The same holds true with respect to sailors inexperienced in the discipline and duties of a man-of-war.
There is this difference, however: an army usually obtains its recruits from men totally unacquainted with military life, while a navy, in case of sudden increase, is mainly supplied from the merchant marine with professional sailors, who, though unacquainted with the use of artillery, &c., on ship-board, are familiar with all the other duties of sea life, and not unused to discipline.

Moreover, raw seamen and marines, from being under the immediate eye of their officers in time of action, and without the possibility of escape, fight much better than troops of the same character on land.

If years are requisite to make a good sailor, surely an equal length of time is necessary to perfect the soldier; and no less skill, practice, and professional study are required for the proper direction of armies than for the management of fleets.
But some have said that even these skeletons of military and naval forces are entirely superfluous, and that a brave and patriotic people will make as good a defence against invasion as the most disciplined and experienced.

Such views are frequently urged in the halls of congress, and some have even attempted to confirm them by historical examples.
There are instances, it is true, where disorganized and frantic masses, animated by patriotic enthusiasm, have gained the most brilliant victories.

Here, however, extraordinary circumstances supplied the place of order, and produced an equilibrium between forces that otherwise would have been very unequal; but in almost every instance of this kind, the loss of the undisciplined army has been unnecessarily great, human life being substituted for skill and order.