The answer is that the Navy had been organized as an educational and industrial, as well as a fighting, institution. Officers and men had gone to school, they were subjected to frequent examinations, and promotions were given from ascertained fitness rather than from the outgrown policy of seniority. Post-graduate schools enabled officers to qualify as experts. Vocational and grammar schools for enlisted men had kindled ambition and given mental as well as physical and naval training. The war, therefore, found the Navy not only fit to fight, but its officers and men equipped to train quickly the half-million young men who enlisted in 1917-18. The Navy had years before instituted educational preparedness--professional, vocational, elementary--as a part of its policy. And the test of war proved that no other form of preparedness produced better results. In 1913 I issued orders which established a school on every ship in the Navy, the officers instructing the men in reading, spelling, writing and arithmetic, geography, grammar and history, as well as in naval and technical subjects. Nearly every enlisted man who availed himself fully of this instruction afloat received promotion, and all of them became more proficient. The war proved that vessels manned by seamen having trained minds as well as trained hands are superior to ships with uneducated crews. Neither speed nor armor wins battles. It is intellect, education, training, discipline, team-work, courage. As a logical result of the schools afloat, Congress later authorized the appointment of one hundred enlisted men annually as midshipmen at the Naval Academy. In the first class after this law made it possible, the honor graduate at Annapolis came from the enlisted personnel. Others have since attained high standing in their class and in the service. The day will come when all appointments to the Naval Academy will be made from the ranks. The educational system, adopted in the Navy in 1913, became part of the army system of training before the American Expeditionary Force returned from France, and Secretary Baker made such instruction an integral part of the training for men enlisting in the Army. With the advent of war the educational work of the Navy was greatly enlarged and changed to meet war conditions. In addition to many technical schools the fleet at Yorktown was utilized for intensive training, and prepared over 45,000 officers and men for important and varied duties afloat. The older type of battleships became virtual training schools, devoting particular attention to gunnery, navigation and engineering, qualifying men for various duties requiring experience. When ordered to sea the men who had enjoyed this special training gave full proof of the practical schooling through which they had passed.