Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/231

1917-18] and the Scientific Section, Professor H. A. Bumstead, Ph.D.

I was fortunate in all of my departmental chiefs. The Chief of Staff, Captain N. C. Twining, would certainly have been a marked man in any navy; he had a genius for detail, a tireless energy, and a mastery of all the problems that constantly arose. I used to wonder when Captain Twining ever found an opportunity to sleep; he seemed to be working every hour of the day and night; yet, so far as was observable, he never wearied of his task, and never slackened in his devotion to the Allied cause. As soon as a matter came up that called for definite decision, Captain Twining would assemble from the several departments all data and information which were available concerning the question at issue, spend a few hours studying this information, and then give his judgment an opinion which was invariably sound and which was adopted in the vast majority of cases; in fact, in all cases except those in which questions of policy or extraneous considerations dictated a different or modified decision. Captain Twining is a man of really fine intellect combined with a remarkable capacity for getting things done; without his constant presence at my elbow, my work would have been much heavier and much less successful than it was. He is an officer of such exceptional ability, such matured experience, and such forceful character as to assure him a brilliant career in whatever duty he may be called upon to perform. I can never be sufficiently grateful to him for his loyalty and devotion and for his indispensable contribution to the efficiency of the forces I had the honour to command.

In accordance with my habitual practice, I applied the system of placing responsibility upon my carefully selected heads of departments, giving them commensurate authority, and holding them to account for results. Because the task was such a great one, this was the only possible way in which the operations of the force could have been successfully conducted. I say, successfully conducted, because in a "business" of this kind, "good enough" and "to-morrow" may mean disaster; that is, it is a case of keeping both information and operations up to the minute. If the personnel and equipment of the staff are not completely capable of this, it is more than a partial failure, and the