This scheme would have the obvious advantage over the present scheme that the professional questions would be decided by professional men, while the financial question would be decided by Congress, which alone has the power to decide it. At present, the laymen on the House Naval Committee spend laborious days interrogating singly, and on different days, various naval officers, who naturally do not always agree. Finally, the House Naval Committee decides on a programme and recommends it to the House. The House discusses it most seriously (the professional points more seriously than the financial point), and decides on something. Then the Senate Committee, using the House decision as a basis, recommends something to the Senate, and the Senate then decides on something more or less like what the Senate Committee recommends. Then the whole question is decided by a Conference Committee of three senators and three members of the House. It is to be noted that this committee decides not only how much money the country shall spend on the navy, but also what kinds of vessels navy officers shall use to fight in the country's defense; how many officers there shall be, and how they shall be divided among the various grades! Attention is requested here to the _ease_ with which a decision can be made, _provided one does not take into account all of the factors of a problem, or if he is not thoroughly acquainted with them_; and attention is also requested to the _impossibility_ of making a _wise_ decision (except by chance) unless one understands _all_ the factors, takes _all_ into consideration, and then combines them _all_, assigning to each its proper weight. From one point of view, every problem in life is like a problem in mathematics; for if all the factors are added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided correctly (that is, if they are combined correctly), and if correct values are assigned to them, the correct answer is inevitable. In most of the problems of life, however, certainly in the problems of strategy, we do not know all of the factors, and cannot assign them their exactly proper weights; and therefore we rarely get the absolutely correct answer. The best that any man can do is to estimate the factors as accurately as he can, judge as correctly as he can their interaction on each other, and then make his own conclusion or decision.