AMERICAN OFFICERS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 34, 8 August 1925, Page 8

AMERICAN OFFICERS

HIGHLY EFFICIENT

MATT OK BRITIBH MODEL.

flu JptWwtng article ii written for. the "craning Post" by Captain Vraneia M'OoHagh, a British joursalitt on the Pennsylvania, and the only BriUab correspondent with the American fleet.

Aboard an Ajsericen war vessel, one ' sometimes feels as if one were aboard a Britiih war veuel. 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 men, earnest, hard-work-ing, capable, and patriotic. If they . .were not patriotic they would not select a profession where promotion is so slow as it is in the American Navy., in which you find lieutenants of 40, when thereare 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 old-fashioned and eighteenth-century in that formal and dignified politeness. Something that reminds me—l do not know quite how—of Old Virginia and the Southern States. . „,, But this politeness is English, not foreign... There "are, in every American ship, officers who have been educated in - -England, or who inherited from English parents an English accent, or who have taken to themselves English wives. And if there are also Scandinavian, German, and Dutch names in the list of officers, there are plenty of such names in every English battleship and transport; AMERICAN NAMES On board an American battleship one finds all sorts of names. British names arc in the majority, but there are also Freiicli-'CiUiadian names, German names, Irish names, and Polish names. Many of tho higher officers have German names, but such officers are, as. a rule, more American than the Americans themselves because their ancestors were very often men of independent mind who emigrated to the New World because of their- objection to the militarism and the re- : ligious. intolerance of the Old. .Admiral Cooritz is a Missouri man, the son of a newspaper editor. He tells good stones of his life as a boy in his father's office, where, as the business did not .justify a large staff, he had to work very hard in the commercial department. He had, to use his own words, to "keep track" of the number of papers that • wore being printed, and "to keep tab on train schedules 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, Cliarlson, Welte, Johnson, Timberl.ike, Agelon, Ericsson,. Murphy. But there are much fewer Irish names in the Navy than in the Array. : LIKE BRITISH WARSHIPS An American war vessel is, I repeat, Tery like a British war vessel. The cus- •»• toms are English.- Ths- uniforms are modelled closely on those of the English Navy an4.:l»arines;. ,The ship's library is f nil of-standard English works on seamanship and naval. history. MMfc,;Amei:i«n,;.,*.a.val officers .are 'Anglophile:- NAloree proportion of those aboard "Admiral'"Cobritz's fleet served under English-admirals during the Great War, apd 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, disT'Ciplinarians. ;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 in the Queenstown command; and the 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 the. boisterous Irish coast. AN EFFICIENT NAVY Because Americans are reputed to be not quite thorough as classical scholars, we suspect them of being not quite thorough as naval officers. Because the American in art, literature, the drama, ? painting, and music is very often a j-...''bluffer,"-we put down the American • navy as a "bluff." But in this we make a. 4 very great mistake, because, in whatever department of life- the American ia weak, he is certainly strong in the department of applied science. The J'unama Canal, the great American rail- . 'Mays, 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 than we find in similar undertakings nearer home. Why, then, should the navy be an exception? ■As a matter of fact, it is not. It i» a. highly successful, organisation, with a contented yet disciplined personnel. The officers are extraordinarily efficient, very scientific, very hard-working. Tho curriculum at Annapolis is severer than that in' any British naval acadamy. It is as severe as the course at German naval colleges before the 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 tho thoroughness ■ with which engineering, chemistry, electricity, and such practical, *ip-to-date ••■■ subjects were taught, at the ability of the professors, the zeal of. the'students, and the excellence of the apparatus. This prepared me for the Pennsylvania and trie other ships of the American ■ hattlo fleet, and for the type of officer I found aboard them. The shyest, most self-conscious, and most "correct" people aboard the Pennsylvania are the dozen or 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 the British Navy, it is equivalent, so far as executive authority goes, to that of a midshipman. These lads may have thought, to use the words of their own poet, that "it must be like heaven. . . . those far- ',. off, foreign lands to see"; but I ani afraid that they see little save their notebooks and their mathematical tables, , for the problems in connection with torpedoes, which are continually being i ■ worked out en this cruise, gives them continuous employment. At all hours of the dsjr and night we are shelling or torpsdoias somebody else, or some- ■ body else is trying to shell or torpedo ' vm -Mid rapid mtist be the calculations aide ia ooaMqaeoM by the eadrti aad

telephoned to the proper quarter, for, of course, the cadets play only a minor role in this business. It is not the cadota alone who are busy, however. All the officers work with that intense and terrible concentration which apjials the easy-going European visitor to New York, Chicago, or Pittsburg.

In judging of the American naval officer and of what he will be likely to do in we,r, wo forget, I fear, this American quality of intense concentration.