Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/226

208 American Embassy that seemed adapted to our needs. We rented this house furnished, just as it stood; a first glimpse of it, however, suggested refined domesticity rather than naval operations. We quickly cleared the building of rugs, tapestries, lace curtains, pictures, and expensive furniture, reduced the twenty-five rooms to their original bareness, and filled every corner with office equipment. In a few days the staff was installed in this five-story residence and the place was humming with the noise of typewriters. At first we regarded the leasing of this building as something of an extravagance; it seemed hardly likely that we should ever use it all! But in a few weeks we had taken the house adjoining, cut holes through the walls and put in doors; and this, too, was filled up in an incredibly short time, so rapidly did the administrative work grow. Ultimately we had to take over six of these private residences and make alterations which transformed them into one. From August our staff increased at a rapid rate until, on the day the armistice was signed, we had not far from 1,200 officers, enlisted men, and clerical force, working in our London establishment, the commissioned staff consisting of about 200 officers, of which sixty were regulars and the remainder reserves.

I find that many people are surprised that I had my headquarters in London. The historic conception of the commander-in-chief of a naval force located on the quarterdeck of his flagship still holds the popular imagination. But controlling the operations of extensive and widely dispersed forces in a campaign of this kind is quite a different proceeding from that of directing the naval campaigns of Nelson's time, just as making war on land has changed somewhat from the method in vogue with Napoleon. The opinion generally prevails that my principal task was to command in person certain naval forces afloat. The fact is that this was really no part of my job during the war. The game in which several great nations were engaged for four years was a game involving organized direction and co-operation. It is improbable that any one nation could have won the naval war; that was a task which demanded not only that we should all exert our fullest energies, but that, so far as it was humanly possible, we should exert them as a unit. It was the duty of the United States above all nations to manifest this spirit.