In future wars, if any such should occur, trained personnel will be of even greater importance than it was in the Great War, because the advance of science increases constantly the importance of the highly trained individual, and if nothing else is certain it can surely be predicted that science will play an increasing part in warfare in the future.  Only those officers and men who served afloat in the years immediately preceding the opening of hostilities know how great the struggle was to gain that high pitch of efficiency which the Navy had reached at the outbreak of war, and it was the devotion to duty of our magnificent pre-war personnel that went far to ensure our victory.  It is essential that the Navy of the future should not be given a yet harder task than fell to the Navy of the past as a result of a policy of starving the personnel.

There is, perhaps, just one other point upon which I might touch in conclusion.  I would venture to suggest to my countrymen that there should be a full realization of the fact that the Naval Service as a whole is a highly specialized profession.  It is one in which the senior officers have passed the whole of their lives, and during their best years their thoughts are turned constantly in one direction—­namely, how they can best fit the Navy and themselves for possible war.  The country as a whole has probably but little idea of the great amount of technical knowledge that is demanded of the naval officer in these days.  He must possess this knowledge in addition to the lessons derived from his study of war, and the naval officer is learning from the day that he enters the Service until the day that he leaves it.

The Navy, then, is a profession which is at least as highly specialized as that of a surgeon, an engineer, or a lawyer.  Consequently, it would seem a matter of common sense that those who have not adopted the Navy as a profession should pay as much respect to the professional judgment of the naval officer as they would to that of the surgeon or the engineer or the lawyer, each in his own sphere.  Governments are, of course, bound to be responsible for the policy of the country, and policy governs defence, but, both in peace and in war, I think it will be agreed that the work of governments in naval affairs should end at policy, and that the remainder should be left to the expert.  That is the basis of real economy in association with efficiency, and victory in war goes to the nation which, under stress and strain, develops the highest efficiency in action.

INDEX

Abdiel as minelayer,
Admiralty, the, American co-operation at,
  and the control of convoys,
  anomalies at,
  lack of naval officers at,
  naval air policy of,
  official summary of changes in personnel of Board,
  over-centralization at,
  “production” at, in 1917,
  reorganization at,
  the Staff in October, 1916,