f thousands of
soldiers that our navy has conducted in safety across the infested
Atlantic, and the feats which our fighters have performed in action, in
stormy seas, in rescue work and in the long, weary grind of daily
routine, no American has cause for aught but pride in the work our navy
has done.

There has been more than a sixfold increase in naval man power and about
a fourfold increase in the number of ships in service. When present
plans have been carried out--and all projects are proceeding
swiftly--the United States will probably rank second to Britain among
naval Powers of the world. Training facilities have increased on a
stupendous scale; we have now various specialized schools for seamen and
officers; our industrial yards have grown beyond dreams and the
production of ordnance and munitions proceeds on a vast scale, while in
other directions things have been accomplished by the Navy Department
which will not be known until the war is over and the records are open
for all to read.

But in the meantime history has been making and facts have been marked
which give every American pride. Praise from the source of all things
maritime is praise indeed, and what greater commendation--better than
anything that might be spoken or written--could be desired than the
action of Admiral Sir David Beatty, commander-in-chief of the Grand
Fleet, who, receiving a report not so many months ago that the German
High Seas Fleet was out, awarded the post of honor in the consolidated
fleet of British and American war-vessels which went forth to meet the
Germans to a division of American battleships. This chivalrous
compliment on the part of the British commander was no doubt designed as
a signal act of courtesy, but more, it was born of the confidence of a
man who has seen our navy, who had had the most complete opportunities
for studying it and, as a consequence, knew what it could do.

There is nothing of chauvinism in the statement that, so far as the
submarine is concerned, our navy has played a most helpful part in
diminishing its ravages, that our fighting ships have aided very
materially in the marked reduction in sinkings of merchantmen as
compared to the number destroyed in the corresponding period before we
entered the war, and in the no less notable increase in the number of
submarines captured or sunk. These facts have not only been made clear
by official Navy Department statements, but have been attested to by
man