Life — April 27, 1916 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

792 “LTP E - The Admiral, the Secretary and the Navy ECRETARY DANIELS has been telling the House Naval Committee about the queer things Admiral Fiske said to him. He represents the Ad- miral as a troublesome person, dis- pleased about the suppression of the officers’ wine mess, over-anxious to be put in command of the flect, a stickler for “Old World ideals” in the navy and unfriendly to “ Amer- ican ideals.” One reads in the Sun's report: “He told me not once,” said Mr. Daniels, “ but five times, that if we didn’t follow the principle of mili- tarism and put men at the head of the navy whose fathers and grand- fathers had been in the service we never would be able to obtain any degree of preparedness.” One can imagine Admiral Fiske as impressed with the value of tradition in the navy, but it was odd for him to have said what Mr. Daniels says he said, because the Admiral’s father was a clergyman. It makes one fear Mr. Daniels is not an accurate reporter. And so does Mr. Daniels’ assertion that Admiral Fiske said that “ naval officers, if deprived of their wine, would take to cocaine.” All probabilities favor the impression confirmed by Admiral Fiske's letter to Representative Britten, that that was a very garbled version of what the Admiral said. The Secretary has liked to diffuse the impression that in everything he has done to the navy he has been backed by high naval authority, For example, George Creel says in the World of March 26th that Mr. Daniels issued the order suppressing the of- ficers’ wine mess “on the official recommendation of the Surgeon-Gen- eral of the Navy.” That sounds im- pressive, but George omits to point out that the said Surgeon-General, when he made the said recommendation, had been in office two months and had been carefully picked for his place by Sec- retary Daniels. George Creel also says that Daniels’ policy about the wine mess “was fol- lowed within a year by all other world powers.” But that seems not likely. One would like to read the orders, There was an important disparity of statement between the Admiral and the Secretary as to the General Board. The Admiral said the General Board recommended an increase of about 19,000 men in the navy, and that the Secretary said he would not publish the Board’s recommendations unless that item was taken out. This asser- tion the Secretary evaded by saying, “T never told the General Board to do anything in my life.” The Admiral and the Secretary are both men who have been successful in their professions. The Admiral has succeeded as an officer of the navy, and is known in all navies as an accom- plished naval expert. The Secretary has succeeded as proprietor of a news- paper in North Carolina. To navigate a newspaper in North Carolina so that it will keep afloat and support a family is no small exploit, and takes a shifty man, quick on his feet and handy with his wits. The Secretary is such a man. He is sober, diligent and active; a good husband, a good father, a useful friend, and skilled to make the worse appear the better case when necessary. He is a man used to be attacked and practiced in response under it. He is as much disliked in his own state as is com- patible with running a successful news- “GaD! SOMETIMES I WISH I'D NEVER MADE THAT LUCKY STRIKE IN WALL STREET” paper. No doubt he has done some things well as Secretary of the Navy. The reason why the officers of the navy mostly dislike him seems much the same as the reason why so many offi- cers of Princeton University disliked Dr. Woodrow Wilson. Dr. Wilson dis- approved a good deal of the estab- lished order at Princeton, and tried to change it. Daniels seems to hate the established order in the navy, and to intend to destroy it as far as he can. He showed his hand when he refused promotion to Captain Templin Potts, who had earned it and should have had it. Daniels, in so far as he can, pits one naval officer against another, using their professional rivalries and jeal- ousies for his own purposes, He is an adroit person, Nothing that he says about the navy, or anything concerning it, or any man in it, should be accepted at its face value. When probed and shown up in the light of full informa- tion his plausible facts usually turn out to be as misleading as his quotations from Fiske. His assertions about the strength or weakness of the navy are political. What he says about pow- der manufacture, gun building, tor- pedoes, airships and the like is just about as reliable as the stories of the sort that one would find in a stout partisan newspaper. His talk to George Creel was newspaper talk, well done comicbooks.com