trained "buck passers," of which commodity I think the staff corps own their full share if not more.

There has been much argument with regard to the attitude of the line toward the staff, and it may be that this is just as opportune a time as any to try to state the line position on that subject.

The line believes that at sea the staff officers are accepted on exact par with the line officers by the commanding officer and the executive and those others who from time to time have the ordering of things on board ship. The support they are given in their own particular work is usually greater than that accorded to the corresponding line officer, because the work of the staff corps is a specialty which the captain trusts his staff man to know better than himself, whereas the captain knows the line officer's job, or thinks he does, from A to Z, and therefore he is not so easily satisfied.

On shore the situation is a bit different in that the line knows, or thinks it knows, by antecedent probability, what would happen if the constructors got entire control of the shore plants, or in other words the non-seagoing. element got entire control of the building and repairs to the equipment with which we sea-going element are going to attempt to beat the enemy.

Our ships, guns, and engines in '98 were monuments to the iniquity of the corps system. We had the construction corps building our ships, the engineer corps build our engines, and a practical ordnance corps build our guns, for, while the officers in the Ornance Bureau were line officers, the bureau was a self-perpetuating closed organization with good press agents, but with little more consideration for the murmurings of the real sea-going element than that shown by the regularly organized corps. ✓ Who has observed the wounded bird effect of the Massachusetts class, with turrets trained abeam, and not said, "From such as these Good Lord deliver us"? Who of us of the requisite age but remembers the almost mathematical certainty with which we would drop a ship or two on even the shortest of cruises in those days when our whole battleship fleet could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and who of us has forgotten the deplorable conditions we unearthed in our ordnance the minute we began really to use the guns as they should be used?

It must be borne in mind that I have not said all this was the fault of the individual corps who had charge of furnishing these various adjuncts of the fleet, but it was distinctly the fault of the corps system. Suspicion, jealousy, lack of knowledge of the other fellow's work, no common objective, everything in fact to disrupt and nothing to build up a working naval organization as a whole is what we got from the corps system and the line therefore looks askance at the attempts to oust them from a position where their voices will have proper weight in the design, repair, and general up-keep of the weapons which are destined to be put in their hands in war to be used against the enemy, and where mistakes of equipment for which they are in no way responsible will be registered against them and not against those who would not listen.

The line also remembers what happened in 1908-1909 and that has made them suspicious of any one who approaches them with fair words and promises while gently easing them toward the door. The line has always

admired the staff corps for their ability with both tongue and pen in discussion, and is much in the same boat as the master mechanic who, at the end of a dressing-down administered rather vehemently and at some length by his chief, said, “Well, chief, you talk better than I do." You will have extreme difficulty in convincing the line they are not interested in the building and repair of the equipment they use to a much greater extent than any staff corps and to such an extent as to require them to keep a controlling hand on such building and repair, and you cannot convince them that the experience they gain by the use of this equipment is not an offset to their supposed lack of technical training.

In fact, the line has never realized what terrible dubs they become, due to their sea-going habits. They have failed to appreciate that cruising about the world narrows them instead of broadening them; that handling men under circumstances where a slip or failure by one may mean disaster to many is not the right kind of training to teach the use of human material; that the operation of machinery teaches nothing of design, nothing of strength of materials, nothing of repair, and nothing to stimulate the ingenuity or the ability to suggest method.

The writer notes with somewhat of a sinking feeling that the poor old commandant, schooled on the Seven Seas, known to kings and diplomats, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and literary folk the world over, to use the words of the drunk to one who had never had the D. T.'s, " ain't never felt nothin', ain't never seen nothin', and don't know nothin'."

Conversely, the writer must admit that he had never appreciated what a broadening influence is possessed by the drawing board and the mold loft, or the shipfitter's shop overlooking Sand Street.

However, this is a bit beside the mark.

The writer does not believe that all line officers will make. good industrial managers, just as he does not believe that all constructors would make good industrial managers, but he does believe that the training of the line officer has more in it to develop latent ability in organization and management than that of the constructor.

This is, of course, only a personal opinion, but it is based on quite an extended experience on both the sea and shore end of this question.

Mention has been made earlier in this paper of the troubles due to the corps system, and it is believed that therein lies the essence of the trouble in our navy yards.

The construction, repair, and operation of equipment are much too closely allied and much too interdependent to permit the control of them by two separate organizations.

Jealousy, suspicion of motive, recrimination, and downright obstruction are the sure results of such an arrangement, and the consequent inefficiency cannot be avoided, and this without regard to the personalities involved.

Such being the case, what is the remedy?

Amalgamate the line and constructors, send constructors to sea as first lieutenants of ships, keep up the post-graduate schools, and our problem is a long way toward solution.

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PROFESSIONAL NOTES

PREPARED BY

LIEUT. COMMANDER H. W. UNDERWOOD, U. S. Navy

FRANCE'S NAVAL OUTLOOK.-So far as eloquence can contribute to the building up of sea power, the French naval outlook is eminently satisfactory, practical unanimity having been reached as to the fact that the republic needs a strong fleet, and has the industrial means of creating one in conformity with the new data revealed by the war. Outwardly a purely defensive policy is advocated, and yet, in the light of the lessons of the war, it would require, to be successfully carried out, something more than 5000-ton scouts and destroyer and submarine flotillas.

Whereas the British Navy of to-day makes up for the reduced number of vessels in commission by the superior quality of the battleships and cruisers that fly the White Ensign in distant waters, the Gallic Fleet has come down to four battleships in full commission, namely, Lorraine (flagship of Adml. de Bon), France, Courbet, Paris, the other three dreadnoughts having only about two-thirds of their nominal complement, without scouts, and with only inferior destroyer flotillas! The 18,000-ton Voltaires and the 15,000-ton Patries are gradually going to rust and becoming unserviceable. Considerations of economy have just caused the Justice-formerly the crack gunnery ship of the fleet-to be disarmed and to be replaced by the ancient-looking and hardly seaworthy 8000-ton D'Entrecasteaux, that ploughs the sea with her terrible-looking ram at a rate of 11 knots in fair weather, as flagship of Admiral Laugier, head of La Division des Ecoles de l'Océan. On the other hand, a valuable personnel of officers and men is being wasted in the keeping in commission of croiseurs-cuirassés of 10,000 to 14,000 tons, carrying nothing above 7.6-inch weapons, and at the mercy of a single dreadnought, whilst some 30 gunboats of 700 to 1200 tons, parading as avisos, sloops, or canonnieres, are swelling up the escadres de la Méditerranée-poussiere navale of the worst sort, essentially vulnerable and powerless, poor helpless sparrows which one hawk would frighten away and disperse. There can be no power where there is neither speed nor calibers, or the relative invisibility and invulnerability of the submarine or of the swift aerial mosquito.