Although we should have an army of sufficient size and possessed of so efficient equipment as ultimately to repel invasion, still the cost in life and treasure for repulsion and expulsion would exceed many times the cost of the warships and naval equipment necessary to prevent invasion.
The American people are not all agreed that we should have a navy. There is a very large percentage of the population who believe that we ought not to have any at all. But there is one ground, I think, for common agreement: Admiral Austin M. Knight, President of the Naval War College, one of the best-informed and ablest officers in the Navy, as well as one of the most scholarly men in the country, says:
"If we are to have a navy it should be as efficient as it can possibly be made. And everybody who knows anything about the Navy knows that this is not its present condition."
I shall quote further from a recent speech of Admiral Knight:
"There is much about the Navy which is splendidly efficient. But as a whole it is far less efficient than it can and ought to be. Our ships are fine. Our officers are capable, industrious, and ambitious. Our enlisted men are the equals of those in other navies. But efficient ships and officers and men do not alone make an efficient navy. They must be welded into an efficient whole by a unity of organization and administration and purpose which coördinates their capabilities and directs their efforts towards a common end, wisely selected and very clearly seen. Here is the first point at which we are lacking. We are lacking also in that harmonious composition of the fleet which is needed to give to every element of it the support that it needs from other elements, to make up a symmetrical and well-balanced whole. And we are lacking to a marked degree in absolutely essential facilities for the care and preservation of our ships, especially in the matter of dry-docks.
"Finally, we are lacking in efficient organization of the personnel. Here, so far as officers are concerned, the conditions are altogether deplorable. In a service like the Navy, where spirit is everything, where enthusiasm must be the driving power back of every activity, I ask you to picture the effect of a condition where a young officer, graduating from the Naval Academy full of spirit and enthusiasm, finds himself confronted with a prospect of promotion to the grade of Lieutenant at the age of 52 years.
"If you ask me who is responsible for these conditions, I can only reply that the responsibility comes home to nearly all of us. Some of it, I am sure, rests with me;—much of it, I believe, with you. Certainly it cannot be attributed in excessive measure to any one administration of the Navy Department, for it has existed for half a century at least. So let us not cloud the issue by assuming that it is a new condition, and that all administrations up to some recent date have been models of wisdom and efficiency, or that Naval Officers themselves have always been ready with good advice. Speaking as the representative of Naval Officers as a body, I frankly admit that we have not always seen clearly what was needed, and have not always worked together even for ends which we did see clearly. As for the Secretaries of the Navy, it is not surprising that many of them have failed to realize that their first duty was to strive, in season and out of season, to promote the War efficiency of the Navy as a whole. Many of them have not remained in office long enough to learn this. Some, perhaps, have realized it more or less clearly but have not found at hand an organization through which they could produce results. A few have made material contributions toward improved conditions....