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, Caesar, 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.