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366 workshop and a home, and a man is under regulation during his play hours as well as during his working hours. But when real men, no matter ii some of them are called officers and some of them sailors, are living together within the close confines of a 500-foot ship, striving earnestly day by day for the same results, artificial distinctions and discriminations can- not long stand up. The naval officer has a far more human contact with the men working under him than does the foreman of an industrial plant; and the interest shown by the executive of a large plant in the vital life of the men who work for him cannot be compared to the interest of the exec- utive officer in the welfare of the men he commands. As we sat around the wardroom table one night, Capt. Cone remarked: "1 keep reminding the officers that i circum- it is only a mdtter of stances, in many cases, that makés us officers and them sailors. Bas- icly they are as able as we are; just change our opportunities and they would be on our place and we ia theirs" - With this sort of "spirit controlling the action of ranking of- ficers, it is no wonder that the ships of the fleet are the happy homes that they are today. From my own ex- perience, I believe that the young man of sound character, who does not have an opportunity of going to col- lege, can take no better finishing course before he starts life's work than to serve one enlistment aboard the ships of the fleet, and I am very _ sure that he is running no more dan- ger of lessening his high moral stand- ards than he does when he attends the average university. Life of the Officer ii One is to' 'judge' from) the questions I have been asked, to a large part of the intelligent people of this country the average naval officer is a snobbish, conceited pet of the government, who divides up his time between drinking, gambling, bullying his subordinates and dazzling the eyes of admiring lady friends. Not one out of 10,000 of the citizens of the country seem to have any idea of the life of the officers whom they have hired to man their navy, nor have they any conception of the ideals of this profession. For the last 20 years I have had the pleasure of a large acquaintance in almost all walks of life, among lawyers, doctors, teachers and business men, but in none of these professions or in any one line of business, have I ever found a body of men who, as a whole, average so high from the standpoint of ability, character, manhood and THE MARINE REVIEW sociability as do the men who make up the officers of the United States navy. Nor is this surprising when one comes to analyze the conditions surrounding their life, for in no pro- fession of which I have any knowl- edge, are the requirements so exact- ing. Graduates of Annapolis Almost all of our naval officers are graduates of the academy at Annap- . olis, to which they are appointed by the congressmen of the country and which they enter only after severe physical and mental examination. The work there is very rigid, a large per- centage of the men who enter drop- ping out through inability to handle it, so that less than' 70 per cent of the entering classes finally graduate at the end of four years and are com- missioned as ensigns in the navy. Several years of hard work follow and then as vacancies occur cfficers are promoted to the next high- er grade, not, however, until they have successfully passed a-very rigid exam- ination which results in still more of them dropping out. This is repeated until the man finally reaches flag rank in the evening of his life, each promotion having been won_ only after he has proved to a cold-blooded examining board his mental qualifi- cations to hold the higher rank. There is no other profession which gives such all-around training or re- quires such all around proficiency, for under our present regulations every navy officer must be ready to do any of the work that is required of any officer of his own grade. Cer- 'tain men are not detailed for engi- ueering work, others for gunnery work, etc., but each man must take his turn at each department. Our captain had come to the ship from the command of the navy yard at New York and previously had been connected with the hydrographic work in the Orient and on the Mississippi. The executive officer had just stepped down from a position as head of the Bureau of Steam Engineering in Washington. The navigating officer was chief engineer of the ship on my previous trip. The first assistant en- gineer had just come from Washing- ton where he had been executive of- ficer on the Dolphin, and I suspect had never seen turbine engines such as we had aboard the ship. A number of the watch officers had just come out of the engine room and the en- gine room officers had recently been relieved from deck work. The young officer faces the proposition that he must be ready and proficient at any time in' steam engineering, electrical the young October, 1914 engineering, ordnance and gunnery, navigating and ship handling; that he must qualify himself to handle and to lead men and that any time he may be ordered to make surveys, con- struct charts or run a navy yard or shore station. In his spare time he must study strategy and international law, because an error on his part in handling some international question - may plunge his own country into war. One young officer from the Utah's battalion, a man out of the academy scarcely three years, found himself in a position in Vera Cruz where he was practically chief of police for five © days, with the necessity of starting up the electric light plant, storage system, waterworks, street-cleaning departments and street cars, in addi- tion to burying the dead, holding court, releasing or paroling some 300 prisoners, awarding punishment, sign- ing passes and issuing permits to hold bull fights, carry knives, sell beer and hold funerals, a rather large con- tract to load on the shoulders of a youngster under 25, and yet the kind of a contract that a naval officer must be ready for at any moment of the day or night from the beginning to the end of his service. It takes real men with real ability to acquit themselves with credit in the battle- ship fleet today. In addition to the examinations every three months, a report covering four long pages of paper is made to Washington on each and every of- ficer and this report becomes a part of his official record. Any lack of professional qualification, dereliction in duty, evidence in drunkenness or disorderly conduct, and, on the other hand, anything of an especially praise- worthy nature that an officer may have done finds its way into this re- port and onto his record, and_ this record, plus the examination already spoken of, forms the basis of his pro- motion, The higher he rises the more the record counts. I know of nowhere in civil life where any system has been devised for so thoroughly | keeping track of a man's ability or so constantly stimulating him to his Lest efforts, for the conscientious naval officer thinks as much of his record as he does of his life. An Unfortunate Order From the standpoint of the public estimate of the navy, it has always seemed to me that the recent order abolishing the wine mess was _ unfor- tunate, as it simply confirmed the erroneous opinion the people have that naval officers as a whole are ad- dicted to the excessive use of liquor. My own observations at sea have been that they are unusually free from it, hae ib Der Mi ae Cl aaa Yate SR