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The Navy as a Fighting Machine by Bradley A. (Bradley Allen) Fiske
page 82 of 349 (23%)
be mutually dependent yet severally independent; and how all must
be made to work as one vast unit, and directed as one vast unit
by the controlling mind toward "the end in view."

The common idea is that an army consists of a number of soldiers,
and a navy of a number of ships. This idea is due to a failure
to realize that soldiers and ships are merely instruments, and
that they are useless instruments unless directed by a trained
intelligence: that the first essential in an army and the first
essential in a navy is mind, which first correctly estimates the
situation, then makes wise plans to meet it, then carries out those
plans; which organizes the men and designs the ships, and then
directs the physical power exertable by the men and the ships toward
"the end in view."

Owing to the enormous mechanical power made available in ships
by the floating properties of water, machinery is more used by
navies than by armies; but this does not mean that machinery can
take the place of men more successfully in navies than in armies,
except in the sense that navies can use more mechanical power.
The abundant use of machines and instruments in navies does not
mean that machinery and instruments can take the place of trained
intelligence--but exactly the reverse. Under the guidance of trained
intelligence, a machine or instrument can perform wonders. But
it is not the machinery that does the wonders; it is the trained
intelligence that devised the instrument or machine, and the trained
intelligence that operates it. Let the trained intelligence err,
or sleep, and note the results that follow. The _Titanic_, a mass
of 40,000 tons, moving through the water at 20 knots an hour, a
marvel of the science and skill of man, crashes into an iceberg,
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