Owing to the engineering and inventive genius of our people and the information we got from Europe, inferiority has not occurred in the units of the material: in fact, in some ways our material is perhaps the best of all.

Neither has inferiority been evidenced in the personnel, as individuals; for the excellent physique and the mental alertness of the American have shown themselves in the navy as well as in other walks of life.
In strategy, however, it must be admitted that we have little reason to be proud.

We do very well in the elementary parts of the naval profession.

In navigation, seamanship, gunnery, and that part of international law that concerns the navy we are as good as any.
But of the higher branches, especially of strategy, we have little clear conception.

How can we have?
Strategy is one of the most complex arts the world contains; the masters in that art have borne such names as Alexander, Caesar, Nelson, and Napoleon.