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Show I THE NAVAL BLUNDERS - .i'II' ! President Wilson had the right conception as to how our navy should perform when, during the war, he sent a cablegram to Rear ; Admiral Sims, advising that our ships do something mere than play a secondary part to Great Britain's naval policy of helplessness. "In my view," said the President, "this is not a time for prudence, prud-ence, but for boldness, even at the cost of great losses." This was when the submarine was making great headway and the British admiralty seemed committed to an extremely conservative conserva-tive policy, fearing to venture except along a fixed rule of minimized mini-mized dangers. The lessons which Nelson had taught were serving to no purpose. pur-pose. There was no dash in evidence and President Wilson in his, cablegram said: "From the beginning of the war I have been greatly surprised at the failure of the British admiralty to use Great Britain's great naval superiority Tn an effective way. In the presence of the present submarine emergency they are helpless to the point of panic. "Every plan we suggest they reject for some reason of prudence. In my view this is not the time for prudence, but for boldness even at the cost of great losses." Gallipoli evidently had a depressing effect on the British admiralty. ad-miralty. The attack on the Dardanelles and the dismal failure, written writ-ten in streams of blood, took all the initiative out of those who were directing the naval forces. Our naval officers, under a similar nr. perience and suffering public condemnation, might have slumped as did the British in naval strategy. But the American commanders at sea should not have fallen into the same slough of despond, as they had experienced no scars of battle and this country, unlike 1 England, could venture at sea without facing the possibility of de- H feat bringing overwhelming calamity. Farragut, who disregarded the torpedoes in the Mississippi, and H Dewey, who steamed past Corregidor in order to enter Manila' bay, threw prudence to the wind and, by daring and risking, gained ad-vantages ad-vantages which thrilled the soul of America. , H Later in the war, the British sea forces took the ffensivc in a H most aggressive way and eventually succeeded in reducing the sub-marine sub-marine losses to within the limits of the combined recuperative pow-j pow-j ers of the ship building yards of Great Britain and America i |