DREADNOUGHT ARKANSAS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3296, 15 August 1911, Page 7

DREADNOUGHT ARKANSAS.

AMERICA’S LAfEST BATTLESHIP. THE “EFFICIENCY OF THE INDIVIDUAL.” Undoubtedly in full sincerity of sentiment and purpose, all public men, from the President that is down to the plainspoken President that was, say nice tilings about the peace-pact; but then from Roosevelt back to Taft insistence is also made that the best security for such a pact is a strong and, above all, efficient navy. At the Coronation Review the American visiting Dreadnought was designedly a “show” vessel, brit in some important respects it is only a very partial realisation of the ideal American, battleship. The aim now is to graft upon naval work that “scientific management” which in factories and industrial plants of all binds is effecting something like a revolution in the methods of production. Six weeks hence the youngest, and biggest of the Dreadnoughts, the Arkansas. will finally leave the shipbuilding yard, and her crew—an assortment in all lines of the very picked men of the navy—are now being assembled. In all, there will be 1000 men and 100 officers, and in the working plan there will be. as far as possible, no foreman or chief, but each man as in a firstclass factory, will have his own duties and his own place, and orders will come direct from above.

Each day there will he 'big-gun drills for most of the crew, and small-arms practice for all the crew. Each day, too, in the most modern-equipped machine shop afloat, the men of that mechanic class will put in a number of hours.repairing machinery, and studying mechanics; and the engine and fire rooms, by unintermitted daily exercises of varied kind, will also be kept adept. Most of the officers —and in the future this “most” will probably come to mean all—'know in theory, and in practice are able to do nearly all the work of the ship down to the simplest detail. Even as far hack as the Spanish v\ ar Admiral Wain weight, then commanding a gunboat the, machinery of which had been disabled, went down himself to the engine-room, and with, his own hands made the required repairs, and saved the ship in the very nick of time from drifting into the fire of a, hostile battery. ... T The dominating principle at the I\avy Department is at the present more and more that in modern warfare it is the “personal e~nation” that counts —the efficiency of the individual in his own task, the efficiency of the system itself in correlating the crew into a harmonious unity, and the efficiency of the commander in directing this self-acting working whole to the best advantage. That is not the, Whole story, it need hardly be added, for accidents must be provided for, and efficient men grow careless and no ideal is ever altogether attainable. But, however, far it may come short of perfection, it could not be worse than the old muddled methods of the past.