Excerpt from The Royal Navy, Vol. 6 of 7: A History From the Earliest Times to the Present

Navy from that time onwards until the conclusion of the war with Russia. For it are responsible Colonel Roosevelt, now President of the United States, Sir Clements Markham, and myself.

Colonel Roosevelt, when he kindly promised to write for me the interesting and suggestive chapter which is to-day before the reader, was not even vice-president. He was only President of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York. Even when he completed the chapter, and corrected the proof-sheets of it, he was only assistant-secretary of the United States' Navy. I feel it my duty to mention these facts in order that I may make clear to his countrymen, should they be curious in the matter, that although the name of the President of the United States is affixed to the chapter, the opinions expressed in it are those, rather, of a naval administrator who, be it remembered, when little more than a boy, wrote what was then the best American account of the war which he now describes again, more briefly, it is true, yet by the light of fuller knowledge. Since the days of his service in the Navy Department, Theodore Roosevelt, already sportsman, big-game hunter, zoologist, and politician, has gained equal distinction as a soldier and as a statesman. The sorrowful circumstances which in the last few days have led him so suddenly to the Presidency must, I fear, confine his wonderful energies to one channel only for some time to come. I am very fortunate in having secured, at a comparatively quiet period of his most active career, the assistance of so brilliant, able, and busy a man.

In his book, The Naval War of published when he-was but four-and-twenty, Theodore Roosevelt dealt with the struggle from the exclusively American point of view. He has now attacked the subject from the more purely critical side and I do not hesitate to say that he has produced a piece of work which, while fair-minded and generous to a degree, is as remarkable for its analytical insight as for its impartial plain speaking. He indicates very clearly why the United States beat Great Britain so frequently in the earlier actions of the war, and why, in spite of American successes, the Great Republic, with a navy as it was then constituted and managed, could never hope for decisive victory. The lessons which he deduces from the history of the war should be as valuable to Britons as to his own people: and, believing as I do in the high mission of the races concerned, I trust that both may equally profit by my friend's clear-sighted conclusions.

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