like ships and men, were limited in quantity; and it was necessary to apportion them as deliberately and as economically as the seemingly more important munitions of warfare. The Germans were constantly changing their tactics; sometimes they would make their concentrations in a certain area; while at other times their strength would appear in another field far distant from the first. These changes made it necessary that we should in each case readjust our forces to counteract the enemy's tactics. It
was a vital necessity that these readjustments should be made immediately when the enemy's changes of tactics became known. It is evident that the element necessary to success was that the earliest and most complete possible information should be followed by prompt decision and action; and it is manifest that these requirements could have been satisfied only by a council which was fully informed and which was on the spot momentarily ready to act. The Allied Naval Council responded to all these requirements. One of my first duties, after my arrival, was to attend one of these councils in Paris ; and immediately afterward the meetings became much more frequent.
Not only were the proceedings interesting because of the vast importance of the issues which were discussed, but because they brought me into intimate contact with some of the ablest minds in the European navies. Over the first London councils Admiral Jellicoe presided. I have already given my first impressions of this admirable sailor; subsequent events only increased my respect for his character and abilities. An English woman once described Admiral Jellicoe as "a great gentleman"; it is a description upon which I can hardly improve. The First Lord, Sir Eric Geddes, though he was by profession an engineer and had been transferred from the business of building roads and assuring the communications behind the armies in France to become the civilian head of the British navy, acquired, in an astonishingly short time, a mastery of the details of naval administration. Sir Eric is a type of man that we like to think of as American; perhaps the fact that he had received his business training in this country, and had served an apprenticeship on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, strengthened this impression. The habitues of the National Sporting Club in London—of whom I was one—used to look reproachfully
