Events have moved rapidly in the naval establishment within the past month. The important Bureau of Navigation has changed hands. A naval surgeon has been ordered to command a hospital ship in the navy. The question of the relative status of the line and the staff has been reopened and accentuated. Congress has taken a hand in the matter; and Chairman Hale, of the Senate Naval Committee, has not only vigorously opposed the Administration's decision respecting hospital ship commands, and declared his intention of fighting for positive rank for the staff corps, but has also introduced a measure that is in many respects revolutionary and bound to provoke criticism, not only striking at the General Board of the Navy, which he wants to abolish, but containing many other ideas as a basis for a general investigation of the naval establishment, under the direction of the Senate Naval Committee.

It was anticipated that Congress would give attention to the Navy Department, but it was not believed the storm would break so early in the session. Scarcely, however, had the battleship squadron under Rear Admiral Evans steamed in through the Dragon's Mouth and anchored in four columns in the Gulf of Paria, five miles from Port of Spain, Trinidad, completing the first lap of its voyage to the Pacific, before the resignation of Rear Admiral Willard H. Brownson (retired), as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, acted as a bomb in the arena of naval controversy. The announcement of his resignation came, in fact, almost simultaneously with the arrival of the fleet at Trinidad.

A REVIEW OF THE SITUATION

Since then the developments may be summarized as follows:

December 23.- Battleship fleet reaches Trinidad. December 24.- Rear Admiral Brownson resigns, on account of the decision of President Roosevelt to adopt Surgeon General Rixey's recommendation for the assignment of a surgeon to hospital ship "command." December 24.- President Roosevelt accepts the resignation, to take effect immediately, and directs Rear Admiral Brownson to turn over the affairs of the Bureau of Navigation to Captain Cameron McRae Winslow, who became Acting Chief of the Bureau. December 25. Surgeon General Rixey gives out formal statement to the daily press in support of his contention that surgeons should command hospital ships, and, incidentally, criticises the Bureau of Navigation by declaring it had "interfered" with the work of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

December 26.- Senator Hale issues statement praising Rear Admiral Brownson for his action, criticising the Rixey hospital-ship-command idea, and declaring for positive rank for the staff corps. December 26.-Written recommendation of Surgeon General Rixey for assignment of Surgeon Charles F. Stokes to command the hospital ship Relief reaches Bureau of Navigation, but no action is taken pending return of President Roosevelt from a hunting trip in Virginia, where he was accompanied by Surgeon General Rixey.

December 26.-Orders issued, formally detaching Rear Admiral Brownson from duty on the Joint Army and Navy Board.

December 30.- Secretary Metcalf lets it be known that the Navy Department was preparing to reply to the Reuterdahl and other criticisms of the Navy Department, and that Chief Naval Constructor Capps and the former Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Rear Admiral Converse, were assembling data with that end in view, by direction of the President.

December 29.- Senator Perkins, of California, one of the ranking members of the Senate Naval Committee, gives an interview praising action of Admiral Brownson and opposing hospital-ship-command policy of the Adminis

tration.

January 2.- President Roosevelt announces the choice of Captain John E. Pillsbury, of the General Board, to succeed Rear Admiral Brownson, as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation.

January 4. After a week's delay, Secretary Metcalf signs the order directing Surgeon Stokes to take command of the Relief, but not until after written authority for that action was received from the White House. January 5.- President Roosevelt authorizes Secretary Metcalf to give out for publication two letters from the former to the latter, severely condemning Rear Admiral Brownson for resigning, and also defending the course of the Administration in rejecting Rear Admiral Brownson's objections to the assignment of a surgeon to "command". The Administration is criticised for not making public the correspondence attending Rear Admiral Brownson's resignation.

January 6.-President Roosevelt authorizes the publication at the White House of Rear Admiral Brownson's letter of resignation and the President's letter of acceptance, with the statement that they had been "inadvertently omitted" from the correspondence given out for publication the previous day.

January 7.- Representative Gill of Maryland introduces resolution in the House of Representatives calling upon Secretary Metcalf for all correspondence and data on file in the Department, concerning Rear Admiral Brownson's resignation and the assignment of Surgeon Stokes to the command of the Relief, this resolution having been introduced because of the belief that all of the data had not been made public.