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A FRIENDLY BOUT

Spectators on the U. S. S. Bushnell are having as much fun as the boxers.

SCHOOL HOUR ABOARD A BATTLESHIP

It was in accordance with this policy, and at my direction, that the General Board developed the continuous building program, comprising 157 war vessels, later known as the "three-year program," which was authorized by Congress in the next naval appropriation act. Presented in my annual report for 1915, it was strongly urged by President Wilson in his message to Congress, and he sounded the keynote in his speech at St. Louis, February 3, 1916, when he declared: "There is no other Navy in the world that has to cover so great an area of defense as the American Navy, and it ought, in my judgment, to be incomparably the most adequate Navy in the world."

With all the Navy striving to build up and expand the service, I turned attention to other forces that might be utilized. War had become a science; inventions were playing a vastly greater part than ever before, and on July 7, 1915, I wrote to Mr. Thomas A. Edison, suggesting the formation of a board of eminent inventors and scientists, and asking if he would consent to become its head. The idea appealed to Mr. Edison, as it did to the various scientific and engineering societies, and in a few weeks the Naval Consulting Board became a reality. Composed of men of eminence and distinction, this was the first of those organizations of patriotic civilians which, when war came, rendered such signal service to the nation.