THE MEN BEHIND THE GUNS

It is no less true now than it was a hundred years ago that our first line of defence is the Navy. It is more true. The elaboration of modern war has made the machine the essential element of defence. A battleship is the most stupendous kind of a war machine. The contest between England, the greatest sea-power, and Germany, the greatest land-power, has proved to the world that a navy which may command the seas avails more than millions of men fighting in the trenches, or hundreds of millions of treasure.

If war should come, there is not one chance in ten that our army would be called on to fight with the Entente in Europe. The need of a land force would be for police duty and moral support at home. But our Navy will be called to help guard all the sea-ways of the world against sporadic and destructive attacks upon commerce.

Our Navy needs, to be prepared for war, two thousand trained officers and twenty-five thousand trained men. An equal shortage in the army would not be dangerous, with volunteer organizations upon which to draw. But in the Navy it means a serious impairment of the fighting powers of that organization which has been called the finest for its constituent units on the seas.

An officer competent to take his place in the complicated organization of a battleship must be an intensively trained man. It has been said that the average line officer of the Navy must know all that the officer of corresponding grade in the army knows, plus his own specialized technical knowledge. That is a statement not far wrong. The modern sea-fighter is a "soldier and sailor too."

The weekly class in naval instruction to be begun next Monday at the Navy Yard on board the Virginia offers an unusual opportunity for men to train themselves. If words mean what they say, then Harvard men are desirous of doing their utmost part in the defence of the country. No greater need, and no greater occasion, may arise. Such training involves slight sacrifice. On the contrary, it will give each man keen and intensely interesting knowledge of that great beast of war, the battleship of the first fleet.

We have the ships and the guns on the ships. Men are needed to make those guns effective.