FLEET OFFICERS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18456, 10 August 1925, Page 8

FLEET OFFICERS.

WHAT MANNER OF MEN ?

COURTEOUS AND HIGHLY EFFICIENT. NAVY ON BRITISH MODEL. I (SPECIAL TO "THE PRESS.") [The following Eftio'e is from tho pen of Captain Francis McCullugh, a British journalist on the Pennsylvania, and the only British correspondent with tho American Fleet.] ' Aboard an American war vessel, one sometimes feels as if one were aboard a British war vessel. In no department of American public life has English influence remained so strong as in the Navy. The American naval officers are a fine class of meu, earnest, hard-work-ing, capablo and patriotic. If they were not patriotic they would not select a profession where promotion is so slow as it is in tho American Navy, in which you often find lieutenants of 40, when there aro so many paths to wealth and high position open to them ashore. I have found American naval officers more polite, as a rule, than the generality of European naval officers, but there is something slightly oldfashioned and eighteenth century in that formal and dignified politeness. Something that reminds mc—l do not know quito how —of Old Virginia and the Southern States.

But this politeness is English, not foreign. There are, in every American ship, officers who liavo been educated. in England, or who inherited from English parents an English accent, or who havo taken to themselves English wives. And if thero are also Scandinavian, German and Dutch names in the list of officers, there are plenty of sueh names in every English battleship and transport.

American Names. On board an American battleship-one finds all sorts of names. British names are in the majority, but thero aro also French - Canadian names,- German names, Irish names, and Polish names. Many of tho higher officers have German names, but such officers aro, as a rule, more American than the Americans themselves because their ancestors were very often men of independent mind who emigrated to the Now World because Of their objection to the militarism and the religious intolerance of the Old.

Admiral Coontz is a Missouri man, the son of' a newspaper editor. He tells good etories of his life as a boy in his father's office, whero, as the business did not justify a large staff, ho had to work very'hard m tho commercial department. He had, to use his own words, to "keep track" of the number of papers that were being printed, and "to keep tab on train schedulos and on the orders people brought in for job printing." And all this he had to keep in his head. A typical list of officers' names aboard an American warship is:—Wallace, Charlson, Welte, Johnson, Timberlake, Ageton, Ericsson, Murphy. But there are much fewer Irish names in the Navy than in tho Army.

Like British Warships,

Ail American war vessel is, I repeat, very like a. British war vessel. TIIO. customs are English.', The uniforms aro modelled closely on thdso of the English Navy and marines. The ship's library is full of standard, English works on seaifaSnship and naval history. Most American naval officers aro Anglophile. A large proportion of those aboard Admiral Coontz's Fleet served under English admirals during the Great War, and all of them without exception look back on that period of hard work, and always imminent danger with the greatest pleasure. They like all the British admirals, but they like most of all the "hustlers," the relentless disciplinarians. It is this trait in the character of the American naval officer which makes me expect a great future for the American Navy. There is, in the United States, a "Queenstown Association," consisting exclusively Of American officers who served iu the Queenstown command; and tho members of this association — or, as many of them as can conveniently do so—still meet at a yearly dinner in order to talk over those good, hard, dangerous old times off tho boisterous Irish coast.

An Efficient Navy. Becauso Americans aro deputed to be not quite thorough as classical scholars, we suspect them of being not quite thorough as naval officers. Because tho American in art, literature, the drama, painting and music is very often a "bluffer," we put down the American Navy as a "bluff." Put in this we make a very great mistake, because, in whatever department of life tho Amorican is weak, ho is certainly strong in the department of applied science. The Panama Canal, the gTeat American railways, the. vast industrial plants that have sprung up in various parts of the United States, put this beyond all doubt. In all these great undertakings there is less friction between employers and employed th/in we find in similar undertakings nearer homo. Why, then, should tho Navy be an exception? As a matter of fact, it is not. It is a highly successful organisation, with a contented yet disciplined personnel. The officers are extraordinarily efficient, very scientific, very hard-working. The curriculum at Annapolis is severer than that in any British naval academy. It is as severe as the course at German naval colleges before tho war.

Intense Concentration. I spent all last winter lecturing throughout the United States, and on many occasions I found myself in great educational institutions, where I was always surprised by the thoroughness with which engineering, chemistry electricity, and such practical, up-to-date subjects were taught, at the ability of the professors, the zeal of the students, and the excellence of the apparatus. This prepared mo for the Pennsylvania and the other ships of the American Battle Fleet, and for'the type" of officers I found aboard them.

The shyest, most sel-conscious, and most "correct" people aboard the Pennsylvania are the dozen ox so of young naval ensigns who joined us at Honolulu, after having come straight from Annapolis for the purpose. Though their rank is nominally equal to that of a sub-lieutenant in tho British Navy, it is equivalent bo far as executive authority goes ' to that of a midshipman. '

Theso lads may have thought, to u*e the words of their own poet, that "it must i>e like heaven. . . . those faroff foreign lands to see": but I am afraid that they see little Bave their notebooks and their mathematical tabled, for the problems in connexion

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with torpedoes, which are continually being worked out on this cruise, give them continuous employment. At all hours of the day and night we are shelling or torpedoing somebody else or somebody else is trying to shell or torpedo us; and rapid must bo the calculations made in consequence by the cadets and telephoned to the proper quarter, for, of course, the cadets play only a minor role in this business. It is not the cadets alone who are busy, however. All the officers work with that intense and terrible concentration which appals the easy-going European visitors to New York, Chieago, or Pittsburg. In judging of the American naval officer and of what ho will be likely to do in war, wo forget, I fear, this American quality of intense concentration.