We now have seventeen battle ships appropriated for, of which nine are completed and have been commissioned for actual service.  The remaining eight will be ready in from two to four years, but it will take at least that time to recruit and train the men to fight them.  It is of vast concern that we have trained crews ready for the vessels by the time they are commissioned.  Good ships and good guns are simply good weapons, and the best weapons are useless save in the hands of men who know how to fight with them.  The men must be trained and drilled under a thorough and well-planned system of progressive instruction, while the recruiting must be carried on with still greater vigor.  Every effort must be made to exalt the main function of the officer—­the command of men.  The leading graduates of the Naval Academy should be assigned to the combatant branches, the line and marines.

Many of the essentials of success are already recognized by the General Board, which, as the central office of a growing staff, is moving steadily toward a proper war efficiency and a proper efficiency of the whole Navy, under the Secretary.  This General Board, by fostering the creation of a general staff, is providing for the official and then the general recognition of our altered conditions as a Nation and of the true meaning of a great war fleet, which meaning is, first, the best men, and, second, the best ships.

Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 9, p.6667

The Naval Militia forces are State organizations, and are trained for coast service, and in event of war they will constitute the inner line of defense.  They should receive hearty encouragement from the General Government.

But in addition we should at once provide for a National Naval Reserve, organized and trained under the direction of the Navy Department, and subject to the call of the Chief Executive whenever war becomes imminent.  It should be a real auxiliary to the naval seagoing peace establishment, and offer material to be drawn on at once for manning our ships in time of war.  It should be composed of graduates of the Naval Academy, graduates of the Naval Militia, officers and crews of coast-line steamers, longshore schooners, fishing vessels, and steam yachts, together with the coast population about such centers as lifesaving stations and light-houses.

The American people must either build and maintain an adequate navy or else make up their minds definitely to accept a secondary position in international affairs, not merely in political, but in commercial, matters.  It has been well said that there is no surer way of courting national disaster than to be “opulent, aggressive, and unarmed.”

It is not necessary to increase our Army beyond its present size at this time.  But it is necessary to keep it at the highest point of efficiency.  The individual units who as officers and enlisted men compose this Army, are, we have good reason to believe, at least as efficient as those of any other army in the entire world.  It is our duty to see that their training is of a kind to insure the highest possible expression of power to these units when acting in combination.