and .2 in another case, the probability is practically double in the second case; whereas, if _a/y_ is 1 in one case, and 2 in another, the probability increases only 55 per cent; while if it is 2 in one case and 4 in the other, the probability of hitting increases only 12 per cent.

This means that if two antagonists engage, the more skilful should, and doubtless will, engage under difficult conditions, where _y_ is considerable relatively to _a_; for instance, at long range. Suppose that he engages at such a range that he can make 10 per cent of hits--that is, make 90 per cent of misses; and that his misses relatively to the enemy's is as 90 to 95--so that the enemy makes 95 per cent of misses. This does not seem to be (in fact it is not) an extreme case: and yet _A_ will hit _B_ twice as often as _B_ will hit _A_. In other words, the effective skill of _A_ will be twice that of _B_.

This illustrates the effect of training--because all that training in handling any instrument can do is to attain as closely as possible to the maximum output of the instrument; and as the maximum output is attained only when the instrument is handled exactly as it should be handled, and as every departure is therefore an error in handling, we see that the effect of training is merely to diminish errors.

That this illustration, drawn from gunnery, is applicable in general terms to strategy seems clear, for the reason that in every strategical situation, no matter how simple or how complex, there is, and can be only one _best_ thing to do; so that the statement of any strategic situation, if followed by a question as to what is the best thing to do, becomes a problem, to which the answer is--_the best thing to do_. Of course, in most strategic problems, there are so many factors almost unknown, and so many factors only imperfectly known, that we can rarely ascertain mathematically what is the best thing to do. Nevertheless, there must be a best thing to do, even if we never ascertain exactly what it is. Now in arriving at the decision as to the best thing to do, one estimates the weight of each factor and its bearing on the whole. If one estimates each factor correctly, that is, if he makes no errors in any estimate, and if he makes no error in summing up, he will make an absolutely correct decision; and any departure from correctness in decision can result from no other cause than from errors in his various estimates and in their final summation. In other words, skill in strategy is to be attained by the same process as is skill in other arts: by eliminating errors.

So, when we take the decisions of the game-board and the war problem, we must not allow ourselves to forget that there has been a tacit assumption that the numbers and the skill of the personnel have been equal on the two sides; and we must supplement our decision as to the best material to be employed by another decision as to how we shall see to it that the assumption of equality of personnel shall be realized in fact--or rather that it shall be realized in fact that our personnel shall get the maximum of effectiveness out of the material.

In designing the machine, therefore, we are confronted with the curious fact that, in general, we must design the various material parts before designing the personnel parts that are to operate them.

The most obvious characteristic of the personnel parts is that the number of personnel parts shall be sufficient to operate the material parts.

To ascertain the number of personnel parts, the only means is actual trial; though naturally, if we have previously ascertained the number of men needed to operate any kind of mechanism, say a certain kind and size of gun, we can estimate quite accurately the number needed to operate a similar gun, even if it differ somewhat from the other gun. After the gun is tried, however, we may have to change our original estimate, not only because the estimate may have been in error, but because the requirement of operating the gun may have changed. For instance, the requirements of fire-control have within very recent years compelled the addition of a considerable number of men to the complements of battleships.

Now the need of supplying enough men to operate successfully any instrument or mechanism is absolute, for the reasons that the number of things to be done is fixed, and that an insufficient number of men in the ratio for instance of 9 to 8 may mean a falling off in the output of the machine much greater than in the ratio of 9 to 8. A simple illustration may be taken from the baseball game; for it is obvious that the output of a baseball team, in competition with other teams, would fall off in a much greater ratio than of 9 to 8, by leaving out one member of the nine. Another illustration, or rather an analogy, may be found in machinery made of rigid metal--say a steam-engine; for the omission of almost any part in an engine would entirely stop its operation.

Not only, however, must we see that the number of personnel parts is sufficient, we must see that they are correctly divided among the various material parts; otherwise there will be too many in one place and too few in another; and while it is better to have too many men than too few, too many men prevent the attainment of the maximum effect.

The effect of having too few men, however, is not merely in limiting the effectiveness of the output of the machine; for, if carried to a considerable degree, it prevents due care of the material parts themselves, and causes those material parts to deteriorate. This deterioration may take the form of actual wasting away as by rust; but even if the deterioration does not advance so far as actual wastage, it may easily, and often does, advance to the stage where, although not evidenced by visible rust or by any other indication, so long as the mechanism is not operated at its normal rate, it declares itself very clearly as soon as the mechanism is tried in service. For this reason, all mechanicians realize that it is better for every mechanism not to lie idle, but to be used considerably, though, of course, without being forced unduly.

Not only also must the personnel be sufficient in number and correctly divided, it must be organized in such manner that the personnel itself will have the characteristics of a machine, in the sense that each unit will be so placed relatively to the hope of reward and the fear of punishment, that he will do his allotted tasks industriously; that he will have the place in the organization for which his character and abilities fit him, and that he will be given such duties and exercises as will fit him more and more for his position, and more and more for advancement to positions higher.

Not only this, we must exercise foresight in the endeavor that the material parts and the personnel parts shall be ready at the same time, so that neither will have to wait for the other; and to insure the immediate availability when war breaks out, of sufficient trained personnel to man and fight effectively all the material units that we shall need to use. This raises the question: "What units shall we need?" The government itself must, of course, decide this matter; but it may be pointed out that if in any considerable war every unit we possess should not be utilized, the navy could not do as effective work as it otherwise could do. In the present war, the belligerents have not only utilized all the units that they had, they have built very many more, using the utmost possible diligence and despatch. In case we should be drawn into war with any considerable naval nation, all history and all reasoning show that we must do the same. Few considerable wars have been waged except with the greatest energy on each side; for each side knows that the scale may be turned by a trifling preponderance on one side; and that if the scale once be turned, it will be practically impossible ever to restore the balance. Every advantage gained makes one side relatively weaker to the other than it was before, and increases the chance that the same side will gain another advantage; gains and losses are cumulative in their effect. For this reason, it is essential, if we are to wage war successfully, that we start right, and send each unit immediately out to service, manned with a highly trained and skilful personnel; because that is what our foe will do.

The Germans meet the difficulty of keeping their personnel abreast of their material very wisely. They utilize the winter months, when naval operations are almost impossible, for reorganizing and rearranging their personnel; so that when spring comes, they are ready in all their ships to start the spring drilling on a systematic plan. The crews being already organized, and the scheme of drills well understood, the work of getting the recruits versed in their relatively simple tasks and the more experienced men skilled in their new positions is quickly accomplished, and the fleet is soon ready for the spring maneuvers.

The fundamental requirement of any organization of men is that it shall approach as closely as possible the characteristics of an organism, in which all the parts, though independent, are mutually dependent, each part doing its appropriate work without interfering with any other, but on the contrary assisting it. The most complex organization in the world is that of a navy, due primarily to the great variety of mechanisms in it, and secondarily to the great variety of trained bodies of men for handling those mechanisms. This variety extends from the highest posts to the lowest; and to make such varied organizations work together to a common end is one of the greatest achievements of civilized man. How it is accomplished is not clear at first view. It is not hard to see how a company of soldiers, drawn up in line, can be made to move as one body by order of the captain. But how in a battleship carrying a thousand men does the coal-passer in the fire-room do as the captain on the bridge desires? It may be objected that he does not--that the captain has no wishes regarding the doings of any coal-passer--that all the captain is concerned with is the doings of the ship as a whole. True, in a way; and yet if the various coal-passers, firemen, quartermasters, _et al_., do not do as the captain wishes, the ship as a whole will not. The secret of the success achieved seems to lie in the knitting together of all the personnel parts by invisible wires of common understanding, analogous to the visible wires that connect the helmsman with the steering-engine. In the case of any small body of men, say the force in one fire-room, the connecting wire joining each man to the petty officer in charge of that fire-room is almost visible, because the petty officer is familiar, by experience, with the work of each man; for he has done that work himself, knows just how it should be done, and knows how to instruct each man. But the more complicated the organization is, the more invisible are the communicating wires that tie the men together, and yet the more important it is that those wires shall tie them; it is even more important, for instance, that the wires connecting the chief engineer with all his force shall operate than that the wires in any one fire-room shall operate. And yet not only are there more wires, but the wires themselves that connect the chief engineer to all the men below him, are longer and more subject to derangement, than the wires that connect the petty officer of one fire-room to the individuals under him.

The chief engineer, of course, is not tied directly to his coal-passers, but to men close to himself; close not only in actual distance, but in experience, knowledge, and sympathy; men who speak the same languages as he does, who understand what he means when he speaks, and who speak to him in ways he understands. These men immediately under him are similarly tied to their immediate subordinates by wires of knowledge, experience, and sympathy--these to their immediate subordinates, and so on.

The same statement applies to the captain in his relations with the chief engineer. The captain may not be an experienced engineer himself; but he is familiar enough with engineering, with its difficulties, its possibilities, and its aims, to converse with the chief engineer in language which both clearly understand.

The same principles seem to apply throughout the whole range of the personnel: so that, no matter how large the organization of any navy may be, there is--there must be, if good work is to be done--a network of invisible wires, uniting all together, by a strong yet flexible bond of sympathy.

And has the material of the navy no connection with this bond? Who knows! Brass and steel are said to be lifeless matter. But does any naval man believe this wholly? Does any man feel that those battleships, and cruisers, and destroyers, and submarines are lifeless which he himself--with his own eyes--has seen darting swiftly, precisely, powerfully on perfect lines and curves, changing their relative positions through complicated maneuvers without accident or mistake? Can we really believe that they take no part and feel no pride in those magnificent pageants on the ocean? From the earliest times, men have personified ships, calling a ship "he" or "she," and giving ships the names of people, and of states; and is not a ship with its crew a living thing, as much as the body of a man? The body of a man is in part composed of bones and muscles, and other parts, as truly things of matter as are the hull and engines of a ship. It is only the spirit of life that makes a man alive, and permits the members of his body, like the members of a ship, to perform their appointed tasks.

But even if this notion seems fanciful and absurd, we must admit that as surely as the mind and brain and nerves and the material elements of a man must be designed and made to work in harmony together, so surely must all the parts of any ship, and all the parts of any navy, parts of material and parts of personnel, be designed and made to work in harmony together; obedient to the controlling mind, and sympathetically indoctrinated with the wish and the will to do as that mind desires.