When the Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor, war became inevitable.  A number of the peace-at-any-price men of course promptly assumed the position that she had blown herself up; but investigation showed that the explosion was from outside.  And, in any event, it would have been impossible to prevent war.  The enlisted men of the navy, who often grew bored to the point of desertion in peace, became keyed up to a high pitch of efficiency, and crowds of fine young fellows, from the interior as well as from the seacoast, thronged to enlist.  The navy officers showed alert ability and unwearied industry in getting things ready.  There was one deficiency, however, which there was no time to remedy, and of the very existence of which, strange to say, most of our best men were ignorant.  Our navy had no idea how low our standard of marksmanship was.  We had not realized that the modern battle-ship had become such a complicated piece of mechanism that the old methods of training in marksmanship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside guns themselves.  Almost the only man in the navy who fully realized this was our naval attache at Paris, Lieutenant Sims.  He wrote letter after letter pointing out how frightfully backward we were in marksmanship.  I was much impressed by his letters; but Wainwright was about the only other man who was.  And as Sims proved to be mistaken in his belief that the French had taught the Spaniards how to shoot, and as the Spaniards proved to be much worse even than we were, in the service generally Sims was treated as an alarmist.  But although I at first partly acquiesced in this view, I grew uneasy when I studied the small proportion of hits to shots made by our vessels in battle.  When I was President I took up the matter, and speedily became convinced that we needed to revolutionize our whole training in marksmanship.  Sims was given the lead in organizing and introducing the new system; and to him more than to any other one man was due the astonishing progress made by our fleet in this respect, a progress which made the fleet, gun for gun, at least three times as effective, in point of fighting efficiency, in 1908, as it was in 1902.  The shots that hit are the shots that count!

Like the people, the Government was for a long time unwilling to prepare for war, because so many honest but misguided men believed that the preparation itself tended to bring on the war.  I did not in the least share this feeling, and whenever I was left as Acting Secretary I did everything in my power to put us in readiness.  I knew that in the event of war Dewey could be slipped like a wolf-hound from a leash; I was sure that if he were given half a chance he would strike instantly and with telling effect; and I made up my mind that all I could do to give him that half-chance should be done.  I was in the closest touch with Senator Lodge throughout this period, and either consulted him about or notified him of all the moves I was taking.