THE CONDITION OF THE NAVY
The Navy from Within. By Vice-Admiral K. G. B. Dewar. (Gollancz. I 5S .) ADMIRAL DEWAR'S story of his thirty-eight years' service in the Navy is not so -much an autobiography as an indictment. He is convinced that the Navy is suffering from severe ills, most of which spring from its defective system of training officers. That system, he holds, is unintelligently designed and based on wrong principles ; it concentrates on unimpor- tant technicalities and ignores essentials ; and it operates to suppress all initiative or individuality, so that the officers it produces have no opportunity to acquire qualities of leader- ship or understanding of true discipline. Discipline is re- garded solely as recognition of the infallibility of senior officers, and none who displays any intellectual independence, or in- dulges in criticism of established theories or customs, is likely to achieve advancement. The obscurantism thus enthroned was responsible during the War for all the failures —e.g., Gallipoli, Jutland, the German submarine campaign of 1917 ; and it is responsible now for a faulty system of discipline which calls urgently for reform.
This indictment Admiral Dewar supports with illustrations drawn from the whole of his naval career. The training of cadets in H.M.S. Britannia ' when he entered the Navy in 1893 was " lacking in any breath of real educational influence "; yet the system which replaced it in a few years was even worse. As a midshipman he did only " donkey work," " of no practical value." The training of a specialist gunnery officer which he underwent a few years later " tended to kill real thinking." Gunnery officers afloat were " walking in dark- ness." The Admiralty " seemed to be supremely ignorant of deficiencies which were apparent to the latest-joined midship- men." The work of the War College, to which he was appointed after his early promotion to commander, " typified the lack of perspective and balance in our educational system." At the Admiralty during the latter part of the War he saw its defects at close quarters. Afloat on the American Station after the War he found in his midshipmen " an astounding incapacity for independent thought." The " Royal Oak' case," in which ten years ago he was one of the central figures, occupies the greater part of two chapters which, however, rather fail to convince because, though the ex parte criticism is detailed, many of the events and documents criticised are taken as known.
All this makes melancholy reading ; but the very fact that the general impression given is one of unrelieved gloom stimu- lates closer examination of the indictment. The narrative seems to prove too much, and the closer examination reveals a tendency to fault-finding which amounts almost to an obsession. To give but a few examples, on one page there is a complaint that junior officers were not given the oppor- tunity for real responsible work at sea; on another, a com- plaint that he was given only an acting sub-lieutenant to assist him in the destroyer he commanded in the annual manoeuvres. He notes on his return to the gunnery school after service afloat, that most of the undesirable features of which he complained during his earlier sojourn there had been eliminated ; but he gives no credit for any advance. In the course of his indictment of the system of training, he quotes an adverse report made by the American Professor Soley, who was sent to investigate European practice in this respect ; but he omits to mention that that report was made in 1875, twenty years before his own experience began.
The fact is that the period of Admiral Dewar's naval ser- vice was one of renaissance. The Navy was awakening to the facts that, on the one hand, it had fallen behind the times, and that on the other, it had forgotten some first principles. Admiral Dewar himself contributed in no small measure to that renaissance, but so far from being victimised for his advanced and Independent ideas, his advancement was rapid and his career distinguished and successful—all but its end. But it is true that the advance of ideas was neither as far nor as fast as he would have wished ; and the sweeping indict- ment which he builds on that fact is evidence of an intolerance which destroys his claim to be considered either an entirely reliable witness or an impartial judge.
There are many of Admiral Dewar's views which those well qualified to judge will consider sound, well-founded and worthy of serious investigation. But the weight of his charges and criticisms is destroyed by overstatement, and by the im- plication which emerges in every chapter, almost on every page of the book, that the author has always been right and
most others in the Navy wrong. H. G. THURSFIELD.
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