No better man for this post could have been selected. A graduate of the
Naval Academy in the class of 1880, his career in the navy had been one
sequence of brilliant achievement. As naval attaché at Paris and
Petrograd, in the course of his distinguished service he had ample
opportunities for the study of European naval conditions, and later he
was intrusted with the important duty of developing gunnery practice and
marksmanship in our battle-fleet. The immense value of his work in this
respect is an open book. His instincts were wholly scientific, and with
neither fear nor favor he carried forward our record for marksmanship
until it was second to that of no navy in the world. The one mark upon
his record is an indiscreet speech made in London, before the European
War occurred, in which he stated that blood was thicker than water, and
that at the necessary moment the navies of the United States and of
Great Britain would be found joined in brotherly co-operation. England
liked that speech a lot, but Germany did not, and Washington was rather
embarrassed. Beginning, however, with April of 1917, that speech
delivered several years previously was recalled as perfectly proper,
pat, and apropos. There can be no doubt that his constructive advice,
suggestion, and criticism were of enormous benefit to the British and
the French, and by the same token exceedingly harmful to the murderous
submarine campaign of Germany, As evidence of the regard in which the
admiralty of Great Britain held this American officer, witness the fact
that upon one occasion when the British commander-in-chief of naval
operations on the Irish coast was compelled to leave his command for a
period, Admiral Sims was nominated by the admiralty to serve as chief of
the combined forces until the British commander returned.

But this mission of Admiral Sims, and the eventual despatch of submarine
flotillas to the war zone, were but two phases of the enormous problem
which confronted the Navy Department upon the outbreak of hostilities.