objected that it is not necessary for the staff at the
department to devise such training, because drills of the entire
fleet can be devised and carried out by the commander-in-chief;
in fact that that is what he is for. This, of course, is partly
true; and it is not the idea of the author that the staff in the
department should interfere with any scheme of drills that the
commander-in-chief desires to devise and carry out; but it is his
idea that the staff should arrange problems to be worked out by
the fleet, in which the tactical handling of the fleet should be
subordinate to, and carried out for, a strategic purpose.

A very simple drill would be the mere transfer of the fleet to a
distant point, when in supposititious danger from an enemy, employing
by day and night the scouting and screening operations that such a
trip would demand. Another drill would be the massing of previously
separated forces at a given place and time; still another would be
the despatching of certain parts of the fleet to certain points at
certain times. The problems need not be quite so simple as these,
however; for they can include all the operations of a fleet under
its commander-in-chief up to actual contact; the commander-in-chief
being given only such information as the approximate position,
speed, and course of the enemy at a given time, with orders to
intercept him with his whole force; or he may be given information
that the enemy has divided his force, that certain parts were at
certain places going in certain directions at certain speeds at
certain times, and he may be directed to intercept those supposititious
parts; that is, to get such parts of his fleet as he may think best
to certain places at certain times.

Of the strategic value to the staff of the practical solutions of
this class of problems by the fleet, there can be little question;
and the records made if kept up to date, would give data in future
wars for future staffs, of what the whole fleet, and parts of it
acting with the fleet, can reasonably be expected to accomplish,
especially from the standpoint of logistics. And it has the advantage
of dealing with only one thing; the actual handling of the actual
fleet, uncomplicated by other matters, such as interference by an
enemy. For the reason, however, that it leaves out of consideration
the effects of scouting and of contacts with the enemy, it is
incomplete.

_Second Scheme_.--To remedy this incompleteness, re