o a degree of efficiency in strategy which now we
cannot even picture. It would automatically indoctrinate the navy
and produce a sympathetic understanding and a common aim, which
would permeate the personnel and make the navy a veritable organism.
It would attain the utmost attainable by any method now known.

Attention is respectfully invited to the fact that at the present
time naval strategy is mainly an art; that it will probably continue
so for many years; that whether a science of naval strategy will
ever be formulated need not now concern us deeply, and that the
art of naval strategy, like every other art, needs practice for
its successful use. Naval strategy is so vague a term that most
of us have got to looking on it as some mystic art, requiring a
peculiar and unusual quality of mind to master; but there are many
things to indicate that a high degree of skill in it can be attained
by the same means as can a high degree of skill in playing--say
golf: by hard work; and not only by hard work, but by doing the
same thing--or similar things--repeatedly. Now most of us realize
that any largely manual art, such as the technic of the piano,
needs frequent repetition of muscular actions, in order to train
the muscles; but few of us realize how fully this is true of mental
arts, such as working arithmetical or strategical problems, though
we know how easy it is to "get rusty" in navigation. Our mental
muscles and whatever nerves co-ordinate them with our minds seem to
need fully as much practice for their skilful use as do our physical
muscles; and so to attain skill in strategy, we must practise at
it. This means that all hands must practise at it--not only the
staff in their secret sanctuary, not only the commander-in-chief,
not only the division commanders, but, in their respective parts,
the captains, the lieutenants, the ensigns, the warrant officers,
the petty officers, and the youngest recruits. To get this practice,
the department, through the staff, must furnish the ideas, and the
commander-in-chief the tools. Then, day after day, month after
month, and year after year, in port and at sea, by night and by
day, the ideas assisted by the tools will be supplying a continuous
stimulus to the minds of all. This stimulus, properly directed
through the appropriate channels and devoted to wise purposes,
will reach the mess attendant, the coal-passer, and the recruit,
as well as those in positions more responsible (th