National Republican., 1883-01-19
PROMOTION BY SELECTION.
The Need Of an Incentive to Encourage Energy,
Activity and Efficiency.
How the System has Affected the Engllsi,
Navy.
10 me Eatnr

A pamphlet has lately been somewhat dis
tributed stating that "a special reference to
the subject of Promotion by selection in tho
naval service may not be inappropriate at q
timo when this vicious principle is being
strongly advocated by few ambitious officers
unwilling to follow the safe system of promo
tion by seniority @ which has hereto
fore produced excellent results"
The authors are certainly correct in stat
ing that discussion is not inappropriate; rs
to whether the principle is vicious, there may
be other opinions than those expressed in the
pamphlet. The excellent results" of the
present system we fail to see. That at this
date, with selection adopted in every efficient
naval force in the world, with our own navy
moribund, as tho present writer profoundly
believes, chiefly through tho fact that the
incapable and tho inefficient rise to high
place and power equally with the
officer who attempts to do something
for tho service and business, is one of the
plainest evidences that we have boon living
out of the world-that we have been in a
somewhat Chinese scclusion apart from the
mental activity which has gone on elsewhere.
We in America have no one with whom to
contrast ourselves. We arc 5000 miles from
the nearest neighbor with whom comparison
can he made. We have not the intellectual
of n number Of other clever and able nations
keenly on the lookout TO see that no intellec-
tual step Is made by one which is not at once
examined and taken in hand by the others.
We thus, in the interval between 1865 and the
present have been, in the navy, in torpid
state as far as naval change Is CON
cerned.. challenge tho authors of
this pamphlet to place their hand
upon single Improvement which
has been advocated liS the service While
Europe, not to speak of Brazil, Chill, and the
Argentine Confederation, and even China.
havo changed not only the material of which
their ships have been built, their form, their
armament, we can point as the best products
of this long interval, TO q few wooden craft,
steaming ut best but IL or 12 knots, with an
tiquatod, inefficient guns, mounted, with few
exceptions, upon carriages still manipulated
with the primitive and barbaric handspilSe.
We need not complain that this state of affairs
Is due to congress or unwilingncss to grant
appropriations for the service. Tho blanc
rests upon our own shoulders. We havon never
formulated naval policy. We have never
mode an effort until within year to keep
step with the rest of the world in all the
manifold changes which have brought about
the tremendous revolution which has made
the ships carrying our flag rs antiquated praC-
tically as would be tho old Constitution and
Ohio if they were sent to do the service ours
are now performing. If naval duty in peace
Is simply to show the flag, these can do il quite
ms well as can the Lancaster and Brooklyn,
and if it came to u question of force the Com
stitution would be no less powerless against
many scores of powerful foreign war vessels
than is our present European flagship, which
can neither fight nor run away.
Say what the writers of the pamphlet re-
ferred to may, one of tho vital reasons of this
ineiliciency and inertness has been the secure
fl,nE st,nt1 a1,
such as they should be or not pay and pro-
motion would be as secure and rapid as if they
were of the latest and most advanced type.
If we want the profession active; if we want
advance, energy, activity, there must be in
centive. 1t holds with the American as with
the Englishmau or Frcnchman. Human ma
ture is the samo in ourselves as it is in other
nations, and If VIC want to rise above the
mere perfunctory fullillment of certain
stcreotyped duties, there must be the feeling
TINT there will be a reward for effort as an
active incentive, and the negative incentive
that at least those who have become mori-
bund will not stand in the way.
The English navy, recognizing how great
ly rewards act as the inducement to study
and effort, have various rewards for special
requirements such as tho Beaufort Tcsti-
monial, and Stanhope medal for special quail
ticatiOns as interpreter or rs gunnery or tor
pedo officer, or scholarship at Greenwich and
when three first-class certificates arc taken,
Tin gunnery, navigation, and seamanship)
after study as an acting sublicutenant mt
Greenwich, the promotion TO lieutenant dates
back to the date of the examination for pass
ing from midshipman to sublieutcnant In
other words, he slSips grade and is advanced
four years. ThcnCeiOrward in every grade
excepting in passing from captain to rear
admiral, promotion is by selection. When
one becomes captain, his promotion to rear
admiral is sure, unless he attans SO before he
reaches the head of the captains list and a
vacancy occurs, or umlcss'there are other cir
cumstances, such as declining sea service, &C.,
which intervene.
The result Of this thorough-and say what
any one may, on the whole, fair-secction
has been to give tho English navy an un-
eXceptionable list of captains. One may be
sure that man found in this list is not q
common or mediocre one. Family or politi-
cal influence, however great, is not going TO
act as the handspring of these various sclec-
tions. France, Germany Sweden, Denmark,
in word, all other nations have some system
by which the working and active and ener-
gctiC man is advanced, and the sluggard left
in the rear. That it is impossible to devise
some tail means among ourselves by which
some such end may be attained is an insult
to our common sense and esprit de- corps.
There certainly should bc in every
grade without exception some per.
centHge of officers advanced for merit
only. The scheme which it seems to the
writer could meet with fewcst objections
would be somewhat rs the following: All
promotions from ensign to master to be by Sc
lection (the grade ofmidshipman ailoat should
be abolished-its retention under present cir
cumstances is an absurdity) half from master
to lieutenant; third from lieutenant, lieu
tenant commander, and commander, and a
fourth from the grades above. 1t is in reality
a much more important thing TO insure hav-
ing an at least partially selected body of COM
manding officers than to select only the ad'
mirals ola navy, rs, given thoroughly elliciept,
jealous, energetic, studOus, and able com
manders, the ability of the admirals, in what
ever way these latter are finally made, Is
pretty well assured.
But there must hc incentive in the earlier
years Of professional life to assure having a
studiOus, wide-awalle and jealous class in
whom such habits OF study and Jealous effort
have become fixed and incentive of any
kind can be no more thoroughly CilACed than
in our present method.
The authors OF tho pamphlet seem perfectly
satisfied, not only with the past, but with the
present. They complain of the failure of the
board of 1866 to accomplish its object. lis
work was done, and done efficiently The
trouble was that congress undid IL by rein
stating many of those who had been thus set
aside.
The pamphlet refers to the yaulting am
bitiOn, to the self seeking, to the unscrupu-
lOus persons who are desirous of self advance
ment in thus desiring some means of rcCog-
nizing merit and efficiency, and asks IL "any
one having the interests of the service nj