, his officers will probably be more
skilful than the officers of the other; so pervasive is the influence
of the chief.

The effectiveness of modern ships and guns and engines and torpedoes,
when used with perfect skill, is so great that we tend unconsciously
to assume the perfect skill, and think of naval power in terms
of material units only. Yet daily life is full of reminders that
when two men or two bodies of men contend, the result depends in
large though varying measure on their relative degrees of skill.

Whenever one thinks of using skill, he includes in his thought
the thing in the handling of which the skill is employed. One can
hardly conceive of using skill except in handling something of the
general nature of an instrument, even if the skill is employed in
handling something which is not usually called an instrument. For
instance, if a man handles an organization with the intent thereby
to produce a certain result, the organization is the instrument
whereby he attempts to produce the result.

If a man exercises perfect skill, he achieves with his instrument
100 per cent of its possible effect. If he exercises imperfect
skill, he achieves a smaller percentage of its possible effect.

To analyze the effectiveness of skill, let us coin the phrase,
"effective skill," and agree that, if a man produces 100 per cent of
the possible, his effective skill is 100 per cent, and, in general,
that a man's effective skill in using any instrument is expressed by
the percentage he achieves of what the instrument can accomplish;
that, for instance, if a gun is fired at a given range under given
conditions, and 10 per cent hits are made in a given time, then
the effective skill employed is 10 per cent.

From this standpoint we see that imperfect skill is largely concerned
with errors. If a man uses, say, a gun, with perfect skill, he
commits no error in handling the gun; and the smaller the sum total
of errors which he commits in handling the gun, the greater his
effective skill and the greater the number of hits.

The word "errors," as here used, does not simply mean errors of
commission, but means errors of omission as well. If a man, in
firing a gun, fails to press the button or trigger when his sights
are on, he makes an error just as truly as the man does who presses
the button or trigger when the sights are not on.

Suppose that, in firing a gun, under given conditions of range,
etc., the effective skill empl