Naval lessons of the great war

Front matter

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Foreword

This book is a record of official testimony given to Congress by navy officers under oath.

It shows that the principal naval lesson of the war is the menace to the national honor and safety that was involved in committing the management of its navy to unworthy hands.

The Secretary of the Navy should be a man of the highest order of ability, knowledge and foresight. This book shows that Secretary Daniels was so far below this standard that the Navy would have been caught wholly unprepared when we entered the war, and would have been ineffective during the war, if certain navy officers had not sacrificed or endangered their positions, by putting through important measures, without his knowledge.

The Secretary of the Navy should be a man of the highest character. This book shows that Secretary Daniels, both in writing over his official signature, and in oral official testis mony before Congressional Committees, made many statements about important naval matters within his cognizance, that were absolutely false.

Bradley A. Fiske, Rear-Admiral, U. S. N. (Retired).

Preface

I have endeavored to present in this volume a review of the recent naval investigation, and an analysis of the evidence relating to the naval lessons of the war.

With most of the questions involved, I have been personally familiar, since those anxious months of 1917 when I became a member of Admiral Sims' staff, first as a civilian volunteer, later as a reserve officer, in the Intelligence Section of his headquarters in London. The lamentable failure of the Navy Department to meet the situation in 1917, even with the resources then available, has long been so well known to almost every man who served abroad in the early months of the war, that Admiral Sims' letter and his testimony seem a very mild and exceedingly temperate statement of the conditions then existing.

It has been my good fortune not only to have served under Admiral Sims abroad, but to have been of some slight assistance to him during his appearance before the senate naval investigating committee. At the request of its chairman, Senator Hale, I was ordered to Washington, by the Navy Department, to assist the Admiral. I therefore was able to follow the investigation at first hand.

As a reserve officer, I am naturally keenly interested in the welfare and future of the Navy. The lessons of the war have been so little understood that it seemed to me that an effort should be made to clarify and condense the facts established by the testimony, and by official records, in such a way as to give those interested in the Navy a definite understanding of the meaning, and the significance to the nation, of Admiral Sims' comments on the naval lessons of the war.

X PREFACE

This book is the result of this feeling. I alone am responsible for its conception, contents and conclusions. I have made use of my personal knowledge of the facts at issue, only to unify and clarify the actual evidence given to the Senate committee under oath by the various witnesses. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that all testimony was sworn testimony and, as a result, that any statements deliberately at variance with truth constitute perjury. Most of the testimony was, therefore, unusually conscientious and straightforward.

The greatest care has been exercised to insure accuracy of statement. Rather than summarize the testimony I have preferred to include a large number of actual quotations, that the reader may have evidence of the correctness of the conclusions stated.

The material used is without exception taken from official sources ; chiefly from the actual record of the Hearings of the Naval Investigation ; partly from other Hearings ; from the Reports of the Secretary of the Navy ; and only in some few cases, for illustrative purposes, from other books and sources.

I have had the temerity to dedicate this volume to the officer who is to-day the outstanding figure in our Navy, the Admiral under whom it was my privilege to serve during the Great War. I have neither sought nor obtained permission from him to do so and make my apologies to him for what may seem to him an impertinence. It should be needless to add that Admiral Sims had no knowledge of my intention to write this book, nor will he have had any knowledge of its contents until it appears in print.

I wish to acknowledge my grateful appreciation to Colonel Robert M. Thompson of the Navy League for his counsel and assistance; to Rear Admiral B. A. Fiske, U. S. N. (ret.), for his kindness in consenting to introduce this

PREFACE xi

volume to the public ; to Rear Admiral W. F. Fullam, U. S. N. (ret.), for his friendly advice; and to the officers who served in the Navy Department during the war, for their service to the nation in admitting, under cross-examination, the truth of every vital point raised by Admiral Sims.

The countr}' as a whole owes much to the Honourable Frederick Hale, United States Senator from Maine, the Chairman of the Investigating Sub-Committee of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, for his patient but insistent and searching effort to bring to light matters of the most vital importance to the navy and to the nation alike.

This volume is not, of course, anything more than a review of the evidence with regard to the lessons of the war, with a very brief and exceedingly tentative suggestion as to the significance of those lessons. If it serves to make possible a better understanding and construction of the present state of the Navy, its purpose will have been accomplished.

Tracy Barrett Kittredge.

Berkeley, Califoraia, December, 1920.

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword — By Rear Admiral B. A. Fiske^ U.S.N. (Ret.) vii

Preface ix

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

XIII The Causes of Departmental Inefficiency

XIV Mr. Daniels' Admirals and Their Smoke Screen (The Testimony of Admirals Rodman, Wilson, Niblack, Strauss and F. F. Fletcher) . . . 255

Chapter I Introduction: The State Of The Navy

THE nation has been amazed and confused, during the last year by revelations, of the most sensational and of the most conflicting character, with regard to the state of the Navy ; its administration by Mr. Josephus Daniels ; and the part it played in the Great War.

Two investigations have been conducted by a subcommittee of the Naval Affairs Committee of the United States Senate ; one, into the method used by the Secretary in making medal awards for war service ; the other, into the condition of the Navy from 1913 to 1917 and into the conduct of the war at sea by the Navy Department.

To a public not familiar with naval matters, the significance of the conditions that were revealed in these investigations is perhaps not fully appreciated. The great volume of testimony, presented during the four months occupied by the investigations; the apparent contradiction between the t 'stimony of the several witnesses ; the bitter personal rcf ctions on officers of the service and upon the Secretary of tJ e Navy ; all have contributed to confusing the mind of the country as to the issues at stake.

The condition of the Navy today is, however, a matter of immediate interest and concern to every citizen. The explanation of the demoralization that now reigns in the naval service can be found in the Hearings of the Senate Committee. In these is presented the extraordinary spectacle

of a member of the Cabinet being publicly pilloried by some of the most distinguished officers in the Navy. In the Navy as a whole, nearly every self-respecting officer today approves, openly or at heart, the condemnations heaped upon the present Secretary, Mr. Josephus Daniels.

As a result of certain of the policies that have been put into force in the Navy Department in the past seven years many splendid traditions of the Navy have been discarded, the spirit of the service has been greatly impaired, the fighting efficiency of the fleet has been reduced to almost nothing.

An officer in the Navy who resigned recently. Commander A. D. Turnbull, writing in the North American Review, says :

" Officers and men grown grey in the service look with breaking hearts upon its disintegration. They have watched their valiant efforts to save the situation brought to nothing. They have seen preferment offered to — and alas ! accepted by — a scattered few of their brothers and shipmates, who could not keep loyalty to service and countrj'- above something that passes as loyalty to an individual. They have seen merit and initiative pretty well crushed. . . .

" Mr. Daniels found the Navy in good material condition, manned by a strong, self-respecting personnel, animated from end to end by a fine spirit and a high purpose.

" Mr. Daniels, after seven years of office, will leave the Navy a battered hulk, which it will take years of careful repairing to make seaworthy."

The condition of the Navy demands national attention. It is the purpose of this volume to present in concise form the deeper meaning and importance of the Sims-Daniels controversy.

II

On June 26, 1915, the Secretary of the Navy, in addressing the officers of the Atlantic Fleet, at the Naval War College at Newport, R. I., said:

" The duty of the officers of the navy is to ask themselves constantly this searching question : ' Have we a maximum of

INTRODUCTION: STATE OF THE NAVY 5

efficiency? ' This question must relate to every element of material and personnel that makes the navy ready for the call that may be made ujion it. If the navy is not what it ought to be, the fault is properly laid at the door of the Secretary, because some one must be responsible. He cannot evade responsibility. . . . The public will and should hold him to account."

This passage can be taken as tlie text of this volume. It provides an excellent point of departure for a review of Mr. Daniels' administration.

His long regime is drawing to a close. The navy has been through an ordeal, the bitterness of which few, outside of the naval service, can even imagine. The founders of our government, in seeking to prevent the military forces from assailing the popular liberties, placed them under the direction of civilian secretaries. The army and the navy were thus made subject to the unrestricted power of a civilian. But, in a democratic country, the exercise of power carries with it a corresponding responsibility. The time has come when this should be made clear to those who administer the forces upon which we depend for our national defence.

Ill

The United States is entering upon a period of history in which the soundness of its institutions and the strength of its people will be subjected to crucial tests. The " war that was to end war " has thrown the world into confusion. A new world is emerging with new tendencies, new forces, new problems, which indicate all too clearly that, in the future as in the past, war will be the ultimate test of a nation. We are, it is true, happily situated, with an ocean on either side of us separating us from any conceivable external danger. This very fact, however, gives new significance to the function of the navy as our first line of national defence. Our political integrity, our world-wide interests, our seaborne commerce depend, in the last analysis, I upon naval strength and efficiency. If our navy is adequate, I well trained, well manned, ably led, we need have no fears j for our security. In any future war, such a navy would ; serve as an impenetrable shield, behind which we could make calmly our military preparations ; as an offensive force that could harass, isolate and blockade the enemy, and make possible the transport overseas, if necessary, of armies composed of millions of men.

We could not have done this in 1917. We could not do it to-day. That is the crucial point to be remembered in considering our naval problem. All officers who knew the situation in 1917, or who know the condition of the Navy today, including Mr. Daniels' chief naval advisers, have so testified. We were not ready for war in 1917. Had we then faced a great power singlehanded, we would now, as Admiral Plunkett testified, be paying the indemnity. As a nation we cannot afford to permit such a situation to occur again. We must demand of those responsible for our national defence a genuine accounting.

The naval investigation brought to light the salient features of Mr. Daniels' administration. In the pages that follow there will be reviewed evidence proving that he rei garded the Navy primarily as a source of political capital for i himself and his party ; that he either never understood or \ completely ignored the only reason for a navy's existence — its readiness for war.

It will be made clear that he has ruled as a despot, ruthlessly crushing opposition, by czaristic and underhanded methods, while publicly parading himself as an ardent dem' crat; that from 1913 to 1917, he enforced a policy of pacifism upon the Navy ; that, in consequence, he prevented ' any real preparedness for war ; and that, all the while he was deceiving the country and lulling it into a sense of false

INTRODUCTION: STATE OF THE NAVY 7

security by declaring in mellifluous phrases that the Navy was ready " from stem to stern " for any emergency.

It will be demonstrated that he repeatedly made false statements, — perhaps inspired by lack of understanding rather than by intent to deceive, — to the country, to Congress and to the President, concerning the Navy and its condition ; that he made incorrect assertions, officially and in writing, to the United States Senate; that he gave testimony under oath before the Senate Committee which was completely at variance with the testimony of other witnesses, and with the facts established by the evidence of official records.

As a public official Mr. Daniels has flagrantly violated his trust. It would be disastrous to permit him to escape his responsibility. " The public will and should hold him to account," as Mr. Daniels himself said in 1915.

Chapter II Naval Organization And Preparedness

1798-1917

WE are often assured that history never repeats itself. Yet there are singular coincidences. The following quotation illustrates the point :

" As we look back at the history of this period (the first year of war), it seems incredible that the Navy Department with the vast resources at its command . . . should have been able to show only such meagre results during seven months of war. Lest this statement be thought too severe, we quote the candid omission (of the responsible naval officials) : ' But for some few redeeming successes . . . the wliole belligerent operations would have been pronounced weak and imbecile failures."

". . . This was mainly due to the extreme slowness and deliberation with which the Navy Department moved. ... It is safe to say that the American people today would not tolerate for a week a Secretary of the Navy who conducted the operations of the war in the timorous, procrastinating and inefficient fashion in which they were conducted in 1861.

The only surprising feature of this quotation is the date, 1861. Otherwise it might be applied to the year 1917 and to the administration of Secretary Daniels. But the last sentence shows the temerity of its writer, Mr. J. R. Soley, himself a graduate of Annapolis and once Assistant Secretary of the Navy, from whose life of Admiral Porter the quotation is taken.

How despairing, indeed, is the task of the historian!

Every investigator in the domain of science knows that in determining the processes at work in nature he is conferring a boon on humanity. He realizes that practical application will be made immediately of any discoveries which will tend to ameliorate the lot of man or render life in civilized societies more secure. In science, as in business or in the individual life, wisdom comes from experience ; we learn by our mistakes. But the writer of history, if he concerns himself at all with the results of his researches, is obliged to admit that his work is fruitless. No matter how clearly he may show the inevitable sequence of cause and effect, or demonstrate the operation of definite processes in human affairs, he must perforce resign himself to seeing his conclusions ignored, as well by the people as by the politicians to whom they entrust the direction of their common destinies. He must submit to witnessing, in every period of national crisis, the recurrence of the same problems and the repetition of the same errors. One has only to read Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian wars (432-404? B. c.) and his description of the failure of democracy to heed the lessons of experience, or consider the consequences of disaster, and then reflect for a moment on the performance of our government in the Great War, to be disheartened.

II

The ultimate test of any state or people is war. Throughout history, war has been the agency that has begun and terminated political and national existences ; that has altered racial, language, cultural and religious boundaries ; that has determined for good or ill the direction of hun^ari social development. We can witness to-day no evidence that wars have ceased to play a determining part in the shaping of the affairs of man.

It was bv war that we came into existence as a nation;

it was chiefly by warfare, organized or sporadic, that the American nation expanded from the Atlantic seaboard to the shores of the Pacific. It was war that sealed and cemented our national union and led to the freeing of the slaves. It was war, again, that made us over from a provincial state into a world power. The destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, signalized a complete transformation in our relations with the other nations of the world. Nor will our most recent war be without equally significant influence on our national destiny, though we are still too fresh from the fray to estimate accurately the probable consequences.

Success in war has, throughout the ages, been determined by certain clearly defined factors and conditions. Every schoolboy realizes that our independent existence as a nation depends upon our ability and willingness to maintain it, when necessary, by war. As a nation we believe and expect that our govermnent will take adequate measures to ensure our success in war. We assume that the known principles of warfare, which alone determine success or failure, will be heeded, in peace and in war, by the responsible departments of our government, to whom we entrust the national defence. We take it for granted that the Army and the Navy will be so organized and administered as to provide us with adequate means for defence. But in the light of history, have we any reason for our assumption?

If we need any answer to such a question, we can find it in the testimony of many distinguished officers of the Navy before the investigating committee of the Senate a few months ago. In going through the voluminous evidence presented by each of more than a dozen officers, who held high and responsible positions during the war, one seeks, almost in vain, to find a single fundamental military principle that was not violated by Mr. Josephus Daniels' department.

To those familiar with our mihtary and naval policy in the past, however, the revelations of the naval investigation sounded strangely familiar. Students of military history, who have written for us the unvarnished tale of the circumstances under which we have entered upon other wars, have revealed similar conditions. In times of peace we have complacently assumed, as did Mr. Bryan, that we would never have another war; but that, if we did, a million men would spring to arms overnight ; though where they would get the arms to which to spring was a mystery we never investigated. Accustomed from childhood to read of the famous exploits at arms, of which our people have shown themselves capable when properly armed, trained and led, we have allowed our politicians to neglect our national defences ; to waste money, intended to provide the country with an efficient army and an adequate navy, in maintaining outlying and isolated army posts and obsolete and unserviceable navy yards, for purely political reasons — "to give jobs to patriots" as the Charlotte (N. C.) Observer put it, in dealing with Mr. Daniels' probable policies in 1913.

Ill

If the Navy, because of w^eakness or unpreparedness, is unready for war at the moment the enemy chooses to strike, it will be destroyed or bottled up. We will then be open to enemy attack, our commerce will be cut off, our coasts will be bombarded, our soil invaded.

Yet we usually fail to realize that the Navy cannot provide us with the defence for which it is maintained unless it is of sufficient strength and efficiency to meet the possible enemy w-ith reasonable prospect of success in battle. The Navy cannot win such success in battle unless it has a sufficient number of all the various types of vessels needed to make a well rounded fighting fleet; unless there are adequate and strategically situated repair, docking and supply facilities to keep the vessels at all times materially fit for battle. The Navy cannot fulfil its mission unless its personnel, officers and men, are adequate in numbers, properly trained for war and actuated by that conscious pride in its efficiency and by that fighting spirit which constitute the morale of the service.

The Navy cannot successfully wage war unless it is led by officers well versed in strategy and tactics, and is guided in its operations by carefully prepared policies and war plans. These conditions cannot be satisfied unless the Navy Department is so organized and co-ordinated, that it can develop and maintain the highest state of material, personnel and moral preparedness for war.

Few of these conditions have ever been realized. Not only in our latest war, but many times before, the same defects and shortcomings have been revealed by the stress of war; the same temporary expedients have been devised to meet the war emergencies; and the war has come to an end just when the Navy, or the Army, as the case may be, was becoming approximately ready to fight with real effectiveness. As soon as the war came to an end, the experience gained was forgotten ; the lessons to be derived went undiscovered and unheeded.

Admiral Stephen B. Luce, Admiral A. T. Mahan, Admiral B. A. Fiske, General Upton, Theodore Roosevelt, and many other students of military and naval history have more than demonstrated these conditions in past wars. The naval investigation has enlightened us as to the extent of their repetition in the present war. Unless precautionary steps are taken the next war will witness the recurrence of exactly the same monotonous but highly dangerous phenomena.

IV

The Navy Department was created by the Act of Congress of April 30, 1798. Previous to that time the War Department had controlled the few frigates in service, but the threat of a war with France compelled recognition of the necessity for a separate administration of the Navy. From 1798 to 1815 the Navy was managed entirely by the civilian Secretary, without any assistance or responsible advice from naval officers. This exclusion of the military element from the control of the Navy made it impossible for the Navy to prepare for war or to fight effectively.

This was illustrated in 1812, when the Navy Department, in a state of panic, demonstrated its incapacity by laying up the entire navy lest it should be swept out of existence by the British cruisers. Captains Stewart and Bainbridge protested successfully against this policy, with the result that American frigates were able to strike severe blows at British trade, bombard the British shores and win several notable victories over single British war vessels. But there was no fleet action in the Wjar of 1812. As a matter of fact, we had no fleet — if we except the one built by Commodore Perry on Lake Eric. The Navy Department was not able to prevent the burning of the Capitol or the landing of British troops on our soil.

As a result of the pitiful incompetency of an exclusively civilian direction of a highly technical naval service. Congress in 1815 provided for the creation of a Board of Navy Commissioners, composed of three post captains of the Navy (the highest rank then in existence) to assist the Secretary. The wording of the act was faulty, however, in that it made no distinction between the military and civil branches of the department. The result was that the three commissioners, instead of directing the military activities of the Navy, came to be charged chiefly with the administration of the civil branch, with the supply, ordnance and construction work. This led inevitably to friction and difficulty. In 1842 the Navy Department was therefore reorganized and the bureaus were established to take over the administration of the civil branch. At the same time the Board of Commissioners, instead of being retained to perform those military functions for which it was created, was abolished. This left the Secretary in the entirely false position of a civilian called upon to administer the affairs of the executive department of the government having to do with naval matters, without a professional assistant. Writing in 1902, Admiral Luce said of this reorganization:

" No provision was made for any direction of naval operations save by the action of the Secretary, a civilian. The organization was one that could work only while the country was at peace and military considerations could be neglected. People generally scouted the idea that peace could ever be disturbed. The Civil War rudely dispelled this idle dream and proved the falsity of the theory on which the organization of the Department was based." {Proceedings of the Naval Institute, 1902.)

The Civil War brought confusion into the Department. No provisions or plans had been made for any belligerent activities. The bureaus were absorbed in the sudden and great demands made upon them by the work of a purely civil character. The Secretary was without military assistance in the administration of the personnel of the Navy and in the direction of military operations and " found himself in a complete state of isolation."

Makeshift arrangements had to be improvised to enable the department to meet the sudden and pressing demands upon it. The Secretary called on Captain Silas H. Stringham to take charge of the Office of Detail, in charge of personnel. Then, on April 1, 1861, President Lincoln directed

Captain Samuel Barron, who already held a commission as captain in the Confederate navy, to take over and organize the Bureau of Detail. This order was not carried into effect, as the President revoked it when the circumstances were explained to him. But it illustrates the chaos that prevailed.

The department found itself in 1861, as it did later, in 1898 and in 1917, witli a war on its hands and no one competent to direct war oj^erations. There were several efforts made to organize the bureau chiefs into a Board of Admiralty, or to provide a board of officers who would exercise the military control over operations. But these efforts were resultless. Finally the position of Assistant Secretary was created and a former naval officer. Captain Gustavus V. Fox, was appointed to fill it. He practically took over the direction of the military side of the department and became, by force of circumstances, a kind of chief of naval staff. Various boards were organized to handle military matters falling outside the scope of the activities of the bureaus. This included the " Committee on Conference," which owed its existence to a civilian, Professor A. D. Bache, the Superintendent of the Coast Survey. This committee, the membership of which included a number of able officers, such as Captain S. F. DuPont, U. S. N., and Commander C. H. Davis, U. S. N., became in reality the strategy board, or plans section, of the improvised war staff. Other emergency boards were appointed to discharge temporarily the otlier military functions of the department, for which no previous provision had been made. Taken together, these boards ultimately met the issue and became a temporary naval general staff.

For the first two j^ears of tlie war, however, the utmost confusion prevailed. Improvised plans of campaign proved faulty and led to disastrous failures. The operations off Charleston, from 1861 to 1863, demonstrated by their futility the consequences of having a military department of the government so organized that no provision was made for war. Admiral DuPont, in charge of these operations, wrote to the department on June 3, 1863:

" When I left Washington (in October, 1862) there was really nothing matured, though I was firmly impressed with the fixed determination of the department that Charleston must be attacked."

The Navy Department thought Charleston could be taken by the monitors alone, without army co-operation, but every effort to do this failed. So with many other of the early attempts. Yet many very able men were in the department ! The failure was not theirs, but was that of the system, or lack of system, against which they had to struggle.

The Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, himself recognized the condition, in his annual reports, with a frankness that stands in refreshing contrast to Mr. Daniels' efforts at concealment. In his annual reports for 1861 and later years. Secretary Welles pointed out that when war came there had been no one in the department to plan or direct military operations. " Hence the views of the department were speculative and uncertain." IMr. Fox and the improvised boards ultimately provided a successful war organization for the department. But two years had been lost. Many blunders were made, and many disastrous delays occurred which could have been avoided had the department been organized and conducted as a military organization.