The veterans of World War II who, for the most part, have completed their studies in college or graduate school should not regard the years of their … - Samuel Eliot Morison

Exploring American History has been a very absorbing and exciting business now for three quarters of a century. Thousands of graduate students have produced thousands of monographs on every aspect of the history of the Americas. But the American reading public for the most part is blissfully ignorant of this vast output. When John Citizen feels the urge to read history, he goes to the novels of Kenneth Roberts or Margaret Mitchell, not to the histories of Professor this or Doctor that. Why? American historians, in their eagerness to present facts and their laudable concern to tell the truth, have neglected the literary aspects of their craft. They have forgotten that there is an art of writing history.

Thus, although Jones had it in him to be a great naval strategist, he found opportunity to prove himself only on the tactical level. There he was magnificent. Recall how he made prompt and sure decisions in emergencies, perfectly adapting his tactics to suddenly confronted facts, as in those first audacious cruises in Providence and Alfred and in the battles of Ranger vs. Drake, Bonhomme Richard vs. Serapis, and Ariel vs. Triumph. That sort of thing is the sure mark of a master in warfare. Of the quality of his seamanship, one needs no more evidence than those early escapes from faster and more powerful ships, and the saving of Ariel from crashing on the Penmarch rocks. His battle with Serapis, as an example of how a man through sheer guts, refusing to admit the possibility of defeat, can emerge victorious from the most desperate circumstances, is an inspiration to every sailor. To every sailor, I say, not only to Americans. In one of his letters of 1780, Jones wrote, "The English Nation may hate me, but I will force them to esteem me too." This prophecy was fulfilled over a century and a half later, when the Right Honourable Albert Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, in a broadcast beamed to America, declared that Paul Jones' defiant answer to Pearson expressed exactly what England felt in the dark days of the Battle for Britain. And in the six months of tribulation for the United States that followed the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, the one sentiment in the back of every American sailor's mind was that of John Paul Jones: I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT

As soon as Japan accepted surrender terms, the Navy moved into high gear on the twin problems of reducing its strength to a peacetime fleet and discharging its excess number of sailors. By an "Al-nav" of 15 August 1945, it replaced its "computed-age" formula for the release of officers and men to a point system such as the Army had been using in its rotation of troops. Age, length of service and number of dependents established an individual's number if points, which determined his eligibility and priority for discharge. Naval separation centers were established at key cities and training stations throughout the country.