In the World War it was necessary for the Navy to maintain close relationship with the President, the Council of National Defense, the State and War Departments, the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, the Shipping Board and other war agencies, and the supply system for Army as well as Navy. It was essential to be in constant touch with the plans for the sending of troops and to have daily interchange of views with representatives of Allied navies. Intimate contact made for prompt action. The efficiency secured and maintained would have been impossible if the naval control had ever passed from Washington. The decisions to establish bases at Brest, at Gibraltar and in the Azores were made by the Navy Department in Washington after conference with Allied powers. The result of their establishment justified the action taken. Routing of ships called for joint action between Allied and American naval agencies working together on both sides of the Atlantic. The movement of vessels carrying troops and supplies was necessarily dependent upon daily conference with War Department officials in Washington. Admiral William V. Pratt, who was Assistant Chief of Operations during the war, thus stated the main naval duty: "Our total naval effort in this war consisted less in the operation of forces at the front than in a logistic effort in the rear, in which the greatest problems we had to contend with originated and had to be solved, here at home. It must be noted that in this war the main united naval effort was one of logistics." Building ships by the hundred; training men by the hundred thousand to operate them; producing munitions, materials and supplies by millions of tons; providing vessels to carry troops and men-of-war to protect them--all these problems of production and transportation were necessarily settled in Washington. It was this vast effort in America, directed from the Navy Department, which made possible all our activities in Europe, all the assistance we were able to render to the Allies and the general cause. [Illustration: AMERICAN DESTROYERS IN QUEENSTOWN HARBOR The depth charges are conspicuous on each stern.] [Illustration: From the painting by Bernard F. Gribble THE RETURN OF THE MAYFLOWER First American destroyers arriving in Queenstown harbor, May 4, 1917.] CHAPTER VII "WE ARE READY NOW, SIR" DESTROYERS, AFTER 3,000-MILE VOYAGE, PREPARED FOR IMMEDIATE SERVICE--FIRST OF AMERICAN FORCES SENT TO EUROPE--DEADLIEST FOE OF U-BOATS, THEY SAILED VAST AREAS, PROTECTING TROOPS AND CARGOES--256 ATTACKS ON SUBMARINES--"FANNING" SANK U-58 AND CAPTURED CREW--NO RANK IN SACRIFICE OR HONORS.