US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

The First Thirty Years 41
acquire an excellent “Service reputation” and the three stripes of a commander.
There was some very thin ice which he barely and luckily got over,
while serving on a staff and while in command of a destroyer. Breaking
through thin ice in the Navy during this period was not only dangerous, it
w’as darn likely to be fatal. For during this period, the Navy, many years in
advance of the Army, fostered and adapted the selective system of promotion
for all grades above the rank of lieutenant commander.
As Fleet Admiral King wrote, the 1916 Selection Law had
an immediate effect on the Service, for until that time longevity had been the
yardstick by which naval officers reached high command, The matter of
selecting only the best, and eliminating the others, had been discussed
throughout the Navy for some years.l’z
Since all seagoing Line officers had the same basic education, and the same
fundamentals of military character acquired at the Naval Academy, it was
obvious that to “be amongst the best” for future selection, it was necessary,
at the minimum, to acquire further education and to use it to the maximum.
This Lieutenant (junior grade) Turner set about doing,’”
The Navy had for many years required its officers to take broad gauge
professional examinations upon each promotion to a higher grade. These
tough examinations were highly effective in self education and in keeping
all seagoing Line officers up to date in all professional aspects of their com-
plex careers. The professional examinations covered such fringe matters as
international law and military law, as well as the basic professional require-
ments of theoretical navigation, practical navigation, electrical engineering,
steam engineering, seamanship, ordnance, and gunnery.
But in addition to this self education, postgraduate instruction was open
to an outstanding few in the Bureaus and at Navy Yards. The establishment
of the Naval Postgraduate School in 1912 at the Naval Academy greatly
expanded the opportunity for further formal education of young officers.
After one year of intensive study at Annapolis, the students were sent on to
Harvard, Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of
Chicago, or the University of Michigan for their master’s degree in mechan-
ical, electrical, diesel, radio, chemical, or various aspects of ordnance
engineering.
m King’s Record, p. 103. Reprinted by permission of W .W. Norton & Co., Inc.
lls The Naul Regi~ter, 1914, lists 34 officers who had completed postgraduate courses in
ordnance and 23 who had completed postgraduate courses in engineering, beginning with graduates
of the Class of 1898.