separate ships, turret crews, fire-control parties,
and what-not, in accordance with the requirements of fleet work
does not prevent them from drilling by themselves as often as they
wish--any more than the necessity of drilling in the orchestra
prevents a trombone player from practising on his instrument as
much as the police will let him.

Thus the fact of keeping a fleet together does more than merely
give opportunity for acquiring skill in handling the fleet itself,
and in handling the various ships so that they will work together
as parts of the fleet machine; because it shows each of the various
smaller units within the ships themselves how to direct its training.

For this reason, the idea so often suggested of keeping the fleet
normally broken up into smaller parts, those parts close enough
together to unite before an enemy could strike, is most objectionable.
It is impossible to keep the fleet together all the time, because of
needed repairs, needed relaxation, and the necessity for individual
drills that enable a captain or division commander to strengthen his
weak points; but nevertheless since the "mission" of training is
to attain fighting efficiency in the fleet as a whole, rather than
to attain fighting efficiency in the various parts; and since it
can be attained only by drilling the fleet as a whole, the decision
to keep the fleet united as much as practicable seems inevitably to
follow. Besides, the statement cannot be successfully controverted
that difficult things are usually not so well done as easy things,
that drills of large organizations are more difficult than drills
of small organizations, and that in every fleet the drills that
are done the worst are the drills of the fleet as a whole. How
could anything else be expected, when one considers how much more
often, for instance, a turret crew is exercised at loading than
the fleet is exercised at the difficult movement of changing the
"line of bearing"?

The older officers remember that for many years we carried on drills
at what we called "fleet tactics," though we knew they were only
tactical drills. They were excellent in the same sense as that in
which the drill of the manual of arms was excellent, or the squad
exercises given to recruits. They were necessary; but beyond the
elementary purpose of training in ship handling in fleet movements,
they had no "end in view"; they were planned with a limited horizon,
they were planned from the b