are sometimes seen in people
suffering from a certain class of nervous ailments; the mind seems
unimpaired, but co-ordination between the brain and certain muscles
is almost wholly lacking.

To prevent such a condition, therefore, the staff must be kept in
touch with the fleet; and it must also permit the fleet to keep
in touch with the staff, by arranging that, accompanying the system
of training, there shall be a system of education which will insure
that the general plan will be understood throughout the fleet; and
that the means undertaken to execute it will be made sufficiently
clear to enable each person to receive the assistance of his own
intelligence. No man can do his best work in the dark. Darkness is
of itself depressing; while light, if not too intense, stimulates
the activities of every living thing.

This does not mean that every mess attendant in the fleet should
be put into possession of the war plans of the commander-in-chief,
that he should be given any more information than he can assimilate
and digest, or than he needs, to do his work the best. Just how
much information to impart, and just how much to withhold are
quantitative questions, which can be decided wisely by only those
persons who know what their quantitative values are. This is an
important matter, and should be dealt with as such by the staff
itself. To get the maximum work out of every man is the aim of
training; to get the maximum work that shall be effective in attaining
the end in view, training must be directed by strategy, because
strategy alone has a clear knowledge of what is the end in view.

_Stimuli_.--Some men are so slothful that exertion of any kind is
abhorrent to them; but these men are few, and are very few indeed
among a lot of healthy and normal men such as fill a navy. An office
boy, lazy beyond belief in the work he is engaged to do, will go
through the most violent exertions at a baseball game; and a darky
who prefers a soft resting-place in the shade of an umbrageous
tree to laboring in the fields will be stirred to wild enthusiasm
by a game of "craps."

Now why are the office boy and the darky stimulated by these games?
By the elements of competition, chance, and possible danger they
bring out and the excitement thereby engendered. Training, therefore
introduces these elements into drills as much as it can. Competition
alone does not suffice, otherwise all men would play chess; competition
and chance combin