PREBLE'S BOYS

Another fascinated study of U. S. Navy history, this deals with the men under Edward Preble, of the Mediterranean command in the War of 1812, and how their careers demonstrated the results of his leadership. These analytical biographies of men of action, military men under orders, and pioneers in the building of a service, are absorbing reading, following as they do along one theme -- the roots and development of the new Navy. From Preble and down through Hull, Jones, Decatur, Bainbridge, Lawrence, Porter, Burrows, Blakely, Warrington, Biddle, this is a roster of farmer, squire, Yankee, Southerner, eccentric and millionaire, student and aristocrat, etc., a grouping with little in common but whose total result was the integrating of the infant Navy. Here are the men, where they came from, who they were -- and what they did, particularly in carrying on the system Preble had started. It is the story too of the United States in international activity, of overseas trading and domestic schisms, of a long, long war, and of the pre-Mahan days of lack of a formulated concept of high strategy. For those to whom the hardy tars have glamor.