In accordance with my habitual practice, I applied the system of placing responsibility upon my carefully selected heads of departments, giving them commensurate authority, and holding them to account for results. Because the task was such a great one, this was the only possible way in which the operations of the force could have been successfully conducted. I say, successfully conducted, because in a "business" of this kind, "good enough" and "to-morrow" may mean disaster; that is, it is a case of keeping both information and operations up to the minute. If the personnel and equipment of the staff are not completely capable of this, it is more than a partial failure, and the result is an ever-present danger. There were men in this great war who "went to pieces" simply because they tried to do everything themselves. This administrative vice of attempting to control every detail, even insignificant ones, to which military men seem particularly addicted, it had always been my policy to avoid. Business at Grosvenor Gardens developed to such an extent that about a thousand messages were every day received in our office or sent from it; and of these 60 per cent. were in code. Obviously it was impossible for the Force Commander to keep constantly at his finger ends all these details. All department heads, therefore, were selected because they were officers who could be depended upon to handle these matters and make decisions independently; they were all strong men, and it is to their combined efforts that the success of our operations was due. You would have to search a long time among the navies of the world before you could find an abler convoy officer than Captain Byron A. Long; an abler naval constructor than Captain L. B. McBride; an abler man to have charge of the finances of our naval forces, the purchase of supplies and all kinds of material than Captain (S.C.) Eugene C. Tobey; abler aviation officers than Captain H. I. Cone and Lieutenant-Commander W. A. Edwards; an abler chief of operations than Captain R. H. Leigh, or an abler intelligence officer than Commander J. V. Babcock. These men, and others of the fourteen department heads, acted as a kind of cabinet. Many of them handled matters which, though wholly essential to the success of the forces, were quite outside of my personal knowledge or experience, and consequently they had to be men in whose ability to guide me in such matters I could place complete confidence. As an example of this I may cite one of the duties of Captain Tobey. Nearly all of the very considerable financial transactions he was entrusted with were "Greek" to me, but he had only to show me the right place on the numerous documents, and I signed my name in absolute confidence that the interests of the Government were secure.