The Navy as a Fighting Machine

by Bradley A. Fiske

No general answer can be given to the question: "In what detail shall the orders be?" The general statement can be made, however, that the instructions should be confined as closely as practicable to a statement of the department's desires, and that this statement should be as clear as possible. If, for instance, the only desire of the department is that the enemy's fleet shall be defeated, no amplification of this statement is required. But if the department should desire, for reasons best known to itself, that the enemy should be defeated by the use of a certain method, then that should be stated also. Maybe it would not be wise for the department to state the method the employment of which is desired; maybe the commander-in-chief would be the best judge of the method to be employed. But maybe circumstances of governmental policy dictate the employment of a certain method, even if militarily it is not the best; and maybe also the department might prefer that method by reason of information recently received, which it does not have time to communicate in full.

Now, if it is desirable for the department to give the commander-in-chief instructions, running the risk of invading his "area of discretion," and of doing other disadvantageous things, it is obvious that the department should be thoroughly equipped for doing it successfully. This means that the department should be provided not only with the most efficient radio apparatus that can be secured, manned, of course, by the most skilful operators, but also with a body of officers capable of handling that particular part of the Navy Department's work which is the concentrated essence of all its work, the actual handling of the naval forces. The usual name given to such a body of officers is "General Staff."

Such bodies of officers have been developed in navies in recent years, by a desire to take advantage of electrical appliances which greatly increase the accuracy and rapidity of communication over long distances. In days not long ago, before communication by radio was developed, commanders on the spot were in possession of much more information about events in their vicinity, compared with the Navy Department, than they are now; and the difficulties and uncertainties of communication made it necessary to leave much more to their discretion and initiative. The President of the United States can now by telephone talk to the commander-in-chief, when he is in home waters, and every day sees some improvement in this line. This facility of communication carries with it, of course, the danger of "interfering," one of the most frequent causes of trouble in the past, in conducting the operations of both armies and fleets—a danger very real, very insidious, and very important. The very ease with which interference can be made, the trained instinct of the subordinate to follow the wishes of his superior if he can, the temptation to the superior to wield personally some military power and get some military glory, conspire to bring about interference. This is only an illustration, however, of the well-known fact that every power can be used for evil as well as for good, and is not a valid argument against developing to the utmost the communication between the department and the fleet. It is, however, a very valid argument against developing it unless there be developed simultaneously some means like a "safety device" for preventing or at least discouraging its misuse.

The means devised is the General Staff; and in some countries like Germany it seems to work so well that (unless our information is incorrect) the Emperor himself does not interfere. He gives the machine a certain problem to work out, and he accepts the answer as the answer which has a greater probability of being correct than any answer he could get by other means.

Training of the Staff.—Now, if there is to be at the Navy Department a body of men who will work out and recommend what instructions should be given to the commander-in-chief, it seems obvious that that body of men should be thoroughly trained. In the German army the training of men to do this work (General Staff work) is given only to officers specially selected. Certain young officers who promise well are sent to the war college. Those who show aptitude and industry are then put tentatively into the General Staff. Those who show marked fitness in their tentative employment are then put into the General Staff, which is as truly a special corps as is our construction corps. How closely this system is followed with the General Staff in the German navy, the present writer does not know exactly; but his information is that the system in the navy is copied (though with certain modifications) after the system in the army.

How can the General Staff at the Navy Department be trained? In the same way as that in which officers at the war college are trained: by study and by solving war problems by tactical and strategical games. The training would naturally be more extended, as it would be a postgraduate course.

There is a difference to be noted between games like war games in which the mental powers are trained, and games like billiards, in which the nerves and muscles receive practically all the training; and the difference refers mainly to the memory. Games of cards are a little like war games; and many books on games of cards have been written, expounding the principles on which they rest and giving rules to follow. These books may be said to embody a science of card-playing.

No such book on naval strategy has appeared; and the obvious reason is that only a few rules of naval strategy have been formulated. Staff training, therefore, cannot be given wholly by studying books; but possibly the scheme suggested to the department by the writer, when he was Aid for Operations, may be developed into a sort of illustrative literature, which can assist the memory.

By this scheme, a body of officers at the Navy Department would occupy their time wholly in studying war problems by devising and playing strategical and tactical games ashore and afloat. After each problem had been solved to the satisfaction of the staff, each distinctive situation in the approved solution would be photographed in as small a space as practicable, preferably on a moving-picture film. In the solution of problem 99; for instance, there might be 50 situations and therefore 50 photographs. These photographs, shown in appropriate succession, would furnish information analogous to the information imparted to a chess student by the statement of the successive moves in those games of chess that one sees sometimes in books on chess and in newspapers. Now if the film photographs were so arranged that the moves in the approved solution of, say, problem 99 could be thrown on a screen, as slowly and as quickly as desired, and if the film records of a few hundred such games could be conveniently arranged, a very wide range of situations that would probably come up in war would be portrayed; and the moves made in handling those situations would form valuable precedents for action, whenever situations approximating them should come up in war.

It must be borne in mind that in actual life, our only real guide to wise action in any contingency that may arise is a memory, more or less consciously realized, of how a similar contingency has been met, successfully or unsuccessfully, in the past. Perhaps most of us do not realize that it is not so much experience that guides us as our memory of experiences. Therefore in the training of both officers and enlisted men in strategy, tactics, seamanship, gunnery, engineering, and the rest, the memory of how they, or some one else, did this well and that badly (even if the memory be hardly conscious) is the immediate agency for bringing about improvement.