Initiative In The Navy.

New York Times 100 years ago today, June 5, 1913:
    A man who enlists in the navy should have a chance to learn a trade, with all the modern advantages of equipment and instruction. That, in substance, is the gospel Secretary Daniels preached at the Naval War College at Newport. Despite the alluring advertisements at the recruiting stations, those who man our warships have had no training in engineering, electrical and mechanical, or in carpentry, or in other trades, save what was needed to teach them their routine duties aboard ship. Of the men are to have real opportunities to become useful citizens in time of peace, they must be placed under progressive, well-educated officers.
    Mr. Daniels finds the naval officers bound down by regulations, their initiative checked and fettered. If he will look into the curriculum of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, he will find that too much of the young officers' training is of the formal, deadening sort. It has been difficult, almost impossible of late, to resist a tendency within the Naval Academy to reject the instruction of men who come with fine equipment from the leading universities and technological schools. Old naval officers, men who never taught, have been recalled from their ships to administer the courses with outworn textbooks and antiquated methods. The midshipmen will hardly be benefited by such a policy, and while it is effective the service will suffer the hurt of which Secretary Daniels complains.