The means devised is the General Staff; and in some countries like Germany it seems to work so well that (unless our information is incorrect) the Emperor himself does not interfere.  He gives the machine a certain problem to work out, and he accepts the answer as the answer which has a greater probability of being correct than any answer he could get by other means.

Training of the Staff.—­Now, if there is to be at the Navy Department a body of men who will work out and recommend what instructions should be given to the commander-in-chief, it seems obvious that that body of men should be thoroughly trained.  In the German army the training of men to do this work (General Staff work) is given only to officers specially selected.  Certain young officers who promise well are sent to the war college.  Those who show aptitude and industry are then put tentatively into the General Staff.  Those who show marked fitness in their tentative employment are then put into the General Staff, which is as truly a special corps as is our construction corps.  How closely this system is followed with the General Staff in the German navy, the present writer does not know exactly; but his information is that the system in the navy is copied (though with certain modifications) after the system in the army.

How can the General Staff at the Navy Department be trained?  In the same way as that in which officers at the war college are trained:  by study and by solving war problems by tactical and strategical games.  The training would naturally be more extended, as it would be a postgraduate course.

There is a difference to be noted between games like war games in which the mental powers are trained, and games like billiards, in which the nerves and muscles receive practically all the training; and the difference refers mainly to the memory.  Games of cards are a little like war games; and many books on games of cards have been written, expounding the principles on which they rest and giving rules to follow.  These books may be said to embody a science of card-playing.

No such book on naval strategy has appeared; and the obvious reason is that only a few rules of naval strategy have been formulated.  Staff training, therefore, cannot be given wholly by studying books; but possibly the scheme suggested to the department by the writer, when he was Aid for Operations, may be developed into a sort of illustrative literature, which can assist the memory.

By this scheme, a body of officers at the Navy Department would occupy their time wholly in studying war problems by devising and playing strategical and tactical games ashore and afloat.  After each problem had been solved to the satisfaction of the staff, each distinctive situation in the approved solution would be photographed in as small a space as practicable, preferably on a moving-picture film.  In the solution of problem 99; for instance, there might be 50 situations and