Theodore Roosevelt was an apostle of preparedness from the hour that he began to think at all about affairs of public moment--and that hour came to him earlier in life than it does to most men. In the preface to his history of the War of 1812, which he wrote at the age of twenty-four, this sentence appears: "At present people are beginning to realize that it is folly for the great English-speaking Republic to rely for defense upon a navy composed partly of antiquated hulks, and partly of new vessels rather more worthless than the old." His prime interest, from the point of view of preparedness, lay in the navy. His sense of proportion told him that the navy was the nation's first line of defense. He knew that without an efficient navy a nation situated as the United States was would be helpless before an aggressive enemy, and that, given a navy of sufficient size and effectiveness, the nation could dispense with a great army. For the army he demanded not size but merely efficiency. One of his principal points of attack in his criticism of the army was the system of promotion for officers. He assailed sharply the existing practice of "promotion by mere seniority." In one of his messages to Congress he pointed out that a system of promotion by merit existed in the Military Academy at West Point. He then went on to say that from the time of the graduation of the cadets into the army "all effort to find which man is best or worst and reward or punish him accordingly, is abandoned: no brilliancy, no amount of hard work, no eagerness in the performance of duty, can advance him, and no slackness or indifference, that falls short of a court-martial offense, can retard him. Until this system is changed we cannot hope that our officers will be of as high grade as we have a right to expect, considering the material from which we draw. Moreover, when a man renders such service as Captain Pershing rendered last spring in the Moro campaign, it ought to be possible to reward him without at once jumping him to the grade of brigadier-general." It is not surprising to find in this message also a name that was later to become famous in the Great War. Roosevelt had an uncanny gift of prophecy. More than once, as President, he picked out for appreciation and commendation the very men who were to do the big things for America when the critical hour came. CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST FOUR YEARS