The armies and navies of the European nations and of Japan are trained, just as college athletes are trained for boat-racing, baseball, football, and competitive contests of the gymnasium. The personnel is kept in the pink of condition for prompt and decisive individual effort and also for supreme collective effort in team work. A pugilist finds it necessary to train with the most complete thoroughness to get himself into prime condition for a fight, while his opponent is training in the same manner. When they meet, it is not the strength, skill, and endurance of the normal man that counts in the fight, but it is the supernormal manhood that has been added to the normal man. An ordinary untrained citizen, although he may possess undeveloped resources equal to those of the trained pugilist, would have no chance whatever in a fight with him. Similarly, such an army and a navy as we should be able to improvise in time of war would have no more chance of success against an army and fleet of a European nation or of Japan than the average citizen would have with a skilled, toughened, and hardened pugilist. There is one source of our naval weakness that of itself alone may bring disaster. It is incomprehensible that such a condition should be allowed to exist. When a fleet goes into distant waters, it should have a nearby base. We have neither the coaling stations nor the dry-docks and harbors of refuge that are absolutely indispensable to the fleet of a country with world pretensions. It is absolutely vital that we should be able to defend the Panama Canal, but we have no dry-docks or efficient repair-shops there, and we have none within a thousand miles of there. A couple of million dollars well spent to remedy this defect might, Admiral Knight declares, very conceivably double the efficiency of the fleet in a critical emergency by making it possible for every ship to go out in perfect condition. We have capable naval bureaus of Ordnance, Construction, and Repair, and for the direction of personnel; but these bureaus are not responsible for the readiness of the fleet for war. Admiral Knight suggests a remedy. He says: * * * * * "_This is the last and great defect in the efficiency of the Navy. How shall it be remedied? The answer is, I think, by the creation in the Navy Department of a 'Division of Strategy and Operations' preferably not co-equal with the present Bureaus but superior to them and standing between them and the Secretary. This arrangement would be a recognition of the fact that all the activities of the present Bureaus should lead up to the Secretary through a channel which coördinates them all and directs them toward war efficiency._