Until 1870 my life since graduation had been passed afloat almost without interruption. Soon afterwards I obtained command rank; and this promotion, combined with the dead apathy which after the War of Secession settled upon our people with regard to the navy, left me with relatively little active employment for several years. In America, the naval stagnation of that period was something now almost incredible. The echoes of the guns which from Koeniggraetz and a dozen battle-fields in France had resounded round the globe, awakening the statesmen of all countries, had apparently ricochetted over the United States, as fog sound-signals are noticed to rebound overhead, unheard through long stretches of the sea-level, until they again touch the water beyond. The nation slumbered peacefully in its "_petit coin_," to use the expressive phrase of a French admiral to me. Had even nothing been done, this inertness might have been less significant; but somewhere in the early seventies, despite all the progress elsewhere noticeable, there were built deliberately some half-dozen corvettes, smaller than the _Iroquois_ class, mostly of wood. That a period of lethargy in action should steal over a government just released from strenuous exertion is one thing, and bad enough; but it is different, and much worse, that there should be a paralysis of idea, of mental development corresponding to the movement of the world. I myself have always considered that the "right about" of policy came with the administration of President Arthur, when Mr. Chandler was Secretary of the Navy. It began with a work of destruction, an exposure of the uselessness of the existing naval material, due purely to stand-still; to being left hopelessly in the rear by the march of improvement elsewhere. Upon this followed under the same administration an attempt at restoration, gingerly enough in its conceptions. The vessels laid down were cruisers, the primary quality of which should be speed; but fourteen knots was the highest demanded, and that of one only, the _Chicago_. Unhappily, wherever the fault lay, the navy then had the habit of living from day to day on expedients, on makeshifts. Although deficiencies were manifest and generally felt, the prevailing sentiment had been that we should wait until the experiments of other peoples, in the cost of which we would not share, should have reached workable finalities. This is another instance of what is commonly called "practical;" as though mental processes must not necessarily antecede efficient action, and as though there was not then at hand abundant data for brains to work on, without any expenditure of money. Finality, indeed, had not been reached, and never will be in anything save death; but at that time it had been shown beyond peradventure that radically new conditions had entered naval warfare, and clearly the first most practical step was a mature official digestion of these conditions--a decision as to what