Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/200

172 reached. Thus, in all matters of discipline aboard ship.

Thus, in matters of discipline aboard ship, in the training of crews and squadrons, in maneuvers and strategy, in armament and equipment, the idea of military efficiency has been splendidly carried out, and in these matters I hold our Navy ranks second to none.

When it comes, however, to the utilization of our yards so that they will be of the greatest aid to the Navy as a military weapon, to the subordination of all our so-called civilian activities in the Department to the great military plan, and to the recruiting of men who will prove the most efficient military units, worthy of promotion, when fit, even to flag rank, many of our high navy officers have lost their perspective. This is all the more curious because the German military organization is continually held up by these naval officers as the ideal to be achieved, and if there is any one feature where the German differs from other organizations it is in the thoroughness with which the beginnings of things and things ordinarily thought of as particularly civil are bent and subordinated from the start to their place in the final military organization.

The need of perfectly trained crews so high in character and intelligence that they can grasp the most intricate matters of machinery and drill, that they can save tenths of seconds in the firing of a gun or keep in constant repair the most delicate electrical machinery, is recognized by navy officers as highly important, but there were many, until very recently, who considered that no special effort was required to attract to the service the class of men from whom these results can be obtained. Possibly this was because, in Germany, for instance, military service is compulsory, and the men with the brains and intelligence needed are compelled to enter some military arm of the service in any event, whereas in this country, depending as we do upon voluntary enlistments, high class men cannot be secured unless there are real inducements far more attractive than pretty pictures on recruiting billboards.

It was to remedy this failure to begin at the bottom in one of the most important military matters which led me to inaugurate new ways to attract the right class of men to the service and to keep them in the service when once so attracted by making the term of enlistment a great opportunity to obtain, at Government expense, an education, particularly along technical lines, which would enable the man, upon his discharge, to obtain a higher wage.

Opportunities for such improvement existed before I became Secretary, and, while they have been considerably enlarged since then, the only sweeping change has been to give to those enlisted men who lacked it the rudimentary school education needed before they could comprehend the mechanical and electrical trades.

What I have done, however, is to bring prominently before the country on every occasion the fact that such opportunities existed, and I believe there is hardly a young man anxious to improve himself who does not know that in the Navy he can find his opportunity.

The result of this campaign has been gratifying in the extreme, and the Navy is now recruited to its full strength from so many applicants that we are able to pick the very cream, our latest figures showing that only seventeen per cent of those who apply are now accepted. In addition, while the value of a man who has already had the training of one enlistment term in the Navy is recognized as being far greater than that of a landsman just taken on board, and while the military importance of having men of long experience on every ship has been acknowledged, the equal importance of making the service attractive to the enlisted men in order to keep them in the service has not been sufficiently considered until recently. Without abating one jot of the rigid military discipline, without pampering or favoring the enlisted man at the risk of destroying his efficiency as a cog in a great machine, the number of re-enlistments has increased, as the result, from fifty-four per cent to