On the deck of the largest battleship were gathered the officers of the
fleet not only, but nearly every officer on active duty in home waters.
All eyes were turned shoreward and presently as a sharp succession of
shots rang out a sleek, narrow craft with gracefully turned bow came out
from the horizon and advanced swiftly toward the flag-ship. It was the
President's yacht, the _Mayflower_, with the President of the United
States on board. As the yacht swung to a launch was dropped overside,
the gangway lowered and Woodrow Wilson stepped down to the little craft,
bobbing on the waves. There was no salute, no pomp, no official
circumstance, nor anything in the way of ceremony. The President did not
want that.

What he did want was to meet the officers of our navy and give them a
heart-to-heart talk. He did just that. At the time it was early summer
in 1917. In the preceding April a declaration that Germany had been
waging war upon the United States had been made in Congress; war
resolutions had been passed and signed by the President. This on April
6. On April 7 the Navy Department had put into effect plans that had
already been formulated. Much had been done when the President boarded
the flag-ship of the Atlantic Fleet that early summer afternoon. Some of
our destroyers were already at work in foreign waters, but the bulk of
our fighting force was at home, preparing for conflict. And it was this
time that the President chose to meet those upon whom the nation relied
to check the submarine and to protect our shores against the evil
devices of the enemy.

"He went," wrote a narrator of this historic function, "directly to the
business in hand. And the business in hand was telling the officers of
the navy of the United States that the submarine had to be beaten and
that they had to do it. He talked--well, it must still remain a secret,