VICE-ADMIRAL BARON VON TEGETTHOFF.
There is a certain tendency in the minds of those who are most earnest in the cause of naval education to confuse the means with the end, and to imagine that all that is wanted is a competent knowledge of such science as mathematics, physics, geography, astronomy, navigation even, or pilotage, gunnery, or naval architecture. In reality, and so far as the duties of a naval officer are concerned, all these are but branches, however important, each in its different degree, of that one science, the art of war, which it is the business of his life to practise. From this point of view, the raison d'être of a ship of war is her power of fighting; that of her captain is the skill to use that power. The captain of a ship of war is therefore called on to possess not merely the skill of the navigator, of the seaman, of the engineer, of the gunner, or nowadays of the electrician, but of all together, directed by the knowledge of how and when to use each to the best advantage so as to attain the desired end. As a matter of first necessity, young officers are specially instructed in the details of those several branches a knowledge of each of which must be joined together in the perfect commander; but it is not by that detailed instruction alone that they become fitted for the duties which promotion will lay on them. Where the official instruction ends, the higher education really begins. From that time, it is the man's own experience, and reading, and thought, and judgment, which must fit him for the requirements of higher rank.
It is a trite proverb that experience teaches even fools. But needful personal experience is not always to be had, or the cost of its lessons may be ruinous. The wise man will learn from the experience of others: and just as a naval officer learns navigation from the theories and practice of centuries, embodied in his Inman or his Raper, or as he learns seamanship from the traditions of old, whether handed down by word of mouth, or recorded by Darcy Lever, or Boyd, or Nares; so also will he learn the art of commanding ships or fleets from the history of his great predecessors, *31 of what they have done, and how they have done it. But this is a higher and graver study than all that has gone before. Certain fixed rules can be laid down for observing the sun or for regulating the chronometers. The different points of seamanship are learned and understood by the average boatswain, as well as by his commanding officer. A given battery will send an electric current through a known resistance. Steam at a given pressure will drive the ship at a known speed; and the measures necessary for obtaining that pressure and that speed are acquired by hundreds. But the science of war is not one of mere rule and precedent; for changing conditions change almost every detail, and that too in a manner which it is often impossible to foresee.
The commanding officer who hopes to win, not merely to tumble into distinction, must therefore be prepared beforehand for every eventuality. The knowledge of what has happened already will not only teach him by precedent; so far as that is possible, it is easy, and within the compass of every-day abilities; it will also suggest to him things that have never yet been done; things in the planning of which he may rise to the height of genius, in the executing of which he may rise to the height of grandeur. And it is in this way that the exact story of difficulties overcome,, of brave defence or brilliant achievement, interesting in itself as a story of gallantry or heroism, becomes, to the naval officer, a study of real and technical importance. It was, I may believe, some such ideas as these which determined Captain Colomb, shortly after the Austro-Italian war of 1866, to bring before the United Service Institution a paper which he aptly named "Lessons from Lissa."[1] But the conditions of Captain Colomb's lecture led him to devote the short time at his disposal to discussing some of the details of the battle — then only imperfectly known — rather than to giving a complete and connected account of it, or entering at all into the personal, political, or even
- ↑ Journal of the United Service Institution, vol. xi., p. 104.
