In January, 1916, the United States Atlantic fleet, capable as to both material and personnel of going to sea and maneuvering together, consisted of 15 battleships and 23 destroyers, 2 mine-depot ships, and 1 mine-training ship, and 4 tugs fitted as mine-sweepers--with no submarines, no aircraft of any kind, no scouts (unless the _Chester_ be so considered, which was cruising alone off the coast of Liberia, and the _Birmingham_, which was flag-ship to the destroyer flotilla).

This was the only fleet that we had ready to fight in January, 1916; because, although more battleships could have been put into commission, this could have been done only by putting out of commission certain smaller vessels, such as cruisers and gunboats; and the battleships would have had to be put into commission very hurriedly, filled up with men fresh from other ships, and no more ready to fight in the fleet against an enemy (whose ships were fully manned with well-trained officers and men, accustomed to the details of their respective ships, and acquainted with each other) than the _Chesapeake_ was ready to fight the _Shannon_.
3.

In case our system is not so good as that of--say Germany--or of any other country having a system equally excellent, we shall _never_ be able to contend successfully against that navy, under equal strategic conditions, unless we have an excess over her in numbers of personnel and material sufficient to counteract our inferiority in efficiency.
The efficiency of a navy or an army is exactly what the strategic system makes it.

Eleven thousand Greeks under Miltiades, highly efficient and thoroughly trained, defeated 100,000 Persians at Marathon.

A Greek fleet under Themistocies defeated and almost destroyed a much larger Persian fleet at Salamis.