Arizona republican., 1905-06-26

the fight was won by young men. even
 if their premises were not already we'll known" Mir Benjamin goes oa
 to intimate. though he does not quite say. that American naval attacks would lack dash and vigor because the
 American navy is officered by old men.
 He continues: we are not properly
 educating the younger men because
 we are giving to these old men the ex- | perience in command. The first thing
 that We should do in the event of war
 would be to relieve them and put
 young men in their places. It is bad
 enough not to be training command
 CTS of vessels, but worse not to be | training admiralS; for to command a i fleet or a squadron requires capabil-
 ities widely different from those which
 the commander of single ship must have. It is not true that a good cap- tain necessarily makes a good admiral The only way to find out whether he will or not is to try him. Drastic as 1 it is. there seems to be but one plain course to pursue, and that is to re-
 move at once from the active list of the. navy every officer of command rank who is over fifty years of age and promote their juniors to their places. Even then the admirals and captains will have had more than d quarter of a century's service. There is no lesson of the recent great bat tie which is plainer than this If the next war must find us with incompe- tent men in the navy it is better that they should be filling vacancies in the lower grades than among the com manders. who directly hold in their keeping the honor and safety of the nation"
 MT. Park Benjamin is an acknowl- edged naval expert. Moreover he is not presumptuous youth. nor any other kind Of youth, with youths nat ural eagerness that the old fogies shall be showed out of the way to give youth a chance to show what it can do. His views command respectful considera- tion. But to the uninstrueted layman some things that MT. Benjamin has ignored seem also worth consideration before the naval authorities adopt his suggestion that all the commanding officers of the American navy shall forthwith be metaphorically chloro- 1 formed.
 The oriental is commonly believed l to age faster than the westerner and : there seems to be some ground for that belief. An American of ffty-five : may be no older, in any essential, than | the Japanese of forty five. During the | Spanish war the then commanding of | fcers of the American navy were no younger than the present commanding officers are now, and the American naval attacks at Manila and Santiago were not especially lacking in dash and vigor. Is it entirely certain that the comparative youth of the Japa- nese naval commanders is not rather the result of accident than of settled policy? Japans is rather a young navy. The Japanese apparently have . no prejudice in favor of youthful commanders on land. Oyama and his division commanders are not young men. Is there any reason why old men are less it for sea service than for land service? One would think IL would be the other way about. The naval commander, under ordinary cir | cumstances, is better lodged, better | fed, better taken care of generally and | is subjected to less physical strain | than the military commander.