As the _Scientific American_ has justly stated, our coast fortifications should not be so named; instead, they should be designated as city-and-harbor fortifications. It would be quite impracticable adequately to defend our long stretch of seaboard by means of coast fortifications. The only coast fortifications that can effectually serve us are battleships. It is absolutely indispensable to our integrity as a nation that we have a fleet sufficiently powerful to defend our whole coast against invasion. These questions present themselves: How are we to ascertain what our naval needs are? How shall we prepare to meet them? Of whom shall we seek guidance? Several years ago the Navy Department organized the General Board of the Navy, headed by Admiral Dewey. This Board studied our needs with great diligence and care, and Congress was advised accordingly. All the leading navies of the world have a technical body corresponding to our General Board, but in other countries that body speaks with authority, while our General Board may only advise. Congress pays but little attention to these advisers. It is a principle of our government that the voice of the greatest number shall rule, and the people of this country have come to believe that the majority is more likely to be right than the minority. Many falsely believe that in the matter of wisdom there is safety in mere numbers; that the opinion of a hundred men is of more value than the opinion of a single man. Multiplying the number of individuals possessing a limited amount of knowledge and an unlimited amount of ignorance does not raise the high-water mark of their united wisdom. Wisdom means intellectual height. Some men are seven feet high intellectually, while others are not more than a foot high. The average of conscientiousness is much higher than the average of intelligence. A man's sincerity cannot be used as a yard-stick for measuring his intellectual height. Sincerity and conscientiousness are sister entities, and are largely a measure of intellectual bias, whose other name is prejudice. [Illustration: Strategic Spheres of Vital Importance in the Pacific] We may compare the intellectual height of men with one another in a manner similar to comparing their physical height, only there is a much greater disparity in the intellectual than there is in the physical. If we take a man six feet high, and stand another man beside him of equal or less height, the height of the two men is no greater than that of the first man. If we add a hundred men of average height, we shall find that the average height of the whole line is considerably less than that of the six-footer with whom we started.