 So, it was maybe three or four months ago when Dr. Cook was starting to put together the agenda for this symposium that he approached and said, Admiral, how would you like to make a presentation on a topic that we've been discussing over the past weeks leading up to that encounter? And I have to admit that after Dr. Snyder's presentation, and then what I thought were some very, very good questions and dialogue that you generated with him, that idea of making a presentation up here in front of y'all sounded like a whole lot better an idea back then than it does right now. But as I mentioned in the opening comments, the idea here today is to broaden your framework and your thinking about ethics and to do so from the lens or through the lens of the profession so that we can all think, reason, and then lead more effectively as a professional. And that's what's led to the presentation that I'd like to work through today. So for about the next 40 minutes or so, my objective is to try to convince you to find time or make time to read a book, something new and unique, right? And I recognize that it probably won't take place while you continue and finish your education here at the college. But there was a book that popped up on my radar screen about seven months ago that I found incredibly compelling. And like I say, I want to convince you to read it. I think that it should be on the bookshelf certainly of every maritime member, every member of the maritime profession of arms, if not everyone within the military. And that book is the rules of the game. Just a quick show of hand that before I get into this, how many folks in here are familiar with the book? There's just a few, okay, that's good. That is good to know. So this book was written by a British naval historian in 1996, Andrew Gordon. And it is a book about the Battle of Jutland and the Royal Navy as it executed its operations in the Battle of Jutland. And I would, I'd hope that, here we are in the context of an ethics symposium that you might be thinking, so what the hell is how, talking about a World War I history book and an ethics symposium for. I think that there are, I think that there are three good reasons. The first is that the centenary anniversary of this battle is coming up at the end of next month. So May 31st, 2016 will be the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of Jutland. So it's a timely topic. Second, this is much, much more than a history book. And as we'll talk a little bit, it started as a history book, but it's much, much more than a book about the history of the Battle of Jutland. At the end of it, it becomes a very compelling read about the profession and the ethical responsibilities of the members of the profession and we'll tease out some of those responsibilities as we move along. And then third, I just thought it was absolutely fascinating as you work your way through this book, it highlights very, very clearly this enduring tension between obedience and compliance and judgment and initiative in all professions, not just in the military. And because it, as it lays that out, I think it's got some important implications for all of us as we get ready to perhaps depart Newport and press on into other roles of leadership. You'll note that I do not nearly have the command of this subject that all of our other presenters today have, so I will continue to refer back to my notes back over here. But before we jump into the book itself and to the lessons that come from it, I want to talk just shortly about how did this thing end up on my radar screen. So one of the very, very best aspects of this job here is the ability to interact with all of the significant leaders that popped through the doors of the Naval War College. And last fall, some of you may remember, but General retired James Mattis was here for a lecture of opportunity. Well, General Mattis and I had an opportunity to have a short office call before he went down to the lecture. And in the office call, we were talking about leader development. And one of the things I was most interested in knowing and having watched him exercise his leadership was if he had any thoughts, if he had any kind of direction or references that we may look to here at the college as we help the Navy shape its own efforts in leader development and leader development in the face of the challenge that we said today that I think somebody when you were mentioning the challenges we face today. So are we best preparing naval leaders today for warfare, not from sea, but at sea against a, you'll hear Admiral Swift talk about peer competitors, not just near peer competitors in an age of precision strike and in an age of a complex operational environment. That was the question that we wanted to pop out to General Mattis. And he had an incredibly quick response to me. Many of y'all might know you. He doesn't like it, but he is infamously known as the warrior monk. He's got a personal library that would probably exceed the combined books of most of us, most all of us in here. But he said very, very quickly, Gardner, you've got to read Rules of the Game. It is the story of what happened to the Royal Navy between Nelson Netrefalger and Jellico at Jutland. So I was like, okay, Jellico. I kind of remember Jellico and then Jutland were old battles. Okay, sir, aye, aye. So we went down to the lecture and he gave a great lecture of opportunity. But I went home that night, got on Amazon and ordered the book. And I was fired up because I did the quick thing where it's going to show up just two days later. And sure enough, I got home from work that night and the package was there. And I ripped it open thinking that I'm going to get this like maddest inspired recommendation of these deep lessons about leader development and be able to start applying them into what we're thinking here. And lo and behold, this thing showed up. And so when you've got the bibliography and references and stuff. So it's sitting up, it's over 700 pages. It's about a pound and three quarters and about three inches thick. And I have a hard time finding good discretionary reading time, much like y'all do too. So even though my dashes of this quick leadership read were just crushed, I decided just to wade into the book. And I'll tell you what, I was absolutely happy that I did. An incredibly compelling read. And when I finished it, I knew that I had read a book that I wish that I had read it years and years ago, 1996. Earlier if it had been written earlier than that. But I had read a very, very important document that reinforces in me much of what I've learned as I have been to use Martin Cook's word, Snyderized, to refine and understand my own thinking about my role as a steward of our profession. So, excuse me. So the focus this morning is going to be on this book and on Gordon's argument. But what I'd like to do is spend a little bit of time putting it into the context. And that is the battle itself. I think that that's worthwhile because it is an incredibly important naval battle in history. And it's appropriate to just review some of that key information about the battle. So that's it, yeah. The recommendation. Thank you, sir. So on 31 May 1996, 1916. So just shy of two years into the war, the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, it was led by Sir John Jellico, stationed at a scapiflo. At the time it was the largest and most sophisticated Navy sailing the seas. Now, a portion of the Grand Fleet, the Battle Cruiser Fleet, was led by a subordinate, Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty, here, just at Rossite. And that's just south of Edinburgh. So the Battle Cruisers, I didn't know until I went through this book, but of note, they were faster than battleships. Okay, but they lacked, they were similar in firepower. They were faster but lacked some of the armament. And the general conups for these ships thought that the combination of their firepower and their speed would overcome the shortcomings associated with lack of protection. So the German High Seas Fleet was led by Vice Admiral Reinhardt Scheer, and it was out of Wilhelmshaven, Germany, right down here. Now the German Navy had a very difficult task at this point. They needed to break Britain's blockade of their country and reestablish critical sea lines of communication and maritime trade to support their war efforts. Now they were numerically inferior, but in many cases they were technologically on par with the British fleet. But in that situation, Scheer knew that he couldn't take on Jellico and the Grand Fleet as a whole. And his primary objective was to set a trap for the Grand Fleet, lure a portion of the Grand Fleet into an action in the North Sea, engage and destroy them. So back looking at England, Britain placed an incredible demand on its Navy. At a minimum, what Jellico was looking at was he needed to maintain control of the sea and enable the critical lifelines of maritime trade into Britain. Ideally, and in the tradition of Nelson, the Royal Navy also longed for an opportunity to meet their enemy on the high seas and deliver them a decisive blow. So last week we had the opportunity to meet Nick Jellico, so the great grandson of Sir John Jellico. He presented a, he made a presentation at our regional alumni symposium with our European partners that have graduated from the college in years past. Now he's been an organizer in the UK for portions of the Centenary Celebration of Jutland, and he's created a website that's got a lot of great, great material on the Battle of Jutland. Instead of me talking about what took place in the battle, what I'm going to do is take an extract of a 24-minute video that he's entitled, Understanding the Battle. So we're going to look at, it's just a little bit over 17 minutes. It's kind of long, but I think the combination of the photos, the graphic overlays, and then some of his narratives will provide some good context for the discussions that we'll have next. But it'll also, I think, just an important part of your education here at the War College. Now as we do, I'd ask you to pay particular attention to some of the narrator's comments at about the 10-minute mark, if you're timing it, about three-quarters of the way through what we're going to watch. When he talks about the culture of the Navy and what had happened to it in the decades that led up to this battle. So for about the next 17 minutes, enjoy this, and we'll pop back up and talk about the book and Gordon's argument. At the end of May 1916, both the British and Germans planned to send a large battle group to a position roughly 80 miles west of the northern tip of Denmark. They each planned a trap for the other. With early but hazy intelligence on the German sortie, the British left Harbour first. The British ground fleet coming from its northern bases at Skapeflöen Kromiti, the battle cruisers joining from Russaeth further south. It was a huge force, silently sailing into the night. The British were on a direct collision course with HIPAA scouting group of five battle cruisers. They were steaming roughly 60 miles ahead of Scheer and the main battle fleet. Only chants brought the two battle cruiser groups together. A small Danish steamer, the Enjo Fjord, was seen by each other's scouts. Simultaneously, they went to investigate, and in doing so fell upon each other, firing what would become the opening shots of the Battle of Jutland. BD ships were faster. They could shoot further and use heavier shell. In his mind, he could easily deal with HIPAA's five battle cruisers. BD was a fox hunting man and loved the chase. He showed extraordinary courage under fire, but Jellica was always concerned with one thing, that BD would too easily be pulled into such a trap. BD immediately raced south, wanting to cut HIPAA off from his route home, but in his haste to close with his adversary, he may have made a mistake. He left behind four of the most modern and powerful ships on the sea that day, Rare Amel, Hugh Evan Thomas' four 15-inch gunned Queen Elizabeth Klaus battleships. A question that was asked, even by many battle cruiser officers, was why BD had not opened fire earlier. He had the range advantage, and HIPAA had always feared the period when his ships would be in a danger zone, unable to return effective fire, but being hit by British fire. 3.48 on the afternoon of May 31st, HIPAA gave the order, open fire. His flagship, the Lutzauer, the guns roared. Within three salvos, deadly German fire was straddling the British ships, and within three minutes, the line had been hit twice. Initial British fire badly overshot the German line, maybe because of the bad visibility. British fire allocation had also been badly muddled. BD had intended that Lutzauer should be targeted by both the Lion and Princess Royal, and that worked, but the Tiger and Queen Mary mistakenly targeted one ship too far back. The second German ship in the line, the Dörflinger, was left totally untargeted. But it was the firing from the Wondertown that scored the first victory. Her gunnery officer, Marholtz, managed to score repeated hits, though he said he could hardly make out the target as she was almost totally covered in splash. After only 13 minutes of battle, the first British ship, the Indefatigable, slid out of line, rolled over and sank. Any survivors didn't last long in the numbingly cold waters of the North Sea. Two men, later rescued by the Germans, tried in vain to rescue their captain. 25 minutes later, the Queen Mary also fell victim to German guns. She'd only been in service three years. The pride of the Royal Navy disappeared in the devastating explosion. A huge mushroom cloud, the only visible evidence that a ship had ever even been there. In less than half an hour, more than 2,000 British sailors lost their lives. In total, there were only 23 survivors from the two catastrophic magazine explosions and only 18 of them from the Queen Mary. The Battlecruiser's architect, British Admiral Sir Jackie Fisher, thought the ship's higher speed and greater gunnery range would more than compensate for the relatively light armor protection. At Jutland, they were proved wrong and the results were fatal. Getting the explosive cordite charges from a turret magazine to the guns was exhausting and under fire, brutally so. The gunners wanted the cordite and shell as fast as possible so they could shoot more quickly. Consequently, cordite bags were dangerously stockpiled around the insides of turrets and passages and this made the flashtight doors designed to stop the flames travelling between the turrets and the magazines irrelevant. Two minutes after the Queen Mary had gone, Lyon nearly suffered the same fate. A half hour earlier, her Q turret had been hit and the top had been blown off. A huge tower of flame now shot skyward. Had the turret still been covered, she would have also blown up. Scouting ahead of the Battlecruiser's good enough on the Southampton urgently signaled that 16 German dreadnoughts were in sight and closing fast. The British now realise they were heading into a trap. Waiting a few moments to confirm the news, BT turned his four remaining Battlecruisers around but the four accompanying Queen Elizabeth's continued southbound into increasingly heavy German fire. Using the same spot around which to turn his ships in reverse course was a mistake. Evan Thomas only made it easier for the German gunners. All they needed to do was to keep their guns trained on the very same spot as the British obligingly steamed into the cauldron of fire. BT's ships had been hit badly. After 75 minutes by around 44 heavy calibre shells and the Germans less than half that amount. After the Queen Mary exploded, BT came to an awful conclusion. He turned to his flag-captain only Chatfield and muttered, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today. Now it was BT's fortunes that rose as the four Queen Elizabeth's began to move north, shielding his rear, pressure on his own four ships was relieved but damage to the battleships was extensive, even if they dealt out equal punishment. But the British trap nearly wasn't ready at all. Jelly Co. only had the roughest idea of the position and course of the two German forces. His repeated and increasingly exasperated requests for information were all but ignored by BT who was busy fighting his own battle. 5 minutes before 6 the ships of the Grand Fleet and the Battlecruiser fleets were finally able to make each other out in the hazy mist but crucially Jelly Co. himself still could not see any German ships. The British commander-in-chief literally only had minutes in which to decide how to best meet the invisible threat. The timing was critical to avoid his own fleet being caught in the middle of the manoeuvre when most of his firepower could not be bored to bear. Jelly Co. deployed the Grand Fleet to port towards the Danish coastline. The fleet literally remodeled itself from six parallel lines each with four dreadnoughts into one continuous line five and a half miles long designed to hurl the maximum amount of steel against the enemy. The manoeuvre was brilliant. It blocked share within a semi-circle of British guns and turning so many ships in such little space required an extraordinary seamanship. There were close calls but not one collusion amongst the 122 ships captains. First the British fleet steered towards Denmark then turned south to parallel the coast. It might have seemed as though Jelly Co. was steaming away from the German fleet but in fact he was positioning his own fleet more carefully. As Beattie took the line ahead of the Grand Fleet so that he could position his own battlecruisers in the van Amaral Bathnot crossed dangerously close by getting two of his four ships through Beattie's own line. The defence and warrior headed straight towards the Germans intent on attacking the cruiser V's Babu. Instead the defence was met with a hail of fire. It exploded in a fireball and sank with all hands. The German ships were now silhouetted against the western setting sun while Jelly Co.'s own were almost invisible, lost in a grey murk. The German fleet's direct route home had been cut off by the Grand Fleet putting themselves in between their opponents and their harbour. The Germans had become increasingly boxed in first by Beattie in the west, then Jelly Co. to the north and now in new force Horace Hood's third battlecruiser squadron to the east. Things started well for Hood. The invincible went to the rescue of the Chester where the young wounded Jack Cornwall continued to man his post on her forward gun. A few days later he would die of his wounds. Posthumously he would receive the Victoria Cross for his bravery. Invincible's shooting found its mark, mortally damaging one of her aggressors, the V's Barton. There was only to be one survivor, the Stoker Hugo Zener and among the dead was Gork Fock, the much beloved German poet. Then at 6.30 another huge explosion. Invincible had blown up. All her crew except six had gone down with her and all that was left this time were just the two halves, stern and bar, sticking upright out of the shallow waters. At first the British sailors cheered. They thought it was a German wreck and then they saw her name. Sixty metres below Invincible's aft gun can still be seen, pointing majestically out beneath the cold grey waters of the North Sea. Hippos ships were out in front of the main battlefleet's dreadnoughts, strung out in a line that was nine miles long. His leading ships were coming under a terrible and increasing rain of British shells. The rays were short, around 10,000 yards and British shooting was superb. 23 heavy hits in minutes. Jellico's own flagship, the Iron Duke, hit the colonics seven times in as many minutes. Although to give you an idea of just how bad the visibility was, Iron Duke's gunnery officer was even nervous at this point about opening fire. He wasn't sure if the ship he saw was an enemy or a friend. She was stunned, but only for a moment. He quickly recovered and ordered a complete turnabout of his battlefleet. Within four minutes his ships, now steaming away from Jellico, vanished into the mist. Jellico was left totally in the dark. None of the captains who'd seen what happened reported anything back to him. Royal Navy had become victim to its own traditions. Speak only when spoken to, do something only when ordered. This Navy was not an easy place for officers with initiative. The British Admiral decided against following Cher into the mist. He doubted he would catch him, but more important, he was also convinced. Some say obsessed that his ships would steam onto mines laid by the German ships in their wake. In fact, his belief that all German destroyers carried mines was wrong, but his intentions had been laid out and agreed to by the Admiralty two years before the battle. Then Cher surprised Jellico a second time. He reversed the previous turn to relaunch another attack of the British line. It seemed like madness. Under intense fire, the front of the German line again buckled, bunching up so badly this time that before Cher even ordered another turn, the leading ships started to turn independently so desperate were they to get out from under British fire. Out in front, Hipper's battlecruisers were now in tatters. Only one option seemed open to Cher to get his main battlefleet home as fast as possible and certainly before daylight and what would undoubtedly be his fleet's annihilation. He now ordered waves of torpedo attacks and with the command, run and find a charge of the heavily damaged battlecruisers at the British line, no matter what the cost. It was Cher's only way to cover the escape of the main battlefleet. Cher knew his opponent and correctly anticipated Jellico's next move. The threat was enough for the British Admiral to turn the groundfleet away from the swarm of oncoming German torpedoes to try to outrun them. Turning towards the torpedoes would have been exceptionally dangerous. The closing speed alone would have been around 45 miles an hour rather than five and the time taken for the complete turn might just have been too long. Not one single one of the 31 torpedoes that eventually reached the British line hit a British ship. Though there were many close calls. Jellico was, as he knew he would be, widely criticised by much of the press and by the British public and by many of those in the Admiralty who specifically had approved of his intended actions two years earlier, including Churchill, even by BT privately, but as BT later wrote when he himself was CNC of the British fleet, when you're winning, risk nothing. While Jellico only had an inkling where the German fleet was, BT signalled that his battlecruisers should take over the lead. At that point the nearest German ship was probably nine miles distant. Jellico nevertheless followed BT's suggestion ordering Jerem to support him, but Jerem had no idea where BT was. Between the two lines of adversary ships however were two light cruisers, the Caroline and the Royalist. They could in fact see the Germans and they promptly engaged. Unluckily Caroline's torpedo aimed at the battleship Westphalen went right underneath her. British torpedoes were in fact notoriously unreliable. The two light cruisers then requested help, but were turned down. Rare Admiral Jerem was not persuaded that the targets weren't in fact BT's. Jerem's actions lost the British 15 minutes of continued action in daylight and that might not have been decisive in itself, but it might also very easily cost share another ship or two so heavily damaged where they by now. At nightfall both fleets reorganized. Jellico wanted to actually avoid a night action. It left too much to chance. Dreadnoughts in his mind were far too vulnerable to short range torpedo attacks and German night fighting equipment and experience actually superior to that of the Royal Navy in some critical areas. The smaller guns, the secondary armament on German ships were directly trained by searchlights that could one moment send out a powerful pinpoint light operating with an iris-like shutter and then just as fast completely open up to full illumination for full main battery fire. British searchlights by comparison were extremely crude. The British didn't even have star shells, which the Germans did. At this point there was only one thing that was really on Shere's mind to break through the British Lion and to take his ships to safety and he had three routes to choose from. But to get through he had first to break through the protective screen of the 58 destroyers that Jellico had placed five miles behind the Grand Fleet and Shere knew about these destroyers from intercepted messages. At 10pm Shere decided to take the shortest route. He headed southeast for the Hornsreef. Throughout the day some of the amulti signals were quite misleading making Jellico doubtful of subsequent intelligence starting with the now infamous message stating that Shere's flagship was still in harbour and before five o'clock that illusion had been shattered. Distrustful of the intelligence he was getting Jellico made up his own mind he headed direct south to the Jade. What was worse was that none of the signal intercepts had been decrypted by Room 40 revealing the true destination of the German high seas fleet were passed on. Jellico was furious when he found out after the war's end. During the next few hours there would be seven separate, unequal but bitterly fought engagements between small British destroyer flotillas and German battleships and their escorts. In one the British 4th flotilla lost a full 70% of her ships. One of her destroyers, the 935 tonne Spitfire, physically clashing bow to bow with the 20,000 tonne Drednaught, the Nassau. In another engagement the Rhineland physically sliced a British destroyer in two. But the British were also able to claim some successes in the night action. A torpedo shot from the British destroyer on-sword claimed the pre-Drednaught the SMS Poman. Her secondary armaments magazine caught fire and she exploded in front of the German line with more than 800 deaths. Not one single report of the many flotilla's actions reached the iron duke that night. While German Telefunken signals certainly blocked some of the radio reports, most captains did not understand the value of sending back information to the flagship. Eventually the Germans did succeed in punching through the British line and Jellico had no idea that they'd even done so. Despite the many opportunities the British failed to sink the massively damaged side-lets and the Germans themselves were responsible for scuttling the Lutzau. Side-lets would not rejoin the fleet until mid-September, derflinger not until the next month. Jellico was ready four hours after reaching Scarpa and Tiger, Princess Royal, Barram and Malere were repaired by July while each of five German battleships needed 50 days of repairs in dock. On the basis of sinking more ships and because more British sailors died in the battle, the Germans claimed victory. The Kaiser, welcoming the fleet back on the 1st of June, declared that the spirit of Trafalgar and British seapower had finally been destroyed. But to claim any victory one needs to have achieved one's stated objectives and the German intentions of ending the British blockade or seriously damaging the Grand Fleet had clearly failed. And although one might say that the German high seas fleet fought with great courage and inflicted heavy pain on the Royal Navy, it was not able to again successfully challenge the British and finish what had been started at Jutland. British sea dominance remained intact and it seemed as if nothing had in fact changed. Well, I hope you enjoyed the video. I know that it was a whole lot better than me trying to describe what took place in the North Sea 100 years ago and really do appreciate Nick Jellico's letting us use that as part of our presentation here today. So while, as an area said, while Germany claimed victory due to a greater tonnage sunk and greater loss of life of their adversary, the battle is considered basically a strategic victory for the British. The blockade of Germany remained intact and the high seas fleet never again challenged the Grand Fleet. But the intent today isn't to focus on the battle itself but rather Gordon's book on that battle and the lessons that he discovered as he studied what had happened to the Royal Navy. So we'll shift back to the book. In the beginning of the book, in Gordon's introduction, he explains that his interest originated out of really a historical argument. So he was speaking one afternoon with another naval historian and I don't know if you remember in the video, but when the four Queen Elizabeth battleships that were behind Beattie and Beattie and the battleships were headed south because they had established contact with the German high seas fleet, the fifth battle cruisers of Sir Hugh Evan Thomas, well, when Beattie discovered that they were engaged with just Hipper and the scouting element of the German high seas fleet and they discovered that the actual rest of the high seas fleet were right on their tail, but it was only Beattie with his battle cruisers, Beattie decides to turn back to the north and to join back up with Jellico. In the course of making those maneuvers, however, a signal went to the fifth battle squadron of Hugh Evan Thomas and that was to turn in succession and it was executed minutes after all the ships realized that the German high seas fleet was really on their way and so as they pointed out there each of those ships they turned in succession at the same location. So they were all in a column headed south turned in succession and in many a controversial aspect of this is should Evan Thomas knowing what his ships were going to be do should he have simply executed the order that he had been given by Beattie or should he have learned turned all at once once he understood the situation. Well when Gordon suggested that and brought this controversy up with another naval historian he got such an animated response about what Beattie would be telling him at that point that Gordon's interest in the battle grew significantly. Now he didn't have any primary source research on the battle everything that he knew about the battle was through others and so because of that disagreement he plunged deeply into his own research and original source or primary source research and as he did the more he got into his study of the battle the more he found himself less interested in the mechanics of the battle kind of the what if could have and should have questions and much much more focused on what had happened to the command culture of the Royal Navy from Nelson to Trafalgar and the key forces that ended up driving those changes. So I recognize we have a joint force here and I would hope that the naval then when I speak of Trafalgar here naval members of the audience would intuitively understand who we're talking about and what happened there but for those naval officers that don't and for the rest of our joint and interagency and international force let me just talk a couple of key points about Trafalgar. So 21 October 1805 off the southwest coast of Spain and it was the most decisive naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars and in it Nelson and his 27 ships went up against the combined ships of the Spanish and French fleets 33 ships of the line 41 ships in total and over the course of that battle 22 French and Spanish ships went to the bottom of the sea while Nelson and his force despite casualties lost not a single vessel and the manner in which Nelson commanded during the Battle of Trafalgar which was consistent with the manner in which he commanded throughout his career it sealed his legacy. He focused all of his energy on setting conditions for success in battle well before the battle itself with consistent face-to-face meetings with his commanders with constant discussions about the enemy the situation and his intent and with an absolute focus on initiative and empowering subordinates Nelson effectively exercised decentralized control and is often considered to be a master of what we now call mission command Gordon writes that Nelson's quote greatest gift of leadership was to raise juniors above the need of supervision so back to the book so about halfway through the book Gordon's got a chapter entitled the long calmly of Trafalgar it's here that Gordon moves really away from kind of the mechanics of the battle itself and he spends about the next 200 or so pages recounting the changes in British command culture and the drivers of those changes in that 100 years between Trafalgar and then Jutland in the aftermath of Trafalgar the British Navy reigned supreme on the oceans of the world and they did so during a period of significant social and technological change the period witnessed the rise of Victorian culture in Britain as the country enjoyed prosperity and the ever increasing spread of its empire Gordon states quote the Victorians sought to structure and codify as many fields of behavior as possible in order to regulate their world to disarm the unpredictable and to perpetuate the status quo William Manchester writes in the book The Last Lion but talking about the Victorians he writes that central to the Victorians world view was quote firm belief in obedience obedience to God to the Queen and to one's superiors it was a time of pervasive authoritarianism unquestioning submission to orders and the way to succeed in life as in sport was thought of to play by the rules of the game to comply with the established order now with some understanding Gordon notes that quote the tendency of the late Victorians to ritualize and regulate thereby tokenize warfare was perhaps a natural one for the world's most foremost territorial freeholder so it was also a period of significant technological change alongside the industrial revolution ships went from sail to steam and the weapons on them went from cannons to gun Gordon asserts that these changes resulted in what he called a new era of seamanship a new era of quote seamanship of iron and steam in which mathematics were subverting the art of centuries and the vista of possibilities opened up for tightly choreographed geometric evolutions far beyond what had been possible while sailing fleets so Gordon argues that it was the combination of these social and technological changes and that they had a significant impact on the culture of the Royal Navy as the Navy looked back to the legacy of Nelson and they look forward to what they considered the almost unlimited potential of controlled fleet actions quote the Victorians chose to extract the myth of the central genius directing the lovely obedient fleet with brilliance and precision as we saw in the video Jutland was to prove the shortcomings of this approach to command and control now one indicator of this approach this authoritarian approach to command and control is evident in the Royal Navy's signal book what Gordon calls the supreme agent of centralization so the book itself, versions of the book dated back to 1799 so it was in use when Nelson led the British fleet at Trafalgar but what changed from Nelson's time was its size and its role in the early days the signal book's limitations were well understood and its use was in a limited manner supplement commanders intent at the end of the 19th century however it had grown to over 500 pages and in two volumes and it was seen as a key to not only fleet maneuvering but also effective fleet operations now at the end of the book Gordon acknowledges that the Grand Fleet achieved its strategic objectives at Jutland's to maintain sea control and to hold at bay the threat from the German high seas fleet at the same time though he questions whether Jellico and the Royal Navy had given Jutland their best shot he noted quote war is infinitely unpredictable in detail nobody can expect to control it and the power of a military force must include its capacity to respond rapidly and effectively to unscripted eventualities and with that in mind he states that Jellico's main fault was that control was a contract he tried to make fate with he feared losing it and imposed a doctrinal regime which seemingly presumed to govern the very nature of war one has to wonder Gordon implicitly questions how World War I may have transpired if the Grand Fleet had operated with a decentralized command structure clear commanders intent subordinate empowerment and individual initiative so now as you can imagine with 700 pages to talk there's a lot more in this book than what I've quickly gone over a couple of other just key highlights first the story of Vice Admiral Sir George Tyron that story includes his attempts in the 1890s to reinstill a Nelsonian spirit in the Royal Navy and decentralized approach to operations the Victoria Camperdown collision in 1893 he was on the flagship of the Victoria at the time he had sent a signal but the collision basically ended all of his efforts to reinstill if you will the Nelson touch in the Royal Navy and central to this part of the book in this story is the court martial in which the bridge teams of both ships they were exonerated even though they knew that the ordered maneuver there were two columns of breast and the ordered maneuver was to turn into each other to basically be columns of breast heading back 180 degrees but at a much less distance in between they knew that the ordered maneuver based on the speed that they were going at and the current distance was going to result in a collision but they held fast to the culture of obedience and compliance and they simply executed the order no one was held accountable at the court martial additionally Gordon covers his own lessons learned from these research and he's got 28 what he calls syndromes that still impact fleets at sea in the modern world today and then one that I thought was fascinating was his discussion of regulators and rat catchers regulators talking about the natural peacetime rise of the predominance of regulators and militaries in general navies in specifically and therefore when you're thinking about leader development the very explicit and deliberate need to purposefully develop rat catchers officers comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity and ready to exercise initiative when appropriate so before discussing my key takeaways from this book I do want to highlight that the book itself is not without its critics some scholars of naval history see Gordon as maybe a little too negative in his treatment of Jellico and a little too pro-BD in his outlook and others argue that the rules of the game it fails to give the Royal Navy full credit for their successful incorporation of some of the emerging technologies at the time efficient reliable mechanical propulsion the central direction of gunnery the beginnings of automatic fire control the employment of signals intelligent and the beginning use of wireless communications but despite those critiques of the book what I would offer is when I finally got through the 700 pages it is and remains a very powerful book for me so I read this book during a time when I was refining in my own mind what the profession of arms meant to me what my professional identity was what it should be and how I should think about ethics in that framework and so within that context this book spoke incredibly loud to me it challenged me to think much more broadly about professional military ethics far beyond rules-based compliance focus of ethics that I had become accustomed to over the course of my career that story of the Royal Navy in the 19th century it pointed out to me that a profession's identity the culture that underpins it is never static but rather it is in a constant state of evolution left undetended that culture will morph and there is a natural tendency a natural tendency for bureaucratic attributes to dominate professional ones and as a result as members of the profession we have an ethical responsibility to never never take our professional identity for granted we must constantly and deliberately assess that identity and then nurture and sustain those attributes that best serve the client and in our case best prepare us to fight and win I took away a cautionary tale for the U.S. Navy specifically with parallels between what Gordon called that long calm Lee of Trafalgar and the U.S. Navy's history since World War II as pointed out by the very good question earlier so when I was reading and reflecting the rules of the game it made me realize that as stewards of our profession we have an ethical responsibility to ensure that our Navy does not fall prey to complacency and professional erosion and what could be described as our own long calm Lee a lady gulf and finally I took away what I saw as a clear linkage between the lessons from this book and our own current design for maintaining maritime superiority as you all know or should know the design highlights the critical importance of decentralized operations to achieve success in a complex environment and it calls for our Navy to focus on being prepared for decentralized operations as we discussed at the ethics symposium last fall for those that were here trust and initiative are the key enablers of decentralized operations and bureaucratic organizations are characteristically low trust low initiative organizations only an organization with a strong professional identity and the accompanying focus on on competence and character on the discretionary employment of specialized knowledge and on the consistent employment of that knowledge in accordance with the shared action only a professional identity will engender the trust and the initiative that is necessary for our Navy to fight and win in a complex environment so reading the rules of the game it reinforced in me this idea that there is a war fighting imperative that we view ourselves that we view our Navy as a profession and that such a view this isn't just an academic exercise or a purely theoretical construct this has practical and operational implications for our Navy as stewards of the profession I see that we have that ethical responsibility to ensure our professional identity and the attributes of the identity that are most required for success in war fighting, trust and initiative that they are never taken for granted but rather constantly and deliberately developed nurtured and sustained so as you all prepare for returning to the fleet or other positions of responsibility and the joint force or the interagency I challenge you to very deliberately very mindfully strengthen your own identity as a member of the profession and to develop and nurture the traits of trust and initiative in all of those with whom you have contact one final story about the rules of the game and I think that this helps explain its linkages between the lessons that come out in it and our own design so when the CNO came to visit the War College last fall we had an opportunity to chat with him we were speaking about leader development some of the other professional identity issues that we were addressing here at the college and I talked to him a little bit about the book that General Mattis had directed me to and I had asked him if he was aware of it and the answer was yes Gardner I'm aware of that book and he stated that it was in fact one of his favorites so when I got into the book I missed this page this is like page three of the book so it took me a little while to recognize it so when he was sub-force several years ago and this is pretty amazing you know on his own initiative he recognized that this book had gone out of print and he thought that this book was so important to the United States Navy that he along with Pete Daly currently the CEO I think of US and I or director of the Naval Institute they put together their own capital to have a second printing and reissue the book so if you've got any desire for a more in-depth understanding of the intellectual underpinnings of how the CNO thinks about our profession about how he thinks about leadership and how he thinks about leader development find time for these 700 pages alright thanks everybody I appreciate your attention we've still got we've got a little bit of time before we pop in and totally bust Dr. Cook's schedule here today but happy to entertain some questions or comments or deflect them to the subject matter experts that are here with me today over to you