"CONTINUITY AND NEW CHALLENGES"
THE OPENING PAGES OF THIS SPEECH AND OTHERS, GIVING A PERSONAL IMPRESSION OF RAY GARRETT, JR., HAVE BEEN GRACIOUSLY PROVIDED BY HARVEY L. PITT.

An Address by
Ray Garrett, Jr., Chairman
Securities and Exchange Commission

Presented before
THE SECURITIES REGULATION INSTITUTE
University of California
Hotel del Coronado
January 16, 1974
San Diego, California

Coming to the "Del" gives me a certain feeling of vicarious nostalgia. I only discovered this fantastic place a few years ago, and no romantic episodes of my younger years are associated with it. But I have heard a great deal about it. It is legendary in the memories of my many contemporaries who entered the Navy in World War II and were assigned to the Pacific Fleet. As an old Army man, I have mixed emotions on the whole subject.

We ground soldiers lived in envy of the Navy and Air Force -- especially the Navy. The Navy I imagined sailing around, drinking milk shakes, until the strain got so bad that they had to pull into some gorgeous harbor, like Pearl or San Diego. Whereupon, all of the junior officers checked into a luxurious pleasure palace to engage in activities appropriate to the shameless pursuit of self-indulgence, the details of which your own imagination can supply. That, I was sure, was how my Navy classmates suffered through the long unpleasantness -- gentle cruises on the blue Pacific with endless supplies of milk shakes, interspersed with Sybaritic interludes of really high living.

And the Del, of course, was legendary as such a pleasure palace. So, when I learned to know it many years after the war, it fully confirmed the accuracy of my earlier imaginings. The Navy did, indeed, have it pretty soft.

Some times ago Stewart Alsop -- who himself had served with the British Army -- wrote a column to the effect that our handling of foreign relations and actual and potential applications of military forces are governed by civilians whose experience, almost without exception, has been Navy or Air Force -- or, if Army, very much rear echelon -- like in Washington, or for the more adventuresome, Paris. This experience in everything but ground combat, according to Mr. Alsop, leads to serious miscalculations as to the efficacy of military alternatives.

While I tend to agree with Mr. Alsop in this regard, it is not appropriate on this occasion to pursue that line of inquiry. The only relevant point is my own pedestrian background. Our guns, of the artillery battalion with which I served in Europe, could shoot at best about eight miles. This led to a short-range view of the war, compared to the ....

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