Theodore H. Price to William G. McAdoo
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My dear Mr. McAdoo
Because of your kindly interest in my efforts to develop a torpedo protector, I should have written you before to tell you of my progress or rather lack of progress in the matter. My only reason for not doing so is that I was sick and in bed most of last week. Perhaps my physical depression was partly due to my discouragement at receiving the following letter from Secretary Daniels:
Sir:Replying to your letter of July 26, 1917, in which you submit further comment regarding the Sandy Hook experiments on torpedo protection by means of laminated wood boards, I have to inform you that the best available information indicates that it is not desirable to continue further any experiments looking towards the building of special pads as a protection to ships.
Very respectfully,
(Signed) Josephus Daniels,
Secretary of the Navy.
This letter is undated but the envelope containing it is postmarked August 18th. Presumably, therefore, it was written some 23 days after my experiments had been brought to Secretary Daniels' attention and I had presented your letter of introduction to him as I did on the 26th of July. On that occasion he turned me over to Admiral Taylor who handed me a letter to which I made reply the next morning. Copies of that letter and my answer are enclosed for your information.Admiral Taylor's manner at our first interview seemed most forbidding and Mr. JR Gordon, a well known naval architect of this city whom I took to see him the next morning, was similarly impressed by his demeanor, remarking as we left his office that "we were about as welcome there as the bubonic plague would have been." As Mr. Gordon, who is the manager of the Union Sulphur Company's fleet here, had left his business and given his time at my request to come over to Washington in an effort to serve the government, I was, I confess, chagrined at the treatment accorded us though it prepared me for the summary and unexplained dismissal of my suggestions that came somewhat tardily three weeks later. The foregoing is written not in any spirit of complaint or criticism but simply that you may know I have done my best to follow up the suggestions you were good enough to make.Mr. Gordon and I both realize that Admiral Taylor must be tremendously overworked; that his chief interest is naturally in the Navy and not the mercantile marine and we have tried to make every allowance for him.
Moreover, I have been told that his attitude toward a layman's suggestion is traditional with and characteristic of the Alumni of Annapolis and West Point.
If this be true he is not perhaps to blame for it but it may explain why the army and navy have been so unreceptive to new ideas in the past.
Why, for instance, the plans for Ericsson's celebrated "Monitor" were first rejected by the Naval Board of his day and only accepted when he agreed to refund her cost if she was not a success.
Why the engineers of the Navy Department insisted that the steam injector "could not work" although it is now in use on nearly every engine built.
Why Holland's submarine had to be literally forced upon our Navy Department by Congress and is even now but partially developed in this country although it is Germany's chief weapon and why the Lewis Gun was rejected by the Ordnance Department of our Army though thousands of them are being used most effectively both by France and England.
But there is no use in multiplying instances. It has been said that Annapolis and West Point "need a Professor of Imagination" and this I think is the trouble. The men who remain in the service of the Army and Navy in times of peace are those who have been taught to take no chances and base their action upon precedent rather than possibilities. It takes a Farragut to say "Damn the torpedoesfull speed ahead," and Farraguts are scarce.
I am not an inventor or a scientist. I doubt whether the idea I have submitted is patentable. I have no hope of making either money or fame out of it. Before bringing it to the notice of the government through you, Mr. Arthur Curtiss James and myself spent about $10,000 in testing it.
The Navy through Commander Fullinwider was asked to be present at the experiment but declined the invitation. The three ordnance officers of the Army who witnessed the test of the device agree in saying that it was sufficiently successful to justify its experimental attachment to a ship. One of them, Major William A. Phillips, seemed to me to be a man of exceptional vision in matters of this kind. He would perhaps be a General now were it not that he, for a time, withdrew from the Army to enter the employ of the Remington Arms Company and built their great plant at Bridgeport, Connecticut. Because he has had a business experience as well as a technical training and is an open-minded man, I find myself wishing that he could be made a Committee of One to investigate every plan offered for meeting the menace of the submarine.
I don't mean my plan alone. It makes very little difference whether my plan is accepted or not but it will mean much to the country if we can find some way to protect the shipping now in existence while we are spending billions to build new ships that will not be available for months or years. I say a Committee of One because I believe that it will be impossible to get promptitude of action from a Committee of more than one. Committees don't work in time of war. The President himself has objected to a committee on the conduct of the war.
Committees can't work with the speed and decision that is essential in time of war. In deliberation, the counsel of their more conservative members is likely to prevail and things don't get done. This is a case where some chances must be taken for no one really knows what the explosive force of a torpedo is, how it acts and what will resist it. For instance, I haven't been able to find anyone who can tell me whether the explosive energy of 400 lbs. of TNT is the square or the cube or any other multiple of the energy generated by 200 lbs. It is largely a matter of special conditions.Major Phillips hasn't the slightest idea that I am writing this letter. Perhaps he would object to it but I believe nevertheless that if he were given a little money to try out some of the more promising of the thousands of suggestions that have been presented to the Navy and the various committees that he would develop a promising lead very soon.
I have been informed that not a single life size experiment except my own has been made with any torpedo protector and there is, I fear, no way to solve this problem except by life size experiments with real ships or their equivalent in caissons. A few hundred thousand dollars thus spent may save the hundreds of millions that the ships now being destroyed each month are worth, but the man who spends it must have the courage to waste some of it on the chance of success and be willing to experiment without asking a guarantee against failure. In so far as this letter is unintentionally critical or censorious, please regard it as confidential. It is phrased as it is simply that I may give point to an idea that I hope you may with your capacity for "doing things" be able to develop into something worthwhile.
Naturally I am somewhat hurt at the treatment I have received in the Navy Department but we must all expect to get hurt in time of war and if I can in any way serve the government or the country, the injury to my feelings doesn't matter. I think I am entirely sincere in saying that my concern is to save the ships already in existence and not for
Yours faithfully,
Theo H. Price
Confidential.
Hon. Wm. G. McAdoo,
Secretary of the Treasury,
Washington, DC
This was enclosed in a letter from William G. McAdoo to Woodrow Wilson, dated 17 September 1917.
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