The Navy as a Fighting Machine

by Bradley A. Fiske

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.