The world knows President Wilson as a scholar, teacher and historian; as executive and statesman. But it does not know him, as we did, as a master of military strategy.
His grasp of the whole situation, his clear conception of Army and Navy policies and operations, his rare judgment were demonstrated in important decisions, and his personal interest and influence had a marked effect on the conduct of the war.
Always interested in the Navy, he kept up with all that was being done and planned, and his suggestions and directions proved of the utmost value to officers and officials.
"We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas," he said not long after the beginning of the European war. In his address at St. Louis, early in 1916, he declared that ours should be "the most adequate navy in the world." At the next cabinet meeting a member expressed surprise at the President's advocacy of so vigorous a naval policy, and asked if he had been correctly quoted in the newspapers.
"Yes," replied the President, "and it is one thing I said in my swing around the circle that I absolutely believe."
He strongly urged the big construction program presented several months before, and exercised a potent influence in putting through Congress the "three year program" which authorized building 157 naval vessels.
Long before we entered the war, when the Allied navies seemed impotent before the onslaughts of the submarines, President Wilson pointed to the vigorous policies which later proved so successful.
"Daniels, why don't the British convoy their merchant ships and thus protect them from submarines?" he asked me early in the war. As sinkings increased, he pointed out that their practice of sailing ships separately had proved a failure, and asked, "Why now, with their distressing experiences, do they hesitate about adopting the convoy system?"
He could not comprehend why the British, as soon as Germany declared war, had not mined the English Channel so that no submarine could pass through it. As a matter of fact, strange as it seems, the channel from Dover to Calais never was a complete barrier to submarines, though the Dover Patrol did brilliant service, and the United States Navy insisted that closing this channel was one of the first steps toward defeating the U-boats.
"Why don't the British shut up the hornets in their nests?" he asked me just before we entered the war, and after we were embarked upon it he declared that we must insist upon some plan that would prevent the egress of the U-boats from their bases. "When our Bureau of Ordnance proposed, in April, 1917, the construction of a mine barrage across the North Sea, he was deeply interested in the plan and heartily approved it. That carried out the idea he believed the Allies should have put into effect earlier in the war. As that plan was debated and delayed, and characterized in London as "impracticable," he grew impatient of the long delay in adopting this or some other vigorous offensive against the submarines.