106 MILITARY AND TECHNICAL CONSIDERATION 
same amount of money). I was very careful not to say in the paper that, if you had money 
“regardless,” you would spend it on Wyomings instead of Pennsylvanias. I do say that if 
you have a given amount of money only, you had better spend it on Pennsylvanias than 
on Wyomings. 
There is an altogether different argument, and one that I hope some line officer—and 
the line officer is the only man I know qualified to write on this subject—will some day give 
us, and that is, considering the money expended, do you want Wyomings, or do you want 
Pennsylvanias? It is altogether a different subject, a very different argument, and will in- 
volve a different paper. 
As regards the divisibility of forces, I have nothing further to say, except the general 
remark that the divisibility of forces will come into the main argument of whether you 
want a lot of Wyomings or a few Pennsylvanias. It is part of that kind of a paper, and 
not part of this paper. It isa very important point, and it should form a large part of the 
argument in favor of whether we want a considerable number of smaller ships or a few large 
ones. It is most important both from the strategical and tactical side. 
As regards concentration of risk, I am very much obliged to Captain Hovgaard for 
having bolstered up my argument in that respect. I firmly believe, as he so well brought 
out, that in time of peace you have distinctly less risks with the larger ship; as Mr. Riggs so 
well brought out, you have a larger unit, you have a much more expensive unit, and you do 
not even try to get the ship into the smaller harbor. Knowing you cannot go there, you do 
not attempt it, and with these very big ships you do not try to go into places where you can- 
not go, and where there should not be occasion to go, even in war time. 
As a matter of actual statistics, I believe it can be shown that the large ships are ac- 
tually absent from their station with the fleet, due to casualties and minor repairs, much 
less time for a ship than the smaller ship. I mean by that, taking Captain Hovgaard’s simile 
of the eight ships and the sixteen ships, that while the sixteen ships have twice as many risks 
and run twice as many chances to be out of the fleet, yet, also, the eight ships are con- 
structed along stronger lines, their auxiliaries and accessories are stronger, the scantlings 
are heavier and better supported, and they do not get out of commission and go wrong as 
readily as they do in the case of the smaller ships. 
As regards the point of better protection which Captain Hovgaard brought out, I was 
hoping he would reach up my sleeve and get one more argument I saved from the paper, in 
case some one tried to find fault with the arguments in the summary. It was suggested to 
me by Naval Constructor Snow and it is that, as regards a given expenditure, it takes less 
auxiliaries to protect the larger ships, and you do not have to spend so much money in 
destroyers, hospital ships, colliers, etc. If you have eight Pennsylvanias it does not take 
more than four destroyers each to look after them. If you have eight Kentuckies it takes 
the same. If you have a fleet of smaller units, it takes a larger number of auxiliary units, 
and the expenditure for these can be tacked on to the battleship units, as they must be 
bought and paid for from the same money the battleships are bought with. 
As regards Captain Niblack’s criticisms, I want also to acknowledge my indebtedness to 
his previous papers. I did not put at the end of my paper any set of references to which I 
had referred. If I had done so, it would be almost as long as the paper itself. The paper 
required the better part of a whole winter in its preparation, and references, as you will 
imagine, to a paper attempting as large a scope as that, would be altogether out of order 
if you attempted to include them in the paper. 
