Naval officers, as a group, are no more temperamentally capable of producing the kind of sensational publicity you suggest they produce than they are of sprouting wings and flying.
Furthermore, if they were, they would be no damn good as naval officers. A naval officer is much more than a man with a certain body of technical information. He is a man trained to respond in a certain behavior pattern in which “honor” and “service” have been substituted for economic motivation. I don’t know whether I have convinced you or not, but I can assure you that it would be almost impossible to find an officer who has spent his entire adult life in the fleet who could put over the sensationalism you suggest. It is about like asking a priest to desecrate the sacrament.
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Certainly the navy has specific secrets. In peacetime they are limited to such things as the details of weapons (and occasionally the existence of a weapon), codes and ciphers, the numerical details of gunnery scores, the in-sides of certain instruments, and similar details in which we are trying to keep a little ahead of the next. You spoke of “official spies” being shown things which are kept from the public. Who handed you that piece of guff? I know what you mean-foreign officers. Unless they are allies, they don’t see anything that newsreel men don’t see. I remember once being ordered to chaperone a British naval officer. I was admonished never to let him out of my sight and was given a list of things he must not see. I even went -into the head with him…
Of course, in wartime practically everything is secret-and a damned good thing! But the essential matters on which a civilian could make up his mind whether or not we need a big navy aren’t secret, never have been secret, and by their nature can’t be secret. Geographical strategy, for example, and the relative strengths of the fleets of various nations. Jane’s Fighting Ships is not a particularly reticent book, and I know you have seen it. Navy yards aren’t hard to get into. In normal times, naval vessels run boats for any visitor who wants to come aboard — and the ship’s police has a weekly headache to make sure none get into the fire-control stations and similar places.
I am completely bewildered as to what you mean by the “hush hush” attitude of the navy. I would certainly appreciate some facts.
Lots of civilians are necessarily entrusted with certain naval secrets. I’ve sailed with many a G.E., Westing-house, and AT&T engineer. The gadget of mine that was taken over by the fleet was developed by one of your father’s engineers. I doubt if he personally had any occasion to know about it, but don’t ask him about it and don’t try to conjecture what it might be. Don’t mention it to anyone, lest they do a little guessing. By mentioning the class of engineer that developed it I have shown greater confidence in you than I have in any other civilian. Let it stand that it is a proper military secret and that we hope that we are the only navy using it.
It is quite possible that a request for a piece of information is turned down when the questioner can see no reason why it should not be told. To that I can say only that the officers refusing to part with the information are the only possible judges as to whether or not public welfare is involved. Being human, they can make errors of judgment, but no one can judge for them. Obviously-if you hold a secret, I have no way of judging whether or not you should share it with me. Consequently, the responsibility for the decision rests entirely with you. A perfectly innocent request for information can be met with what appears to be an arbitrary refusal. How can the questioner know?
But, having been in the navy, and having held both confidential and secret information, I can assure you that it is not the policy of the navy to go out of its way to be mysterious. Decidedly not! On the contrary, it usually seemed to me that we were too frank, aboveboard, and open. It was too easy to get too close to really hush-hush stuff, to such an extent that it used to worry me.