young men for professions, though other professions. It may be said that the Academy it unique in the demands for which it was created. That is only true because it is the only Naval Academy we have. It is absolutely similar in principle to all schools that prepare a man for a definite profession. Therefore, can we not draw some vital truths from a comparison?

In what medical school do we fit young men to become operating practitioners upon graduation? In what law school do we prepare young lawyers to become upon graduation, able to handle law cases? Do any of our mechanical or electrical schools fit their graduates to be immediately available for regular engineering work? Do any of our business schools turn out business men? To every question we must answer "No." In fact the whole tendency in the development of our colleges seems to point to a lengthening of their course. So insistent has the demand become, that one college (Minnesota) has changed its course to five years, and others are expected to follow. In all other professions, we see that the college is thus endeavoring to build up its course, so that the graduate will have a firm foundation upon which to build the structure of his after life. The college itself is a great school of preparation where all the laws and theories, the application of which will be used in later life, are taught. Only enough practical work is added to the course to assist in the teaching of the subject, and in every profession we find that a period of further development is necessary. The young medical graduate puts in a year or two as an interne in a hospital. The young law graduate occupies a desk in a lawyer's office and is called upon to look up information, to draft legal documents as directed. In the mechanical and electrical engineering professions we see this probationary period further enforced. The shops, drafting room and testing room are all brought into play to bring the young graduate to a proper coordination and application of the theory his alma mater supplied him. No better example of this can be cited than the wonderful system that the General Electric Company has perfected and is using to-day. There, graduates of the finest technical schools of our country are put in a department, at small pay, where their energies are directed to the testing of electric apparatus, the natural field in which all theory that they imbibed at their college, is applied practically. And they stay in that department for from eighteen months to two years. At the expiration of that period the com

pany draws those it desires to keep, those who can be of use to it in more than a manual way.

Thus in every profession we see a condition existing which is entirely opposed to the navy's system-entirely different in both theory and in result. The contrast may be briefly stated as follows: The Naval Academy at present teaches the graduate to become immediately available for operative duty, while in practically all other professions we find that the school is a school of preparation and the graduate is fitted for operative duty only after a complete and exclusively practical course of about two years. And in all the other professions of life it has been found and proven that it is necessary to use the school as primarily a teacher of theory, and to leave the coordination and application of this theory to a further period of post-graduate application Does it not appear from this that we may have been mistaken in permitting the conditions affecting us to crowd out the enforce ment of a thorough theoretical foundation for the addition of: little extra practical knowledge? Is our profession so differen that we do not need such post-graduate study? Or is our schoc so excellent that it eliminates the necessity of that study?

I have not mentioned as yet the two years' period that th register calls the "probation period." And it is properly named That two years was unquestionably designed as a period in whic the midshipman should learn the methods and devices by whic their theory was applied in actual practice. In all other profe sions that period of probation is necessary. Its use was inaug rated in the navy years ago. But is it used now? Can the answ be anything else than "No?" It is easy to prove. Are our e aminations upon the completion of our probationary two yea very different from those given us on graduation? The diffe ence is so slight as to be negligible. In the writer's case the was no difference.

In other words, the service, or those directing its sentimen at the Naval Academy, do not see any difference, or at least ve little, between the requirements of a midshipman upon graduati and upon commissioning. It is not at all surprising then tha great deal of agitation has arisen to commission a graduate i mediately, or in other words, to publicly announce that a gradu of the Naval Academy is qualified to be a thorough naval offic upon his graduation. How many graduates of the University Pennsylvania's Medical College are qualified to practice medici

or how many happy possessors of the degree of E. E. from the Boston Institute of Technology are immediately qualified to be operating engineers?

Would it not be advisable therefore to incorporate a little more theory, a course in "Thermodynamics," a more complete course in “Electricity," a more thorough course in "Calculus," add perhaps, the study of "Least Squares," and "Precision of Measurements," give more "Strength of Materials" and "Machine Degn" (and other subjects more or less important) at the Academy and to eliminate, if necessary, enough practical work to meet the required balance. In doing this the two years after graduation would of necessity become in our profession, what I think it was intended for, and what it is used for in other professions. It would throw on the older officers of the service an additional responsibility perhaps, but would they not, in course of time, be better fitted to handle it? We might say that at present the service is shirking the responsibility of teaching the young officer and has gradually pushed it over on the Academy. The foremost daty of the service, before even "battle efficiency" in importarce, is the training of the young men in the service. That is the application of the work "conservation" in its highest sense. And it is most decidedly applicable to the officers especially.

This policy would also result in a better system of eliminating between graduation and commissioning. In civil life the process f elimination begins to be forcibly felt at the expiration of the two years' probation. It is at that time that classes begin to separate to the various levels to which their members are destined. With our system as at present worked, the eliminating practically ceases upon graduation, to be actively taken up about 25 or 30 years later.

I have placed the whole subject as a question, or series of questions. They may be epitomized in one. Is the present system at the Naval Academy the best one for achieving the purpose for which the government maintains it? I hardly think it is, and perhaps there are others who agree with me, and still others who might agree after giving their attention to the matter. The officers of the navy are responsible to the people of the country for the internal administration of the Navy Department and the training of the navy's personnel. If the Academy's system needs correction, the burden of making the correction lies with the navy itself.

[COPYRIGHTED.]

U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE, ANNAPOLIS, MD.

THE AMERICAN NAVY AND THE OPINIONS OF ONE OF ITS FOUNDERS, JOHN ADAMS. 1735-1826.

By CAPTAIN CARLOS GILMAN CALKINS, U. S. N. (Retired).

As the service which grew up to become the navy of the United States could neither create nor provide for itself, it may be worth while to attempt the discovery of the point of view of the statesmen responsible for its foundation. Without their aid, that is without the sanction of a politically organized community, the commerce-destroyers of the Revolutionary War would have fallen under the penalties of piracy. But by adapting the cruisers commissioned by the separate colonies as a Continental Navy, that service secured an international standing and gave the Confederation a place among the maritime powers of the world. This act of organization was in itself a bond of union, and the exploits of the infant navy helped to develop the sentiment of nationality in 1776-though the process had to be repeated for the next generation. From the beginning it was apparent to one man at least that the political significance of the navy as a bond of union was of no less value than its military and economic service. John Adams forced the Continental Congress to adopt the array of minute-men around Boston as a national army and to place them under the command of a general from Virginia for political reasons, but his task was not complete until the same principles had been applied to the maritime forces of the New England colonies. When that was done, four months after the adoption of the army and twice as long before July 4, 1776, his strenuous plea for independence had a sound material basis. The colonies had raised troops and ships to make war on the King, and they could not continue to profess an allegiance which required their disarmament. Of the loyalty of Adams to his