Preparation strategy deals with the laying out of plans for supposititious wars and the handling of supposititious forces against supposititious enemies; and arranges for the construction, equipment, mobilization, provisioning, fuelling, and moving of supposititious fleets and armies. War strategy is vivid, stimulating and resultful; preparation strategy is dull, plodding, and—for the strategist himself—apparently resultless. Yet war strategy is merely the child of preparation strategy. The weapons that war strategy uses, preparation strategy put into its hands. The fundamental plans, the strength and composition of the forces, the training of officers and men, the collection of the necessary material of all kinds, the arrangements for supplies and munitions of all sorts—the very principles on which war strategy conducts its operations—are the fruit of the tedious work of preparation strategy. Alexander reaps the benefit of the preliminary labors of his father, Philip; William is made German Emperor by the toil of Moltke.
The work of laying out a supposititious campaign, involving supposititious operations against a supposititious enemy, requires of the strategist a thorough estimate of the situation, including a careful estimate of the forces of the enemy, in material and personnel, and of the strategy that will probably govern his operations—whether he will act on the defensive, or assume the offensive; if he is to act on the defensive, how and where will he base his forces, how far will he operate away from his own shores? And if he is to act on the offensive, what direction will his operations take; will he secure an advance base; and if so, where? And as the character of the enemy's operations will depend on the personnel of the enemy General Staff and of the high commanders afloat, who comprise the personnel, and what are their characteristics?
To decide these questions correctly requires considerable acquaintance with the enemy country, its navy and its policy, a full knowledge of the strategy, personnel, and material of that navy, and a sound conception of strategy itself. But to decide the questions correctly is essential, because the decision will form the basis of the future plans.
Naturally, as the plan is entirely supposititious and is to take effect at some indefinite time in the future, all the factors that will be in existence at that time cannot be foretold exactly, and therefore must be estimated. This will necessitate several alternate hypotheses; and a war plan including mobilization and operations must be made out, based on each hypothesis. For instance, on the hypothesis that the enemy will take the offensive, one set of plans will have to be prepared on the basis that we shall also take the offensive, and another on the basis that circumstances may be such at that time as to make it wise for us to resort to the defensive; while on the hypothesis that the enemy is to remain on the defensive, a set of plans very different from the other two as to both mobilization and operations must be devised.
Each set of the plans just suggested may also have to be divided into two or more parts. On the basis that the enemy will remain on the defensive, for instance, the circumstances when the hour for action comes, such as the fact of his being quite unprepared, may indicate the advisability of an attack on him as sudden as it can be made; while, on the other hand, circumstances such as the fact of his being thoroughly prepared may render it necessary for us to send a larger force than we could get ready quickly, especially if the enemy coast be far away, and may therefore indicate the advisability of deliberate movements, and even a protracted delay before starting.
But no matter what plan is to be followed, a detailed plan for every probable contingency must be prepared; and it must be elaborated in such detail that it can be put into operation instantly when the fateful instant comes; because the enemy will put his plans into operation at the same time we do, and the one whose plans are executed first will take a long step toward victory.
Not only must the plans provide some means whereby the plans themselves shall get into full operation instantly when war breaks; other plans must also provide that all the acts which those plans contemplate must be performed. Not only must the plans provide that all the prearranged orders for putting theKearsargeinto full commission shall be instantly sent by mail, telegraph, and telephone to the proper officials, but other plans must also provide means whereby the officers and men shall actually march on board theKearsarge, her ensign and commission pennant be displayed, all the fuel, ammunition, provisions, and equipment be on board and theKearsargesail at once, and join the commander-in-chief at sea.
Doubtless the most complicated and comprehensive plans are those for sending a large expedition on an offensive mission to a far-distant coast, especially if that coast be guarded by an efficient navy, if it have outlying islands that would afford good bases for her destroyers and submarines, and if there are not good harbors which our fleet could seize as advance bases, from which to prosecute its future operations. The complexity of the task of planning such an expedition, taking due account, but not exaggerated account, of all the factors, favorable and adverse, is appalling; but the task must be undertaken and accomplished. The most tedious part is the logistics—the arrangements for supplying the fleet on the way and in the distant theatre of operations with the necessary provisions, equipment, and ammunition and, above all, the fuel. The average superdreadnaught consumes about 460 tons of coal per day at full speed, and about 108 tons at 10 knots; and coal or other fuel for all the dreadnaughts, battle cruisers, cruisers of various classes, scouts, destroyers, submarines, ships, aircraft of different kinds, hospital ships, ammunition ships, transports, and the fuel ships themselves, must be provided by means thatmust not fail.
While the work of planning an offensive movement to a distant coast is the most tedious and complex, the work of planning a defensive measure against a sudden attack on the coast needs the most concentration of effort; for whatever the plans require to be done must be done at once. This necessitates that the orders to be issued must be as few as possible; that they be as concise and clear as possible; that the things to be done be as few and as simple as possible, and that all possible foresight be exercised to prevent any confusion or misunderstanding, or any necessity on the part of any one for requesting more instructions.
When the fateful instant comes, the final command to mobilize puts into execution whichever of the plans already made is to be followed; and for this reason it is clear that the various plans must be kept separate from each other, and each set of plans must include all the various orders that must be signed for carrying it into effect, including the particular word or phrase that directs the execution of that particular set of plans.
It is the story that the final order to the British navy in the early part of August, 1914, was the word "Go." All the units went immediately, understandingly, unitedly; and the greatest machine the world has ever known was almost instantly in operation at full speed. No such stupendous feat, physically considered, had ever been done before. The mobilization of the Prussian army in 1870 and of the German army about August 1, 1914, were as great performances mentally and strategically, but not physically, by reason of the relative feebleness of the forces set in motion. This relative feebleness was due, of course, to the insignificance of muskets compared to navy guns, of railway-trains compared to battleships, etc.—an insignificance far from being neutralized by the greater number of the units, for one 14-inch shell has an energy equal to that of about 60,000 muskets, and no army contains anything approximating the powerfulness of a battleship.
Not only, however, must the strategist make plans in peace for preparations that culminate in mobilization, and simply insure that the navy shall be ready in material and personnel when war breaks; he must also make plans for operating the navy strategically afterward, along each of the various lines of direction that the war may take. In other words, the work of preparation strategy in making war plans may be divided into two parts—mobilization and operation.
The plans of mobilization deal naturally with all the activities concerned, material and personnel, and endeavor to arrange a passing from a state of peace to a state of war in the quickest possible time, and with the least chance of errors and omissions. A considerable degree of imagination is required, an almost infinite patience, and a perfect willingness to work indefinitely without any reasonable expectation of getting tangible results. A more hopeless task can hardly be given any man or body of men than that of working out plans, general and detailed, day after day, for contingencies that will probably never happen, and to guard against dangers that will probably never come; preparing tables, diagrams, and schedules which are almost certainly doomed to rest forever in the sepulchre of the confidential files.
Yet this work is basic. Perhaps it is for that reason, that it is obscure and dull; basic work is apt to be so. The spectacular success of an individual in any walk of life is often but the crowning of the unrecognized, and often utterly unknown work—of other men.
Strategy is not a science only; it is an art as well; and although the art cannot be practised in its perfection until after the science is well comprehended, yet the art of strategy was born before the science was. This is true of all those departments of man's activity that are divided into sciences and arts, such as music, surgery, government, navigation, gunnery, painting, sculpture, and the rest; because the fundamental facts—say of music—cannot even attract attention until some music has been produced by the art of some musician, crude though that art may be; and the art cannot advance very far until scientific methods have been applied, and the principles that govern the production of good music have been found. The unskilled navigators of the distant past pushed their frail craft only short distances from the land, guided by art and not by science; for no science of navigation then existed. But the knowledge gradually gained, passing first from adept to pupil by word of mouth, and afterward recorded on the written and then the printed page, resulted first in the realization of the fact that various apparently unrelated phenomena were based on the same underlying principles; and resulted later in the perception, and still later in the definite expression, of those underlying principles. Using these principles, the navigator expanded the limits of his art. Soon we see Columbus, superbly bold, crossing the unknown ocean; and Magellan piercing the southern tip of the American continent by the straits that now bear his name.
But of all the arts and sciences, the art and science that are the oldest and the most important; that have caused the greatest expenditure of labor, blood, and money; that have been the immediate instruments of more changes and greater changes in the history of the world than any other, are the art and the science of strategy.
Until the time of Moltke the art of strategy, like most arts, was more in evidence than the science. In fact, science of any kind is a comparatively recent product, owing largely to the more exact operations of the mind brought about by the birth of the science of measurement, and the ensuing birth and development of the mechanic arts. Before Moltke's time campaigns were won by wise preparation and skilful execution, as they are now; but the strategical skill was acquired by a general or admiral almost wholly by his own exertions in war, and by studying the campaigns of the great commanders, and reflecting upon them with an intensity that so embedded their lessons in his subjective mind that they became a part of him, and actions in conformity with those lessons became afterward almost automatic. Alexander and Napoleon are perhaps the best illustrations of this passionate grasping of military principles; for though both had been educated from childhood in military matters, the science of strategy was almost non-existent in concrete form, and both men were far too young to have been able to devote much time or labor to it. But each was a genius of the highest type, and reached decisions at once immediate and wise, not by inspiration, but by mental efforts of a pertinacity and concentratedness impossible to ordinary men.
It was because Von Moltke realized this, realized the folly of depending on ability to get geniuses on demand, and realized further the value of ascertaining the principles of strategy, and then expressing them so clearly that ordinary men could grasp and use them, that he conceived and carried into execution his plan; whereby not only actual battles could be analyzed, and the causes of victory and defeat in each battle laid bare to students, but also hypothetical wars and battles could be fought by means of problems given.
The first result of a course of study of such wars and battles, and practice with such problems, was a skill in decision a little like that developed in any competitive game, say tennis, whist, chess, poker, boxing, and the like—whereby any action of your adversary brings an instantaneous and almost automatic reply from you, that you could not have made so skilfully and quickly before you had practised at the game; and yet the exact move of your adversary, under the same conditions, you had never seen before. Of course, this skill was a development, not of the science, but of the art, as mere skill always is; but as skill developed, the best methods for obtaining skill were noted; and the principles governing the attainment of success gradually unveiled themselves, and were formulated into a science.
Naturally, strategy is not an exact science like mathematics, physics, or engineering—at least not now. Whether it ever will be cannot be foretold. The reason that strategy (like medicine and most other sciences concerning human beings) is not an exact science is simply because it involves too many unknown quantities—quantities of which our knowledge is too vague to permit of our applying exact methods to them, in the way in which we apply exact methods to the comparatively well-known quantities and elements in the so-called "exact sciences." But a science may be a science even if it is not an exact science; we may know certain important principles sufficiently well to use them scientifically, even if we do not know them with sufficient exactness to permit us to use them as confidently as we should like. We may know, for instance, that it is folly to divide a military force in the presence of an active enemy into such small forces, and at such distances apart, as to let the enemy defeat each small force, one after the other, even if we do not know exactly how far it would be safe to separate two forces of a given size, in the presence of an enemy of a given power. It is well to know a fact in general terms, even if we do not know it in precise terms: it is well to know in general terms that we must not take prussic acid, even if we do not know exactly how much is needed to kill.
So the studies and problems instituted by Von Moltke, and copied in all the armies and navies of the world, have brought about a science of strategy which is real, even though not exact, and which dwells in the mind of each trained strategist, as the high tribunal to which all his questions are referred and by whose decisions he is guided; just as the principles of medicine are the guide alike of the humblest and the most illustrious practitioner, wherever the beneficent art of medicine is practised.
It is clear that, in order to be skilful in strategy (in fact, in any intellectual art), not only must a man have its scientific principles firmly imprinted on his mind, but he must make its practice so thoroughly familiar to his mental muscles that he can use strategy as atrainedsoldier uses his musket—automatically. Inasmuch as any man requires years of study and practice—say, of chess—in order to play chess well enough to compete successfully with professional chess-players, it seems to follow that any man must require years of study and practice of the more complicated game of strategy, in order to play strategy well enough to compete successfully with professional strategists. The game of chess looks easy to a beginner; in fact, the kind of game that he thinks chess to be is easy. But after he has learned the moves, he finds the intricacies of the game developing more rapidly than he can master them, and discovers that chess is a game which some men spend their lifetime studying. The full realization of this fact, however, does not come to him until after defeats by better players have forced into his consciousness the almost infinite number of combinations possible, the difficulty of deciding on the correct move at any juncture, and the consequences that follow after wrong moves.
So with strategy. The ease and certainty with which orders can be transmitted and received, the precision with which large forces can be quickly despatched from place to place, and the tremendous power exertable by those forces, tend to blind the mind to the fact that transferring any force to any place is merely making a "move," and that the other player can make moves, too. If a man were never to be pitted in strategy against another player, either in games or in actual war, the "infinite variety" of strategy would never be disclosed to his intelligence; and after learning how to make the moves, he might feel willing to tackle any one. Illustrations of this tendency by people of great self-confidence are numerous in history, and have not been missing even in the present war, though none have been reported in this country as occurring on the Teuton side. There has always been a tendency on the part of a ruling class to seize opportunities for military glory, and the ambition has often been disproportioned to the accompanying ability and knowledge—sometimes on the part of a King, prince, or man of high nobility, sometimes on the part of a minister, sometimes on the part of an army or navy man, who has been indebted to political or social influence for his place. But within the past fifty years, especially since the establishment of the General Staff in Prussia and the studies of Von Moltke, the overshadowing importance of strategy has been understood, the necessity of comprehending its principles and practising its technic has been appreciated, and attempts to practise strategy by persons inexpert in strategy have been deprecated.
The game of strategy, while resembling in many ways the game of chess, differs from it, of course, in the obvious element of personal danger. It also differs from it in an equally important but less obvious way—its relation to the instruments employed; for in chess those instruments (pieces) are of a number and character fixed by the rules of the game; whereas in strategy the number and character of the instruments (ships, etc.) employed are determined by strategy itself, assisted by engineering. Germany realizes this, and therefore has established and followed a system whereby the character of the various material and personnel units of the navy, and even the number of them (under the restrictions of the money alloted), are decided by a body of men who are highly trained in strategy and engineering.
There is an intimate connection between policy and strategy, and therefore between naval policy and naval strategy; and while it is difficult to draw the line exactly which separates policy and strategy, it may be said in general that policy is the concern of the government, and strategy is the concern of the navy and army, to be employed by them to carry out the policy.
As naval policy and naval strategy are so intimately connected in their essence, it is apparent that the naval policy of a country and its naval strategy should be intimately connected in fact; for the policy cannot be properly carried out if the strategy that tries to execute it is not good, or if the policy requires more naval force or skill than the navy can bring to bear; and the strategy cannot be good if it is called upon to execute a policy impossible to execute, or if the exact end in view of the policy is not distinctly known. Some of the greatest mistakes that have been made by governments have been made because of a lack of co-ordination between the government and its navy, so that the policy and the strategy could not work together. We see an illustration of this throughout the history of France, whose civil and naval authorities have not worked harmoniously together, whose naval strategy has apparently been opportunistic and short-sighted, and whose navy in consequence has not been so successful as the large sums of money spent upon it might lead one to expect.
Across the English Channel we see a totally different state of things. In Great Britain the development of the navy has been going on for more than twelve hundred years, ever since King Offa declared that "he who would be secure at home must be supreme at sea." For about eight hundred years thereafter the development was carried on energetically, but in an opportunistic fashion, following the requirements of the hour. In 1632, however, the Board of Admiralty was established; and with occasional interruptions, especially prior to 1708, the board has continued in existence ever since. A coherent policy of development has thereby been assured, and a wisdom of strategy established which more than any other single factor has made Great Britain the mistress of the seas, and almost the mistress of the world.
The wisdom of her strategy has been due largely to the fact of the close touch maintained between the civil government, including Parliament, and the navy; for by its very constitution the Board of Admiralty includes some of the highest officers of Parliament, the cabinet, and the navy. Its presiding officer is a member of the cabinet, and also member of Parliament; four of the officers are naval officers, high in rank, character, and attainments; and the junior civil lord is a civilian versed in naval matters. All the orders for great movements of the fleets and ships are directed by this board and signed by its secretary, the board, by a fiction of the law, being considered an individual replacing the lord high admiral—which it did, in 1632. The board is supposed to meet every day with all the members present, the vote of each member carrying as much weight as that of any other member. Naturally, the first lord of the admiralty being a cabinet officer and a member of Parliament, has a far greater influence on broad questions than any other member; and the first sea lord being the person of the most experience in naval matters, has the most weight on strictly naval questions. Theoretically, however, neither of these gentlemen can carry a measure opposed to the others; and any member, even a junior, has equal opportunity with the others to bring up and discuss any question and to attempt to procure its passage by the full board; but in 1869 the first lord at that time, Mr. Childers, brought about a change whereby the first lord was made personally responsible to the government. This vastly increased the power of the first lord, relatively to the others.
Two other navies, the German and the Japanese, which with the British, are the most efficient navies in the world, have systems somewhat different from the British. In Germany and Japan the Emperor is the head of the navy, and there is no civilian between him and it. In Germany there is no minister of marine, unless the Emperor himself may be said to be the minister, which he practically is; and the navy is divided into three parts, each under an admiral. The three parts are the General Staff, which deals with war plans and fundamental questions; the naval cabinet, which deals with matters of personnel; and the administrative section, which has to do with questions of material, including money, and the getting of money from Parliament. In Japan the minister of marine is by law a naval officer, and under him is a chief of staff, also a naval officer. The minister of marine has the direction of the navy as a whole, but the ideas of the chief of staff are supposed to be carried out in matters that are strictly naval. The Japanese naval officer has a higher regard for the office of chief of staff than for that of minister of marine, because it is given for professional excellence only.
It might seem at first sight that in Germany and Japan there would be danger of a lack of co-ordination between the civil and the naval authorities, and a tendency for the navy to become unduly self-assertive. Of course, one reason why there is no such danger is that the governments of those countries are controlled by men who, though civilians, have great knowledge of international affairs, and of military and naval subjects; another reason is that the navy is so vital a matter, accurate knowledge about it is so general, and interest in it so wide-spread and intense, that there is no great gulf fixed between naval people and civilians. Still another reason is the fact that in each country the Emperor is trained in military and naval duties as well as in civil duties, and therefore can effect in his own person the co-ordination of the civil and the naval authority: that is, of policy and strategy.
Such automatic and complete co-ordination is desirable not only in preventing the unnatural barrier between the civil and the military authority which exists in some countries such as ours, but in lightening the labors and enlightening the deliberations of the strategists. If, for instance, a bold policy is to be enforced, and a large sum of money allotted for material and personnel, the strategists will be led to recommendations different from those to which they would be led if a cautious policy were to be pursued, and a small sum of money to be allotted.
Germany did not turn her eyes seriously toward the navy until the Emperor William II read Mahan's book, "The Influence of Sea Power upon History." Previous to that epochal event, Germany had relied on her army to protect her interests and enforce her rights, being led thereto by the facts of her history and the shortness of her coast-line. But the strategically trained mind of William grasped at once the situation laid bare by Mahan; and his military training led him to quick decision and prompt action. The necessary machinery was soon set in motion, with the amazing result that in twenty years the German navy became the second in power and perhaps the first in efficiency in the world.
Was this feat accomplished by prodigal expenditures in building vessels and other material of all kinds, and enlisting and commissioning a large number of officers and men? No, the expense was less than that of building our navy, even if a liberal allowance be made for the relative cheapness of things in Germany; and the mere enlisting and commissioning of officers and men was the simplest part of the undertaking.
How was it accomplished? In the simplest way imaginable: by following Moltke's plan of solving hypothetical war problems, and adapting the military war game (Kriegspiel) to naval forces; playing numberless war games, and deciding from those games the naval strategy best adapted to Germany's needs—not only in matters of general principle, not only as to tactics, training, education, co-operation with the army, and the size of fleet required to carry out the policy of the nation—but also as to the composition of the fleet, relative proportions of vessels of the various types, and the characteristics of each type. Nothing was left to chance; nothing was decided by guessing; no one man's dictum was accepted. The whole problem was attacked in its entirety, and a general solution found; and after this, the various divisions and subdivisions of the problem were attacked and solved, in obedience to the same principles, in accordance with the results obtained atKriegspiel.
If a very large and complicated engine of new pattern is to be built by any engineering company, no casting of the smallest kind is made until general plans have been outlined, detailed plans prepared from these, and then "working plans" made for the workmen. From the working plans, the workmen construct the various parts; sometimes in number several hundred. Finally, the whole intricate machine is put together, and the motive power applied. Then all the parts, great and small, begin their allotted tasks, each part perfectly adapted to its work, not too large and not too small; all working together in apparent confusion, but in obedience to law—fulfilling exactly the will of the designing engineer. So, the vast and new machine of the German navy was designed in the drafting-room of theKriegspiel; and though it has been gradually strengthened and enlarged since then, each strengthening piece and each addition has been designed in accordance with the original plan, and has therefore harmonized with the original machine. Thus the navy has expanded smoothly, symmetrically, purposefully. No other result was to be expected: the strategy having been correct, the result was correct also.
Perhaps one contributing factor to the success of the German navy has been her staff of officers highly trained in strategy byKriegspiel, that insures not only sound advice in general, but also insures that at any time, night or day, a body of competent officers shall be ready at the admiralty to decide what action should be taken, whenever any new situation is reported. This factor is most important; because in naval and military operations, even in time of peace, but especially in war, events follow each other so rapidly, and momentous crises develop so suddenly, that the demand for action that shall be both wise and instantaneous is imperative. The chess-player can linger long over his decisions, because his opponent cannot make his next move meanwhile; but in warfare no such rule or condition can exist. In war, time is as vital a factor as any other: and the strategist, who, like Napoleon, can think faster and decide more quickly and accurately than his antagonist is,ceteris paribus, sure to win; and even ifceterisare not quiteparibus, his superior quickness and correctness will overcome great handicaps in material and personnel, as the lives of all the great strategists in history, especially Alexander and Napoleon, prove convincingly. To bring a preponderating force to bear at a given point ahead of the enemy—to move the maximum of force with the maximum of celerity—has always been the aim of strategy: and probably it always will be, for the science of strategy rests on principles, and principles never change.
Thus while we see in Great Britain's navy an example of the effect of a strategy continuous and wise, conducted for three hundred years, we see in the Japanese and German navies equally good examples of a strategy equally wise, but of brief duration, which started with the example of the British navy, and took advantage of it.
The German and Japanese navies did not follow the British navy slavishly, however; for the national military character of their people required the introduction and control of more military and precise methods than those of the primarily sailor navy of Great Britain. We see, therefore, a curious similarity between the German and Japanese navies, and very clear evidence in each of the engrafting of purely military ideals on maritime ideas. And we see not only this, we see the reaction on the British navy itself of the ideals of the German and the Japanese, and a decided change during the last ten years from the principles of "the blue-water school"; as evidenced mainly by the institution of a Naval War College, including a war staff, the employment at the admiralty of General Staff methods, though without the name; and the introduction into naval methods, especially naval gunnery, of mathematical procedures.
Previous to the Japanese-Russian War, ten years ago, the strategy of the British navy may be characterized as physical rather than mental, depending on a superior number of ships and men; those ships and men being of a very high grade individually, and bound together by a discipline at once strict and sympathetic. All the personnel from the highest admiral to the humblest sailor prided themselves on being "British seamen," comrades of the sea, on whom their country placed her ultimate reliance. Maneuvers on a large scale were held, target practice was carried on with regularity—and navy ships carried the banner of Saint George over every sea, and displayed it in every port. Tactics and seamanship filled the busy days with drills of many kinds; but strategy, though not quite forgotten, did not command so large a portion of the officers' time and study as it did in Germany and Japan. The rapid success of the Germans and Japanese, however, in building up their navies, as instanced by the evident efficiency of the German fleet almost under the nose of England, and the triumph of the Japanese fleet in Tsushima Strait startled the British navy out of her conservatism, and caused her to proceed at full speed toward the modernization of her strategy. With the quick decision followed by quick action that characterizes the seaman everywhere, the British instituted a series of reforms, and prosecuted their efforts with such wisdom and such vigor, that, in the brief space of ten years, the British navy has been almost revolutionized. As in all such movements, the principal delay was in bringing about the necessary mental changes; the mental changes having been accomplished, the material changes followed automatically.
The change whereby the German and Japanese navies became preceptors to their preceptor is like changes that occur in every-day life, and is one of many illustrations of how a young and vigorous individual or organization, endowed with proper energy and mentality, can appropriate whatever is valuable for its purposes from its elders, and reject whatever those elders have had fastened on them by circumstances or tradition, and develop a superior existence. It is a little like the advantage which a comparatively new city like Washington has over an old city like Boston, in being started after it was planned, instead of being started haphazard, without being planned at all.
The United States navy was started not like the city of Washington, but like the city of Boston. It was modelled on the British navy; but since the United States has never taken an interest in its navy at all comparable with that taken by Great Britain in its navy, and since our navy has been built up by successive impulses from Congress and not in accordance with a basic plan, the lack of harmoniousness among its various parts reminds one of Boston rather than of Washington. Owing to the engineering and inventive genius of our people and the information we got from Europe, inferiority has not occurred in the units of the material: in fact, in some ways our material is perhaps the best of all. Neither has inferiority been evidenced in the personnel, as individuals; for the excellent physique and the mental alertness of the American have shown themselves in the navy as well as in other walks of life.
In strategy, however, it must be admitted that we have little reason to be proud. We do very well in the elementary parts of the naval profession. In navigation, seamanship, gunnery, and that part of international law that concerns the navy we are as good as any. But of the higher branches, especially of strategy, we have little clear conception. How can we have? Strategy is one of the most complex arts the world contains; the masters in that art have borne such names as Alexander, Cæsar, Nelson, and Napoleon. Naval strategy is naval chess, in which battleships and other craft take the place of queens and other pieces. But it is a more complicated game than chess, for the reason that not only are there more kinds of "pieces," but the element of time exerts a powerful influence in strategy while it does not even exist in chess. The time element has the effect not only of complicating every situation, but also of compelling intense concentration of mind, in order to make decisions quickly; and often it forces decisions without adequate time for consideration, under circumstances of the utmost excitement, discomfort, and personal peril.
One dislikes intensely to criticise his own country, even to himself. But when a naval officer is studying—as he should continually do—what must be done, in order to protect his country from attack by some foreign foe, it would be criminal folly for him to estimate the situation otherwise than honestly; and to do this, it is necessary to try to see where his country is weak and where strong, relatively to the possible foes in question. If we do this, and compare the strategical methods employed by—say Germany and us—we are forced to admit that the German methods are better adapted to producing economically a navy fitted to contend successfully in war against an enemy. In Germany the development of the navy has been strictly along the lines of a method carefully devised beforehand; in our country no method whatever is apparent, at least no logical method. Congress, and Congress alone, decides what vessels and other craft shall be built, how many officers and men shall wear the uniform. It is true that they consult the report of the secretary of the navy, and ask the opinions of some naval officers; and it is true that the secretary of the navy gets the opinions of certain naval officers including the General Board, before making his report. But both the secretary and Congress estimate the situation from their own points of view, and place their own value on the advice of naval officers. And the advice of these naval officers is not so valuable, possibly, as it might be; for the reason that it is really irresponsible, since the advisers themselves know that it will not be taken very seriously. The difference between the advice of men held responsible for the results of following their advice, and the advice of men not so held responsible, is well recognized, and is discussed fully in the reports of the Moody and the Swift Boards on the organization of the Navy Department. Furthermore, our officers do not have the machinery of theKriegspielto help them. It is true that at the Naval War College, a war-game apparatus is installed and that war games are played, and war problems solved; but the officers there are very properly engaged in the regular work of a war college, in educating officers in the principles of warfare, and have little time for other work. It is also true that the war games and problems there do lead occasionally to recommendations by the War College to the General Board as to various matters; but the connection between the conclusions of the War College and the decisions of Congress via the General Board and the secretary of the navy is so fragile and discontinuous, that it may truthfully be said that the influence of the war games at our War College has but a faint resemblance to the determining force of theKriegspielin Berlin.
It is often said that Germany is an empire and the United States a republic, and thatthereforethe military methods of Germany cannot be employed here. The inference is not necessarily correct, however, as is shown by the excellence of the army of France; for, France, although a republic, insists that military strategy only shall control and direct the army. The American Congress can do the same with the American navy. Whether Congress shall so decide or not, the decision will undoubtedly be wise; and we of the navy will do our utmost to make the navy all it should be. In this connection, it should be noted that:
1. Germany has been following a certain strategic system regarding the navy; we a system different from that of any other navy, which has been used now for about one hundred and forty years. Both systems have been in operation for a time sufficiently long to warrant our comparing them, by comparing the results they have achieved.
2. The German navy has been in existence a much shorter time than the American navy, belongs to a much less populous and wealthy country, and yet is not only about 30 per cent larger in material, and more than 100 per cent larger in trained personnel, but if we judge by maneuvers carried on in both peace and war, is much better in organization, morale, and capacity for doing naval work upon the ocean. We do not, of course, know what Germany has been doing since the war began on August 1, 1914; but all accounts show that Germany, like all the other belligerent Powers, has been adding units of material and personnel to her navy much more rapidly than they have been destroyed; as well as perfecting her strategy, under the influence of the war's stimulus. Leaving out of consideration, however, what she may have been doing since the war began, and neglecting any unauthenticated accounts of her status before it started, we know positively that in 1913 the maneuvers of the German fleet were executed by a force of 21 battleships, 3 battle cruisers, 5 small cruisers, 6 flotillas of destroyers (that is 66 seagoing torpedo vessels), 11 submarines, an airship, a number of aeroplanes and special service ships, and 22 mine-sweepers—all in one fleet, all under one admiral, and maneuvered as a unit.This was nearly three years ago, and we have never come anywhere near such a performance. In January, 1916, the United States Atlantic fleet, capable as to both material and personnel of going to sea and maneuvering together, consisted of 15 battleships and 23 destroyers, 2 mine-depot ships, and 1 mine-training ship, and 4 tugs fitted as mine-sweepers—with no submarines, no aircraft of any kind, no scouts (unless theChesterbe so considered, which was cruising alone off the coast of Liberia, and theBirmingham, which was flag-ship to the destroyer flotilla). This was the only fleet that we had ready to fight in January, 1916; because, although more battleships could have been put into commission, this could have been done only by putting out of commission certain smaller vessels, such as cruisers and gunboats; and the battleships would have had to be put into commission very hurriedly, filled up with men fresh from other ships, and no more ready to fight in the fleet against an enemy (whose ships were fully manned with well-trained officers and men, accustomed to the details of their respective ships, and acquainted with each other) than theChesapeakewas ready to fight theShannon.
3. In case our system is not so good as that of—say Germany—or of any other country having a system equally excellent, we shallneverbe able to contend successfully against that navy, under equal strategic conditions, unless we have an excess over her in numbers of personnel and material sufficient to counteract our inferiority in efficiency.
The efficiency of a navy or an army is exactly what the strategic system makes it. Eleven thousand Greeks under Miltiades, highly efficient and thoroughly trained, defeated 100,000 Persians at Marathon. A Greek fleet under Themistocies defeated and almost destroyed a much larger Persian fleet at Salamis. With an army of less than 35,000 men, but highly trained by Philip of Macedon, his father, Alexander, in only twelve years conquered ten of the most wealthy and populous countries of the world. Cæsar, Alaric, Attila, Charlemagne, and all the great military men from the greatest antiquity down to the present moment have trained and organized bodies of soldiers and sailors, under systems suited to the times, and then waged successful war on peoples less militarily efficient. Cortez conquered Mexico, and Pizarro conquered Peru; the British, French, and Spanish subdued the Indians of North America, and during the latter half of the nineteenth century nearly all the land in the world that was "unoccupied" by Europeans or their descendants was taken in possession by European Powers. Great Britain is now mistress of about one-quarter of the land and the population of the globe. Russia, France, Germany, and the United States govern most of the remainder.
These results were brought about almost solely by the exercise of military force:—and of this force, physical courage was not a determining element, because it was just as evident in the conquered as in the conquerors. The determining element was strategy that (under the behest of policy) prepared the military and naval forces in material and personnel before they were used, and directed their operations, while they were being used.
Of all the single factors that have actually and directly made the history of the world, the most important factor has been strategy.
DESIGNING THE MACHINE
The most important element connected with a navy is the strategy which directs it, in accordance with which all its plans are laid—plans for preparation before war and plans for operations during war. Strategy is to a navy what mind is to a man. It determines its character, its composition, its aims; and so far as external conditions will permit, the results which it accomplishes.
It is possible for certain features connected with a navy to be good, even if the strategy directing it be faulty; or for those features to be faulty, even if the strategy directing it be good. Experience has shown, however, that, in any organization the influence of the men at the top, and the effect of the policy they adopt, is so great that the whole organization will in the main be good or bad according to the kind of men that control it, and the methods they employ. The better the discipline of the organization, the more completely the quality of the management will influence the whole, and the more essential it becomes that good methods be employed. Good discipline means concentration of the effort of the organization; and the more concentrated any effort is, the more necessary that it be directed aright. The simplest illustration of this is seen in naval gunnery; for there the effect of good fire-control is to limit the dispersion of the various shots fired, relatively to each other; to make a number of shots fired simultaneously to bunch closely together, that is to concentrate; getting away from the shotgun effect, and approximating the effect of a single shot. Obviously, if the fire-control and the skill of the gunners are so great that the shots fall very close together, the chance of hitting the target is less than if the shots did not fall close together, if the range at which the guns are fired is incorrect. A mathematical formula showing the most effective dispersion for a given error in range was published in theNaval Instituteby Lieutenant-Commander B. A. Long, U. S. N., in December, 1912.
So, we see that if the strategy directing a navy is incorrect, we can accomplish little by improving the discipline, and may do harm; when unwise orders have been given in the past, those orders have sometimes been disobeyed with beneficial effect. Neither would it avail much to improve the details of the material or personnel, or to spend much money; for there is no benefit to be derived from building fine ships, if they are to be captured by the enemy. If the Russian fleet sent to Tsushima had been weaker than it was, the loss to Russia would have been less.
Inasmuch as strategy, however, includes all the means taken to make a navy effective, it is obvious that a good strategical direction will be more likely to result in good discipline and good material than would a poor strategy. But this is not necessarily so, for the reason that a strategy may be in the main faulty, and yet be good in certain ways—especially in attention to details, for which a high degree of mentality is not required. In the same way, an individual who is short-sighted and imperfectly educated may be a most excellent and useful member of society, provided he is not permitted to use power in matters beyond his vision. An illustration of how an incorrect point of view does not necessarily injure, but may even benefit in details is shown by certain militia regiments, which are able to surpass some regiments of the regular army in many details of the drill, and in general precision of movement.
In fact, a very wise strategical direction has as one of its most important functions the division of study and labor among various lines of action, and in deciding which lines are important and which not: and for this reason may—and often does—limit labor, and therefore perfection of result, along lines which a less wise strategy would not limit. Illustrations of the casting aside of rigid and difficult forms of drill during the past fifty years in armies, and the substitution of more easy methods are numerous. This does not indicate, however, that a wise strategy may not encourage rigid forms of drill, for the army which is directed with the greatest strategical skill is the German, and no army has more precise methods, not only of procedure, but of drill. The Prussian army of Frederick William which Frederick the Great inherited was not more rigidly drilled in some particulars than the German army of to-day, fought by Frederick the Great's great-great-great-grandnephew, William II.
So we see that a wise and far-sighted strategy does not necessarily either frown on or encourage attention to details; it merely regulates it, deciding in each case and for each purpose what degree of attention to detail is best.
The most obvious work of naval strategy, and therefore the work that impresses people most, is in directing naval forces against an enemy in war. But it is clear that before this can be done effectively strategy must first have made plans of preparation in time of peace; and it is equally clear that, previous to this, strategy must first determine the units of the force and their relation to each other: it must, in other words, design the machine.
Evidently, therefore,the work of strategy is three-fold: first, to design the machine; second, to prepare it for war; and, third, to direct its operations during war.
A navy being a machine composed of human and material parts, it is clear that the work of designing it correctly should take account of all the parts at the outset; and not only this—the whole design should be completed before any parts are made and put together if the best results are to be obtained. This is the practice in making material machines in manufacturing establishments—and no other practice there could be successfully pursued. It is the outcome of the experience of tens of thousands of men for many years—and the result of the expenditure of tons of money.
This remark as to manufacturing establishments does not include the development of new ideas, for which experimentation or original research is needed; because it is sometimes necessary, when venturing into untrodden fields, to test out by mere trial and error certain parts or features before determining enough of their details to warrant incorporating them in the drawing of the whole machine. Similarly, some experiments must be made in the methods, organization, and material of the naval machine; but in this, case, as in the case of manufacturing establishments, the experimental work, no matter how promising or alluring, must be recognized as of unproved and doubtful value; and no scheme, plan, or doctrine must be incorporated in the naval machine, or allowed to pose as otherwise than experimental, until successful trials shall have put it beyond the experimental stage.
The naval machine consists obviously of two parts, the personnel and the material; these two parts being independent, and yet mutually dependent, like the parts of any other organism. Obviously, the parts are mutually dependent not only in the quantitative sense that the more numerous the material parts the more numerous must be the personnel to operate them, but also in the qualitative sense that the various kinds of material determine the various kinds of personnel that must be provided to operate them with success. Gunners are needed to handle guns, and engineers to handle engines.
In this respect, personnel follows material. In the galley days only two kinds of personnel were needed—sailors to handle the galleys (most of these being men merely to pull on oars)—and soldiers to fight, when the galleys got alongside of the enemy. Ship organization remained in a condition of great simplicity until our Civil War; for the main effort was to handle the ships by means of their sails, the handling of the simple battery being a very easy matter. Every ship was much like every other ship, except in size; and in every ship the organization was simple and based mostly on the necessities of handling the ship by sails.
The first important change from this condition followed the departure of the Confederate ironcladVirginia(Merrimac) carrying 10 guns and 300 men from the Norfolk Navy Yard on the 8th of March, 1862, and her sinking hardly two hours afterward the Union sloop of warCumberland, carrying 24 guns and 376 men; and then destroying by fire the Union frigateCongress, carrying 50 guns and 434 men. The second step was taken on the following day, when the UnionMonitor, 2 guns and 49 men, defeated theMerrimac. These two actions on two successive days are the most memorable naval actions in history from the standpoint of naval construction and naval ordnance, and perhaps of naval strategy; because they instituted a new era—the era of mechanism in naval war.
The next step was the successful attack by the Confederate "fish-torpedo boat"David, on the Union ironcladHousatonicin Charleston harbor on February 17, 1864; and the next was the sinking of the Confederate ironcladAlbemarleby a spar torpedo carried on a little steam-launch commanded by Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S. N., on October 27, 1864.
These four epochal events in our Civil War demonstrated the possibilities of mechanism in naval warfare, and led the way to the use of the highly specialized and scientific instruments that have played so important a part in the present war. During the half-century that has intervened since theMonitorandMerrimacushered in the modern era, since the five brave crews of theDavidlost their lives, and since Cushing made his amazing victory, a contest between the sailor and the scientist has been going on, as to which shall be deemed the ultimate master of the sea. As in many contests, the decision has gone unqualifiedly to neither; for he who sails the sea and braves its tempests, must be in heart and character a sailor—and yet he who fights the scientific war-craft of the present day cannot be merely a sailor, like him of the olden kind, but must be what theNew York Times, a few years ago, laughingly declared to be a combination quite unthinkable, "a scientific person and a sailor."
Each year since the fateful 8th of March, 1862, has seen some addition to the fighting machinery of navies. Some appliances have been developed gradually from their first beginnings, and are to-day substantially what they were at first—but of course improved; among these are the turret, the automobile torpedo, the telescope-sight, the submarine, and the gyrocompass. Many other appliances found favor for a while and then, having demonstrated the value of what they attempted and did perform, were gradually supplemented by improved devices, doing the same thing, but in better ways; in this class are many forms of interior-communication apparatus, especially electrical. Still other appliances are adaptations to ship and naval life of devices used in civil life—such as the telephone, electric light, and radio.
Each of these appliances has required for its successful use the educating of men to use it, and frequently the creation and organization of entirely new branches of the service; an illustration is the radio corps in each of our large ships. At the present time the attitude of officers and of the department itself is so much more favorable to new appliances that a clear probability of a new device being valuable is a sufficient stimulus to bring about the education of men to use it; but a very few years ago many devices were lost to us because they were considered "not adapted naval use." Now we endeavor to adapt them.
The present complexity of our material is therefore reflected in the complexity of the organization of our personnel; and as it is the demands of material that regulate the kind of personnel, and as a machine must be designed and built before men can learn to use it, it follows that our personnel must lag behind our material—that our material as material must be better than our personnel as personnel.
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.
Despite the great gulf normally fixed, however, between the engineer and the inventor, most of the definite progress of the world for the past one hundred years has been done by the co-ordination of the two; a co-ordination accomplished by "the man of business."
Now the inventor and engineer type do not exist only in the world of engineering and mechanics, though it is in that world that they are the most clearly recognized; for they exist in all walks of life. In literature, inventors write novels; in business life, they project railroads; in strategy, they map out new lines of effort. In literature, the engineer writes cyclopædias; in business, he makes the projected railroads a success; in strategy, he works out logistics and does the quantitative work.
In that part of strategy of which we are now thinking—the designing of the naval machine—the inventor and the engineer clearly have two separate lines of work: one line the conceiving, and the other line the constructing, of strategic and tactical methods, and of material instruments to carry out those methods. Clearly, these two lines of work while independent are mutually dependent; and, if properly carried out are mutually assistant. The coworking of the inventor and the engineer is a little like that coworking of theory and practice, which has been the principal factor in bringing about the present amazing condition of human society commonly called "Modern Civilization."
The shortcomings of human speech are most evident in discussing complicated matters; and for this reason speech is supplemented in the engineering arts by drawings of different kinds. No man ever lived who could describe a complicated machine accurately to a listener, unless that machine differed but little from a machine with which the listener was acquainted. But hand a drawing of even a very complicated machine to a man who knows its language—and the whole nature of the object is laid bare to him; not only its general plan and purpose, but its details, with all their dimensions and even the approximate weights. So, when the forces representing a complicated naval situation are placed upon the game-board, all the elements of the problem appear clearly and correctly to each person; the imagination has little work to do, and the chance for misunderstanding is almost negligible. Of course, this does not mean that the game-board can decide questions with absolute finality. It cannot do this; but that is only because conditions are represented with only approximate realism, because the rules of the game may not be quite correct, and because sufficient correct data cannot be procured. The difficulties of securing absolute realism are of course insuperable, and the difficulties of getting absolutely correct data are very great. The more, however, this work is prosecuted, the more clearly its difficulties will be indicated, and therefore the more effectively the remedies can be provided. The more the game-board is used both on ship and shore, the more ease will be found in getting correct data for it, and the more correctly conclusions can then be deduced.
These remarks, while intended for tactical games, seem to apply to strategical games as well; for both the tactical and the strategical games are simply endeavors to represent actual or probable situations and occurrences in miniature, by arbitrary symbols, in accordance with well-understood conventions.
War games and war problems have not yet been accepted by some; for some regard them as games pure and simple and as academic, theoretical, and unpractical. It may be admitted that they are academic and theoretical; but so is the science of gunnery, and so is the science of navigation. In some ways, however, the lessons of the game-board are better guides to future work than "practical" and actual happenings of single battles: for in single battles everything is possible, and some things happen that were highly improbable and were really the result of accident. After nearly every recent war there has been a strong move made toward the adoption of some weapon, or some method, that has attained success in that war. For instance, after our Civil War, many monitors were built, and the spar torpedo was installed in all our ships; after the battle of Lissa, the ram was exploited as the great weapon of the future; the Japanese War established the heavily armed and armored battleships on a secure foundation; and the early days of the present war caused a great rush toward the submarine. Yet, in most cases, the success was a single success or a very few successes, and was a little like the throw of a die, in the sense that the result was caused in great measure by accident; that is, by causes beyond the control of man, or by conditions that would probably not recur.
The game calls our attention to the influence of chance in war, and to the desirability of our recognizing that influence and endeavoring to eliminate it, when reasoning out the desirability or undesirability of a certain weapon or a certain method. Of course, every thoughtful person realizes that few effects in life are due to one cause only, and that most effects are due to a combination of many causes; so that, if any weapon or method succeeds or fails, it is illogical to infer from that one fact that the weapon or method is good or bad. A common illustration is the well-known fact that a marksman may hit the target when his aim is too high or too low, provided that he has erroneously set his sight enough too low or too high to compensate; whereas if he had made only one error instead of two, he would have missed. "Two wrongs cannot make a right," but two errors can compensate each other, and often do. The theory of the Probability of Errors recognizes this. In fact, if it were not true that some errors are plus and some minus, all errors in gunnery (in fact in everything) would be additive to each other, and we should live in a world of error.
The partial advantage of the game-board over the occurrences of actual war, for the purpose of studying strategy, lies largely in its ability to permit a number of trials very quickly; the trials starting either with identical situations, or with certain changes in conditions. Of course, the game-board has the tremendous disadvantage that it presents only a picture, and does not show a real performance; but the more it is used, and the more fleets and game-boards work together, the more accurate the picture will become, and the more correctly we shall learn to read it.
One limitation of the game-board is that it can represent weather conditions only imperfectly—and this is a serious limitation that mayor may not be remedied as time goes on. The theory of the game-board is in fact in advance of the mechanism, and is waiting for some bright inventive genius for the remedy. Until this happens, the imagination must do the best it can, and the effect of a certain kind of weather under the other conditions prevailing will have to be agreed upon by the contestants.
The term "war game" is perhaps unfortunate, for the reason that it does not convey a true idea of what a "war game" is. The term conveys the idea of a competitive exercise, carried on for sport; whereas the idea underlying the exercise is of the most serious kind, and has no element of sport about it, except the element that competition gives. A war game may be simply a game of sport—and sometimes it is so played; but the intention is to determine some doubtful point of strategy or tactics, and the competitive element is simply to impart realism, and to stimulate interest. When two officers, or two bodies of officers, find themselves on different sides of a certain question, they sometimes "put it on the game-board," to see which side is right.