In August, however, additional ships and forces began to arrive from America, and it became necessary to have larger quarters than those available in the Embassy for handling the increasing administrative work. At one time the British Government contemplated building us a temporary structure near the Admiralty, but this was abandoned because there was a shortage of material. We therefore moved into an unoccupied dwelling near the American Embassy that seemed adapted to our needs. We rented this house furnished, just as it stood; a first glimpse of it, however, suggested refined domesticity rather than naval operations. We quickly cleared the building of rugs, tapestries, lace curtains, pictures, and expensive furniture, reduced the twenty-five rooms to their original bareness, and filled every corner with office equipment. In a few days the staff was installed in this five-story residence and the place was humming with the noise of typewriters. At first we regarded the leasing of this building as something of an extravagance; it seemed hardly likely that we should ever use it all! But in a few weeks we had taken the house adjoining, cut holes through the walls and put in doors; and this, too, was filled up in an incredibly short time, so rapidly did the administrative work grow. Ultimately we had to take over six of these private residences and make alterations which transformed them into one. From August our staff increased at a rapid rate until, on the day the armistice was signed, we had not far from 1,200 officers, enlisted men, and clerical force, working in our London establishment, the commissioned staff consisting of about 200 officers, of which sixty were regulars and the remainder reserves.
I find that many people are surprised that I had my headquarters in London. The historic conception of the commander-in-chief of a naval force located on the quarterdeck of his flagship still holds the popular imagination. But controlling the operations of extensive and widely dispersed forces in a campaign of this kind is quite a different proceeding from that of directing the naval campaigns of Nelson's time, just as making war on land has changed somewhat from the method in vogue with Napoleon. The opinion generally prevails that my principal task was to command in person certain naval forces afloat. The fact is that this was really no part of my job during the war. The game in which several great nations were engaged for four years was a game involving organized direction and co-operation. It is improbable that any one nation could have won the naval war; that was a task which demanded not only that we should all exert our fullest energies, but that, so far as it was humanly possible, we should exert them as a unit. It was the duty of the United States above all nations to manifest this spirit. We had entered the war late; we had entered it in a condition of unpreparedness; our naval forces, when compared to those which had been assembled by the Allies, were small; we had not been engaged for three years combating an enemy using new weapons and methods of naval warfare. It was not unlikely that we could make some original contributions to the Allied effort; indeed, we early did so; yet it was natural to suppose that the navies which had been combating the submarines so long understood that game better than did we, and it was our duty to assist them in this work, rather than to operate independently. Moreover, this question as to whether any particular one of our methods might be better or might be worse than Great Britain's was not the most important one. The point was that the British navy had developed its own methods of working and that it was a great "going concern." The crisis was so pressing that we simply did not have the time to create a separate force of our own; the most cursory examination of conditions convinced me that we could hope to accomplish something worth while only by playing the game as it was then being played, and that any attempt to lay down new rules would inevitably decrease the effectiveness of our co-operation, and perhaps result in losing the war. We can even admit, for the sake of the argument, that the Americans might have created a better organization than the British; but the question of improving on their methods, or of not improving on them, was a point that was not worth considering; long before we could have developed an efficient independent machine the war would have come to an end. It was thus our duty to take things as they were, to plunge immediately into the conflict, and to make every ship and every man tell in the most effective way and in the shortest possible time. Therefore I decided that our forces should become, for the purpose of this war, virtually a part of the Allied navies; to place at the disposal of the Allies our ships to reinforce the weak part of their lines; to ignore such secondary considerations as national pride, naval prestige, and personal ambitions; and to subordinate every other consideration to that of defeating the Hun. I have already described how in distributing our subchasers I practically placed them at the disposal of the Allied Council; and this represents the policy that was followed in all similar matters.
The naval high commands were located at Washington, London, Paris, and Rome. Necessarily London was the headquarters of the naval war. Events which had long preceded the European conflict had made this choice inevitable. The maritime development of four centuries had prepared London for the rôle which she was now called upon to play. From all over the world naval and maritime information flowed to this great capital as though in obedience to the law of gravity. Even in peace times London knew where every ship in the world was at any particular time. All other machinery for handling this great mass of detail was necessarily accumulated in this great city, and Lloyd's, the world headquarters for merchant shipping, had now become practically a part of the British Admiralty. In this war the matter of information and communications was supremely important. Every decision that was made and every order that was issued, even those that were the least consequential, rested upon complete information which was obtainable, in time to be useful, only in London. I could not have made my headquarters in Washington, or Paris, or Rome because these cities could not have furnished the military intelligence which was needed as a preliminary to every act. For the same reason I could not have efficiently controlled the operations of all our forces from Queenstown, or Brest, or Gibraltar; the staff controlling the whole had necessarily to be located in London, and the tactical commands at these other bases must be exercised by subordinates. The British placed all their sources of information and their communications at our disposal. They literally opened their doors and made us part of their organization. I sat daily in consultation with British naval chiefs, and our officers had access to all essential British information just as freely as did the British naval officers themselves. On the day of my arrival Admiral Jellicoe issued orders that the Americans should be shown anything which they wished to see. With all this information, the most complete and detailed in the world, constantly placed at our disposal, and a spirit of confidence and friendship always prevailing which has no parallel in history, it would have defeated the whole purpose of our participation in the war had the American high command taken up its headquarters anywhere except in London.
Incidentally, there was an atmosphere in the London Admiralty which made a strong appeal to anyone who is interested in naval history. Everything about the place is reminiscent of great naval achievements. The room in which our councils met was the same old Admiralty Board room that had been used for centuries. In accordance with the spirit of British conservatism, this room is almost exactly the same now, even in its furnishings, as it was in Nelson's time. The same old wood carvings hang over the same old fireplace; the table at which we sat is the identical one at which Nelson must have sat many times, and the very silver inkstand which Nelson used was used by his successors in this war. The portrait of this great naval chieftain looked down upon us during our deliberations. Above the fireplace is painted a huge compass, and about the centre of this swings an arrow. This was a part of the Admiralty equipment of a hundred years ago, though it has no usefulness now except a sentimental one. In old days this arrow was geared to a weather vane on the roof of the Admiralty, and it constantly showed to the chiefs assembled in the council room the direction of the wind—a matter of great importance in the days of sailing ships.
All general orders and plans concerning the naval operations of British and American forces came from the Admiralty, and here officers of my staff were constantly at work. The commanders-in-chief at the various bases commanded the combined British and American ships based on those ports only in the sense that they carried out the general instructions and policies which were formulated in London. These orders, so far as they affected American forces, could be issued to the commanders-in-chief only after American headquarters in London had viséd them. Thus the American staff held the ultimate command over all the American forces which were based in British waters. The same was true of those at Brest, Gibraltar, and other stations. The commanders-in-chief executed them, and were responsible for the manner in which the forces were used in combating the enemy. The operations of which I was the commander extended over an immense area. The Plymouth and Queenstown forces represented only a part of the ultimate American naval strength in European waters and not the most important part; before the war ended, Brest, as I shall show, developed into a greater naval base than any of those which we maintained in the British Isles. Convoys were not only coming across the Atlantic but they were constantly arriving from the Mediterranean and from the South Sea, and it was the duty of headquarters in London, and not the duty of local commanders, to route these precious argosies, except in special cases, just before they reached their port of destination. Not infrequently, as previously described, it was necessary to change destinations, or to slow down convoys, or to make any number of decisions based on new information; naturally only the centre of information, the Admiralty convoy room, could serve as a clearing house for such operations. The point is that it was necessary for me to exercise the chief command of American forces through subordinates. My position in this respect was precisely the same as that of Generals Haig and Pershing; I had to maintain a great headquarters in the rear, and to depend upon subordinates for the actual execution of orders.
The American headquarters in London comprised many separate departments, each one of which was directly responsible to me as the Force Commander, through the Chief of Staff; they included such indispensable branches as the office of the Chief of Staff, Captain N. C. Twining, Chief of Staff; Assistant Chief of Staff, Captain W. R. Sexton; Intelligence Department, Commander J. V. Babcock, who also acted as Aide; Convoy Operations Section, Captain Byron A. Long; Anti-submarine Section, Captain R. H. Leigh; Aviation Section, Captain H. I. Cone, and afterward, Lieutenant-Commander W. A. Edwards; Personnel Section, Commander H. R. Stark; Communication Section, Lieutenant-Commander E. G. Blakeslee; Material Section, Captain E. C. Tobey (S.C.); Repair Section, Captain S. F. Smith (C.C.), and afterward, L. B. McBride (C.C.); Ordnance Section, Commander G. L. Schuyler, and afterward, Commander T. A. Thomson; Medical Section, Captain F. L. Pleadwell (M.C.), and afterward, Commander Edgar Thompson (M.C.); Legal Section, Commander W. H. McGrann; and the Scientific Section, Professor H. A. Bumstead, Ph.D.
I was fortunate in all of my departmental chiefs. The Chief of Staff, Captain N. C. Twining, would certainly have been a marked man in any navy; he had a genius for detail, a tireless energy, and a mastery of all the problems that constantly arose. I used to wonder when Captain Twining ever found an opportunity to sleep; he seemed to be working every hour of the day and night; yet, so far as was observable, he never wearied of his task, and never slackened in his devotion to the Allied cause. As soon as a matter came up that called for definite decision, Captain Twining would assemble from the several departments all data and information which were available concerning the question at issue, spend a few hours studying this information, and then give his judgment—an opinion which was invariably sound and which was adopted in the vast majority of cases; in fact, in all cases except those in which questions of policy or extraneous considerations dictated a different or modified decision. Captain Twining is a man of really fine intellect combined with a remarkable capacity for getting things done; without his constant presence at my elbow, my work would have been much heavier and much less successful than it was. He is an officer of such exceptional ability, such matured experience, and such forceful character as to assure him a brilliant career in whatever duty he may be called upon to perform. I can never be sufficiently grateful to him for his loyalty and devotion and for his indispensable contribution to the efficiency of the forces I had the honour to command.
In accordance with my habitual practice, I applied the system of placing responsibility upon my carefully selected heads of departments, giving them commensurate authority, and holding them to account for results. Because the task was such a great one, this was the only possible way in which the operations of the force could have been successfully conducted. I say, successfully conducted, because in a "business" of this kind, "good enough" and "to-morrow" may mean disaster; that is, it is a case of keeping both information and operations up to the minute. If the personnel and equipment of the staff are not completely capable of this, it is more than a partial failure, and the result is an ever-present danger. There were men in this great war who "went to pieces" simply because they tried to do everything themselves. This administrative vice of attempting to control every detail, even insignificant ones, to which military men seem particularly addicted, it had always been my policy to avoid. Business at Grosvenor Gardens developed to such an extent that about a thousand messages were every day received in our office or sent from it; and of these 60 per cent. were in code. Obviously it was impossible for the Force Commander to keep constantly at his finger ends all these details. All department heads, therefore, were selected because they were officers who could be depended upon to handle these matters and make decisions independently; they were all strong men, and it is to their combined efforts that the success of our operations was due. You would have to search a long time among the navies of the world before you could find an abler convoy officer than Captain Byron A. Long; an abler naval constructor than Captain L. B. McBride; an abler man to have charge of the finances of our naval forces, the purchase of supplies and all kinds of material than Captain (S.C.) Eugene C. Tobey; abler aviation officers than Captain H. I. Cone and Lieutenant-Commander W. A. Edwards; an abler chief of operations than Captain R. H. Leigh, or an abler intelligence officer than Commander J. V. Babcock. These men, and others of the fourteen department heads, acted as a kind of cabinet. Many of them handled matters which, though wholly essential to the success of the forces, were quite outside of my personal knowledge or experience, and consequently they had to be men in whose ability to guide me in such matters I could place complete confidence. As an example of this I may cite one of the duties of Captain Tobey. Nearly all of the very considerable financial transactions he was entrusted with were "Greek" to me, but he had only to show me the right place on the numerous documents, and I signed my name in absolute confidence that the interests of the Government were secure.
All cables, reports, and other communications were referred each day to the department which they concerned. The head of each department studied them, attended to the great majority on his own responsibility, and selected the few that needed more careful attention. A meeting of the Chief of Staff and all department heads was held each day, at which these few selected matters were discussed in council and decisions made. The final results of these deliberations were the only matters that were referred to me. This system of subdividing responsibility and authority not only promoted efficiency but it left the Force Commander time to attend to vitally important questions of general policy, to keep in personal touch with the high command of the Allied navies, to attend the Allied naval councils, and, in general, to keep his finger constantly on the pulse of the whole war situation. Officers of our own and other navies who were always coming in from the outlying stations, and who could immediately be placed in touch with the one man who could answer all their questions and give immediate decisions, testified to the efficient condition in which the American headquarters was maintained.
One of our departments was so novel, and performed such valuable service, that I must describe it in some detail. We took over into our London organization an idea that is advantageously used in many American industrial establishments, and had a Planning Section, the first, I think, which had ever been adopted by any navy. I detached from all other duties five officers: Captain F. H. Schofield, Captain D. W. Knox, Captain H. E. Yarnell (who exchanged places afterward with Captain L. McNamee of the Plans Section of the Navy Department), and Colonel R. H. Dunlap (of the Marines), who was succeeded by Colonel L. McC. Little, when ordered to command a regiment of Marines in France. These men made it their business to advise the Commander-in-Chief on any questions that might arise. All were graduates of the Naval War College at Newport, and they applied to the consideration of war problems the lessons which they had learned at that institution. The business of the Planning Section was to make studies of particular problems, to prepare plans for future operations, and also to criticize fully the organization and methods which were already in existence. The fact that these men had no administrative duties and that they could therefore devote all their time to surveying our operations, discovering mistakes, and suggesting better ways of doing things, as well as the fact that they were themselves scholarly students of naval warfare, made their labours exceedingly valuable. I gave them the utmost freedom in finding fault with the existing regime; there was no department and no office, from that of the Commander-in-Chief down, upon whose activities they were not at liberty to submit the fullest and the frankest reports. If anything could be done in a better way, we certainly wanted to know it. Whenever any specific problem of importance came up, it was always submitted to these men for a report. The value of such a report depended upon the completeness and accuracy of the information available, and it was the business of the Intelligence Department of the staff to supply this. If the desired information was not in their files, or the files of the Allied admiralties, or was not up to date, it was their duty to obtain it at once. The point is that the Planning Section had no other duties beyond rendering a decision, based upon a careful analysis of the facts bearing upon the case, which they submitted in writing. There was no phase of the naval warfare upon which the officers of the Planning Section did not give us reports. One of their favourite methods was to place themselves in the position of the Germans and to decide how, if they were directing German naval operations, they would frustrate the tactics of the Allies. Their records contain detailed descriptions of how merchant ships could be sunk by submarines, and these methods, our officers believed, represented a great improvement over those used by the Germans. Indeed, I think that many of these reports, had they fallen into the hands of the Germans, would have been found by them exceedingly useful. There was a general impression, in our own navy as well as in the British, that most of the German submarine commanders handled their boats unskilfully and obtained inadequate results. All these documents were given to the responsible men in our forces, as well as to the British, and had a considerable influence upon operations. The British also established a Planning Section, which worked harmoniously with our own.