The Navy as a Fighting MachineFiske, Bradley A. (Bradley Allen)
History
The Navy as a Fighting Machine
Fiske, Bradley A. (Bradley Allen)
Naval art and science; Naval strategy; Navies; Sea-power; United States. Navy -- Management
This does not mean that every mess attendant in the fleet should
be put into possession of the war plans of the commander-in-chief,
that he should be given any more information than he can assimilate
and digest, or than he needs, to do his work the best. Just how
much information to impart, and just how much to withhold are
quantitative questions, which can be decided wisely by only those
persons who know what their quantitative values are. This is an
important matter, and should be dealt with as such by the staff
itself. To get the maximum work out of every man is the aim of
training; to get the maximum work that shall be effective in attaining
the end in view, training must be directed by strategy, because
strategy alone has a clear knowledge of what is the end in view.
_Stimuli_.--Some men are so slothful that exertion of any kind is
abhorrent to them; but these men are few, and are very few indeed
among a lot of healthy and normal men such as fill a navy. An office
boy, lazy beyond belief in the work he is engaged to do, will go
through the most violent exertions at a baseball game; and a darky
who prefers a soft resting-place in the shade of an umbrageous
tree to laboring in the fields will be stirred to wild enthusiasm
by a game of "craps."
Now why are the office boy and the darky stimulated by these games?
By the elements of competition, chance, and possible danger they
bring out and the excitement thereby engendered. Training, therefore
introduces these elements into drills as much as it can. Competition
alone does not suffice, otherwise all men would play chess; competition
and chance combined are not enough, or gentlemen would not need
the danger of losing money to make card games interesting; but
any game that brings in all three elements will rouse the utmost
interest and activity of which a man is capable. Games involving
these three elements are known by many names; one name is "poker,"
another name is "business," and another name is "politics." There
are many other games besides, but the greatest of all is strategy.
Now in the endeavor to prepare a fleet by training, no lack of
means for exciting interest will be found; in fact no other training
offers so many and so great a variety of means for introducing
the elements of competition, chance, and danger. The problem is
how best to employ them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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