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LIFE AND WORK OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL

 CHAPTER SEVEN

 HIS WORK FOR THE NAVY

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Department—His Record as a Naval Author—Cutting Red Tape— Foresaw War with Spain—His Preparedness Order to Dewey—Improved American Gunnery.
Theodore Roosevelt had always been interested in the United States Navy, with the interest of a patriotic citizen born on the seaboard and of a far-seeing young man of affairs. That laudable interest, which he possessed in full measure when he went to Washington in March, 1897, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he retained throughout his subsequent career, and it was strongly demonstrated in the public utterances of the closing years of his life, when his beloved country was at war and the Navy emerged triumphant from the test.

Mr. Roosevelt's interest in naval affairs was at first that of an author and historian. In his college days at Harvard he had written some chapters of his "Naval History of the War of 1812," which was published in 1882, two years after his graduation, when he was twenty-four years old. The subject attracted him because he believed that the existing histories, read by the American people, were one-sided in their treatment of the facts.

His naval history was so impartial and so successful that the critics of the greatest authority commended him, declaring that "the impartiality of the author's judgment and the thoroughness with which the evidence is sifted are remarkable and worthy of high praise." As a result, when an English publisher was preparing a history of the British Navy, Mr. Roosevelt was asked to write the history of its exploits in the War of 1812. Thus he made himself an authority on naval affairs at an age when most young men are authorities only on sports, if on anything at all.

It was therefore with alacrity, if not eagerness, that Mr. Roosevelt accepted the appointment to the Navy Department. He felt that it was urgently necessary to strengthen the naval arm as a means of national defense, and he welcomed the opportunity to take part in its upbuilding.

Cutting Red Tape
He had not been long at Washington before he discovered that many evils had grown up that would seriously handicap the department if suddenly brought face to face with the problem of preparing for war. He at once set under way a general overhauling of the various bureaus^ cutting red tape in every direction. The list of merchant vessels that could be drafted for an auxiliary navy was incomplete and faulty, and he undertook to revise it. He framed an important personnel bill. He started the navy on a course of real gunnery so as to improve marksmanship. He distributed ships and supplies where they would be of most help and use if a storm burst, particularly remembering to place ships in Pacific waters, where they might loaf expectantly in the general neighborhood of the Philippines.

Scarcely had he got his feet under a Navy Department desk when he asked for—and got—$800,000 for powder and shell for the navy. A few months later he wanted $500,000 more. The representatives of the people asked him, aghast, what had become of the ammunition purchased with the $800,000 handed to his department.

'' Great heavens!" he cried, equally aghast at the question. '' What do you suppose we did with it ? We fired it. And this new half-million dollars' worth of ammunition will all be exploded thirty days after we get it. What else do you want to know, gentlemen?"

Foresaw War With Spain
From the start he scented distant, and not so very distant, trouble with Spain. With all the thunder he used a score of years later while booming for preparedness for the greatest of all wars, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt, back in 1897, thundered for naval preparedness for a Spanish war which he believed inevitable. He gave all the vigor of his being to the repair and general overhauling of what ships we then owned. With the utmost ardor he began to assemble ammunition, supplies of all kinds.

For command of the Asiatic fleet certain politicians were pushing an officer of the respectable, commonplace type. Roosevelt determined to get the appointment for Commodore Dewey, who was that officer's junior and who had no political backing, but whose career Roosevelt had been watching. He enlisted the services of Senator Bed-field Proctor, whom he knew to be close to the President, checkmated the politicians and secured the appointment which resulted in so much glory for the American Navy.

When at last the Spanish War actually came in 1898, Roosevelt's tireless energy supplemented the work of Secretary Long in an invaluable manner. Upon him devolved the duty of organizing and refitting the auxiliaries and purchasing colliers. His quick decision and prompt action in many matters of importance had an important bearing on the subsequent naval successes of Manila Bay and Santiago. It was he who urged successfully that Admiral Dewey be retained in command of the Asiatic station when it was proposed to supplant him, and one of his last official acts was to write the famous dispatch which sent Dewey to Manila.

When the last of the Spanish War smoke had settled, and the experts began to check things up, it was generally admitted that much of the navy's success had been due to gunners who had gained their expertness while firing Roosevelt's real ammunition in preparation for the scrimmage. The shooting was not good in that war, but had it not been for Mr. Roosevelt's ideas, it would have been atrocious.

As it was, we proved to be better marksmen than the Spaniards, but Mr. Roosevelt was not satisfied. He wrote later in his autobiography: "I grew uneasy when I studied the small portion of hits to shots made by our vessels in battle. When I was President I took up the matter and speedily became convinced that we needed to revolutionize our whole training in marksmanship.''

He did revolutionize it and made the United States fleet, gun for gun, at least three times as effective in point of fighting efficiency in 1908 as it was in 1902.
Ordered Dewey to Prepare
In the records of the Navy Department, Theodore Roosevelt has left many memorials, but none more striking than an order cabled to Admiral Dewey on February 25, 1898, nearly two months before war was declared on Spain, in which the first step toward American occupation of the Philippine Islands was taken.
Mr. Roosevelt, as Assistant Secretary, issued the order without the knowledge or approval of Secretary Long, and in his autobiography he described this as one of the times when he seized opportunities presented by the absence of the Secretary to take steps toward preparation for war which he regarded as vital.

Mr. Roosevelt had repeatedly urged that prompt action be taken to make ready for war. He believed Admiral, then Commodore Dewey, commanding the Asiatic fleet, should be given advance instructions. No instructions were sent to Dewey, however, and when Mr. Long departed from Washington on February 25, leaving Roosevelt as Acting Secretary, this order in Roosevelt's name went over the cables:

"Dewey, Hongkong:—Secret and confidential. Order the squadron, except Monocacy, to Hongkong. Keep full of coal. In event of declaration of war on Spain your duty will be to see that Spanish squadron does not leave Asiatic coast, and then offensive operations in Philippine Islands. Keep Olympia (Dewey's flagship at Manila Bay, previously ordered home) until further orders.

(Signed) ROOSEVELT."

In discussing this and similar steps he took, Mr. Roosevelt told, in his account of his own life, of what he regarded as the greatest weakness of the navy at that time, its poor gunnery. He recalled many letters written on this subject by the American naval attach^ at Paris, then Lieutenant, now Vice-Admiral Sims, and declared that this young officer alone seemed to realize fully the deplorable state of the navy in this regard on the eve of war.

Improved American Gunnery
Subsequently, as President, Mr. Roosevelt singled out Sims and placed him at the head of naval gunnery, which resulted in development of the present nigh standards of marksmanship in the United States Navy.

Mr. Roosevelt then coined the phrase that "only holes mean hits, and the shots that hit are the shots that count.''

The keen study given to naval matters by Mr. Roosevelt while Assistant Secretary was shown later in his first message as President to Congress, which included more than one hundred specific recommendations as to the navy. Throughout the time he was President, Mr. Roosevelt showed the keenest interest in the development of the navy. Finally he sent the Atlantic fleet, under Rear Admiral (Fighting Bob) Evans, on its memorable cruise around the world, the first and last voyage of its kind ever undertaken by any battle fleet.

The Navy Our Peacemaker
Mr. Roosevelt's more recent views on the navy were expressed in his volume on "America and the World War," published in 1915 (Charles Scribner's Sons), in which he said:

"Until an efficient world league for peace is in more than mere process of formation the United States must depend upon itself for protection where its vital interests are concerned. All the youth of the nation should be trained in warlike exercises and in the use of arms—as well as in the indispensable virtues of courage, self-restraint, and endurance—so as to be fit for national defense. But the right arm of the nation must be its navy. Our navy is our most efficient peacemaker. In order to use the navy effectively we should clearly define to ourselves the policy we intend to follow and the limits over which we expect our power to extend. Our own coasts, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal and its approaches should represent the sphere in which we should expect to be able, single-handed, to meet and master any opponent from overseas.

The Philippine Question
"I exclude the Philippines. This is because I feel that the present administration has definitely committed us to a course of action which will make the early and complete severance of the Philippines from us not merely desirable but necessary. I have never felt that the Philippines were of any special use to us. But I have felt that we had a great task to perform there, and that a great nation is benefited by performing a great task. It was our bounden duty to work primarily for the interests of the Filipinos; but it was also our bounden duty, inasmuch as the entire responsibility lay upon us, to consult our own judgment and not theirs in finally deciding what was to be done. It was our duty to govern the islands or to get out of the islands. It was most certainly not our duty to take the responsibility of staying in the islands without governing them. Still less was it—or is it—our duty to enter into joint arrangements with other powers about the islands; arrangements of confused responsibility and divided power of the kind are sure to cause mischief. I had hoped that we would continue to govern the islands until we were certain that they were able to govern themselves in such fashion as to do justice to other nations and to repel injustice committed on them by other nations. To substitute for such government by ourselves either a government by the Filipinos with us guaranteeing them against outsiders, or a joint guarantee between us and outsiders, would be folly.

"It is eminently desirable to guarantee the neutrality of small civilized nations which have a high social and cultural status and which are so advanced that they do not fall into disorder or commit wrong-doing on others. But it is eminently undesirable to guarantee the neutrality or sovereignty of an inherently weak nation which is impotent to preserve order at home, to repel assaults from abroad, or to refrain from doing wrong to outsiders. It is even more undesirable to give such a guarantee with no intention of making it really effective. That this is precisely what the present administration would be delighted to do has been shown by its refusal to live up to its Hague promises at the very time that it was making similar new international promises by the batch. To enter into a joint guarantee of neutrality which in emergencies can only be rendered effective by force of arms, is to incur a serious responsibility which ought to be undertaken in a serious spirit. To enter into it with no intention of using force, or of preparing force, in order at need to make it effective, represents the kind of silliness which is worse than wickedness.

Should Keep Our Promises
"Above all, we should keep our promises. The present administration was elected on the outright pledge of giving the Filipinos independence. Apparently its course in the Philippines has proceeded upon the theory that the Filipinos are now fit to govern themselves. Whatever may be our personal and individual beliefs in this matter, we ought not as a nation to break faith or even to seem to break faith. I hope therefore that the Filipinos will be given their independence at an early date, and without any guarantee from us which might in any way hamper our future action or commit us to staying on the Asiatic coast. I do not believe we should keep any foothold whatever in the Philippines. Any kind of position by us in the Philippines merely results in making them our heel of Achilles if we are attacked by a foreign power. They can be of no compensating benefit to us. If we were to retain complete control over them and to continue the course of action which in the past sixteen years has resulted in such immeasurable benefit for them, then I should feel that it was our duty to stay and work for them in spite of the expense incurred by us and the risk we thereby ran. But inasmuch as we have now promised to leave them and as we are now abandoning our power to work efficiently for and in them, I do not feel that we are warranted in staying in the islands in an equivocal position, thereby incurring great risk to ourselves without conferring any real compensating advantage, of a kind which we are bound to take into account, on the Filipinos themselves. If the Filipinos are entitled to independence, then we are entitled to be freed from all the responsibility and risk which our presence in the islands entails upon us.

"The great nations of southernmost South America, Brazil, the Argentine, and Chile, are now so far advanced in stability and power that there is no longer any need of applying the Monroe Doctrine as far as they are concerned ; and this also relieves us as regards Uruguay and Paraguay, the former of which is well advanced and neither of which has any interests with which we need particularly concern ourselves. As regards all these powers, therefore, we now have no duty save that doubtless if they got into difficulties and desired our aid we would gladly extend it, just as, for instance, we would to Australia and Canada. But we can now proceed on the assumption that they are able to help themselves and that any help we should be required to give would be given by us as an auxiliary rather than as a principal.
The Naval Problem
"Our naval problem, therefore, is primarily to provide for the protection and policing of Hawaii, Alaska, and the Panama Canal and its approaches. This offers a definite problem which should be solved by our naval men. It is for them, having in view the lessons taught by this war, to say what is the exact type of fleet we require, the number and kind of submarines, of destroyers, of mines, and of airships to be used against hostile fleets, in addition to the cruisers and great fighting craft which must remain the backbone of the navy. Civilians may be competent to pass on the merits of the plans suggested by the naval men, but it is the naval men themselves who must make and submit the plans in detail. Lay opinion, however, should keep certain elementary facts steadily in mind.

'' The navy must primarily be used for offensive purposes. Forts, not the navy, are to be used for defense. The only permanently efficient type of defensive is the offensive. A portion, and a very important portion, of our naval strength must be used with our own coast ordinarily as a base, its striking radius being only a few score miles, or a couple of hundred at the outside. The events of this war have shown that submarines can play a tremendous part. We should develop our force of submarines and train the officers and crews who have charge of them to the highest pitch of efficiency—for they will be useless in time of war unless those aboard them have been trained in time of peace. These submarines, when used in connection with destroyers and with airships, can undoubtedly serve to minimize the danger of successful attack on our own shores. But the prime lesson of the war, as regards the navy, is that the nation with a powerful seagoing navy, although it may suffer much annoyance and loss, yet is able on the whole to take the offensive and do great damage to a nation with a less powerful navy. Great Britain's naval superiority over Germany has enabled her completely to paralyze all Germany's sea commerce and to prevent goods from entering her ports. What is far more important, it has enabled the British to land hundreds of thousands of men to aid the French, and has enabled Canada and Australia to send a half-million men from the opposite ends of the earth to Great Britain. If Germany had had the more powerful navy, Great Brit-lain would now have suffered the fate of Belgium. * * *

The Experience of 1898
"It has been said that the United States never learns by experience but only by disaster. Such method of education may at times prove costly. The slothful or shortsighted citizens who are now misled by the cries of the ultra-pacifists would do well to remember events connected with the outbreak of the war with Spain. I was then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. At one bound our people passed from a condition of smug confidence that war never could occur (a smug confidence just as great as any we feel at present) to a condition of utterly unreasoning panic over what might be done to us by a very weak antagonist.

"One Governor of a seaboard State announced that none of the National Guard regiments would be allowed to respond to the call of the President, because they would be needed to prevent a Spanish invasion of that State—the Spaniards being about as likely to make such an invasion as we were to invade Timbuctoo or Turkestan. One Congressman besought me to send a battleship to protect Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia.
Another Congressman asked me to send a battleship to protect a summer colony which centered around a large Atlantic-coast hotel in Connecticut. In my own neighborhood on Long Island, clauses were gravely inserted into the leases of property to the effect that if the Spaniards destroyed the property the leases should terminate. Chambers of commerce, boards of trade, municipal authorities, leading business men, from one end of the country to the other, hysterically demanded, each of them, that a ship should be stationed to defend some particular locality; the theory being that our navy should be strung along both seacoasts, each ship by itself, in a purely defensive attitude—thereby making certain that even the Spanish navy could pick them all up in detail.

'' One railway president came to protest to me against the choice of Tampa as a point of embarkation for our troops, on the ground that his railway was entitled to its share of the profit of transporting troops and munitions of war, and that his railway went to New Orleans. The very Senators and Congressmen who had done everything in their power to prevent the building up and the efficient training of the navy screamed and shrieked loudest to have the navy diverted from its proper purpose and used to protect unimportant seaports. Surely our Congressmen and, above all, our people, need to learn that in time of crisis peace treaties are worthless, and the ultra-pacifists of both sexes merely a burden on and a detriment to the country as a whole; that the only permanently useful defensive is the offensive, and that the navy is properly the offensive weapon of the nation.

"The navy of the United States is the right arm of the United States and is emphatically the peacemaker. Woe to our country if we permit that right arm to become palsied or even to become flabby and inefficient!"