PAST PRESIDENTS OF THE U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER, U. S. NAVY, 1873 REAR ADMIRAL JOHN L. WORDEN, U. S. Navy, 1874 REAR ADMIRAL C. R. P. RODGERS, U. S. Navy, Jan. 1875–Jan. 1878 REAR ADMIRAL EDWARD SIMPSON, U. S. NAVY, OCT. 1885-OCT. 1887 1911 FORMS OF GOVERNMENT IN RELATION TO THEIR EFFICIENCY FOR WAR By REAR ADMIRAL A. P. NIBLACK, U. S. Navy GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS In our diplomatic relations with countries it is essential that we study forms of government. Other governments, recognizing the complexity of our own system, send to Washington selected persons as ministers or ambassadors and, with the view of solving other difficulties, often select those with American wives. Had the governments associated with us in the late war fully understood that our President practically shares the treaty-making power with the Senate, they would probably have pursued a different course in framing a treaty in Paris. If misunderstandings, therefore, arise among statesmen from such elementary causes, it is important that we examine the forms of government of at least the principal powers, such as Great Britain, France, Japan, and Germany, with which our future relations are so important. It would be bold to say that the war just fought out was fundamentally between England and Prussia not only as dominating their associates in their respective governments, but as political and commercial rivals in Europe and in the world, but in April, 1848, in the House of Commons, Disraeli stated that the commercial and political importance of the rising state of Prussia on the North Sea should not pass "unnoted and uncensured" by |