The dim corridors and smoke-filled conference rooms of the Albany State House instantly crumbled in Leo's mind.
「The scene shifted abruptly.」
Leo found himself in a vast, brightly-lit office.
Sunlight streamed in through massive windows, revealing the streetscape of Washington D.C. outside. In the distance, he could see the silhouette of the Lincoln Memorial under construction.
The office walls were covered with world maps crisscrossed by complex shipping lanes, alongside design blueprints for the latest dreadnoughts and destroyers.
The ringing of telephones and the clatter of typewriters were incessant, the very heart of a vast bureaucratic machine operating at high speed.
The United States Navy Department.
Roosevelt sat behind a massive mahogany desk.
He was far more mature than he had been in Albany. His features were more chiseled, and his eyes had lost the keen edge of a young reformer, replaced with the profound composure and shrewdness of an executive.
He swiftly reviewed a document, occasionally jotting notes with a fountain pen before decisively signing his name.
His position: Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
A title that sounded like a subordinate's, but in fact held true authority over the Navy's day-to-day operations.
"My second step was to grasp real power and accumulate experience."
Roosevelt's narration turned serious.
"My struggle against the Tammany Association in Albany earned me national prestige, but it also served as a sobering lesson in reality."
"Lofty ideals and fine-sounding slogans alone cannot change a thing."
"You need power. More importantly, you need a profound understanding of how the complex machinery of power truly works."
"I spent seven full years at the Navy Department."
Leo's view began to fast-forward, showcasing seven long and crucial years of work.
He saw Roosevelt testifying on Capitol Hill, facing a group of Congressmen who were ignorant of naval affairs yet scrutinized every penny.
He argued until he was red in the face with Congressmen from the agricultural states of the Midwest, fighting for a budget to add two new battleships to the Pacific Fleet.
He spoke of Hawaiian sugar and Californian oil, and how they were transported to the East Coast via Pacific shipping lanes.
He used tangible economic interests to convince these congressmen from landlocked states that a powerful Navy directly concerned their own livelihoods.
He saw Roosevelt in a hard hat, standing in a Philadelphia shipyard.
In a massive dry dock, the keel of a warship was being laid.
Sparks flew, and the noise was deafening.
He stood with grease-stained engineers and shipbuilders, pointing at massive blueprints. They discussed the armor thickness of the new battleships, how it should be designed to withstand modern armor-piercing shells, and whether its cannon caliber could surpass the latest models from the United Kingdom and Germany.
He knew his subject. He was a genuine expert.
He saw Roosevelt standing on the docks of Norfolk Naval Base.
Behind him, gray warships stood in rows. Young marines in khaki uniforms, rifles slung over their shoulders, were about to board transport ships bound for the European theater of World War I.
Roosevelt stood on a high podium, addressing the young men about to depart on their expedition.
His voice was booming and powerful, filled with a galvanizing energy.
He told them they were not just fighting for French soil, but for the very freedom of the seas upon which the United States depended for its survival.
"Leo," Roosevelt's voice rang out, "you must remember that ideals and passion are not enough to govern a nation. What you need is experience, knowledge, and the ability to translate complex concepts into concrete, actionable steps."
The scene finally settled on a tense emergency meeting.
A massive map of the Atlantic Ocean hung on the conference room wall.
Countless red markers on the map indicated the positions of sunken Allied merchant ships.
During World War I, German Navy U-boats had initiated unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. Elusive as ghosts, they acted like a wolf pack, brazenly attacking the merchant convoys that supplied England and France.
The admirals at the Navy Department—old-school naval commanders with white beards who subscribed to the "big guns and battleships" doctrine—were at a loss.
Their battleships were designed for decisive fleet actions on the open ocean; they simply couldn't catch these agile underwater killers.
Just when everyone was at their wit's end, Roosevelt stood up.
He walked up to the map and proposed a plan that, at the time, sounded utterly insane.
With a long pointer, he drew a line on the map from the northernmost tip of Scotland all the way to the coast of Norway.
"Gentlemen," he said, "we can't hunt them down across the entire Atlantic Ocean. But we can seal them inside their dens."
His plan was to lay a vast mine barrage across the treacherous waters of the North Sea—a region hundreds of kilometers wide, known for its high winds and rough waves.
It would use tens, even hundreds of thousands of naval mines to create an impassable wall of death, completely blockading all passages German submarines used to enter and exit the Atlantic Ocean.
A wave of sharp gasps went through the conference room.
The admirals considered the plan pure fantasy.
They believed that laying mines across such a vast and hostile stretch of sea was technically impossible to achieve.
Furthermore, the necessary funding and materials would be astronomical.
"This is madness!" an admiral exclaimed, slamming his fist on the table. "We don't have that many mines, and we don't have enough ships!"
Roosevelt personally took his plan to Congress and to the White House.
He expounded upon the plan's feasibility and immense strategic value to President Woodrow Wilson and the congressional leaders.
He then personally negotiated with the steel companies in Pittsburgh and the Dupont Chemical Company in Delaware, securing a sufficient supply of steel and explosives for the massive undertaking.
Ultimately, he made this insane plan, which everyone had deemed impossible, a reality.
A vast armada worked around the clock, deploying tens of thousands of mines into the frigid waters of the North Sea.
This "North Sea Mine Barrage" effectively contained the German submarine threat and was instrumental in ultimately winning the Battle of the Atlantic.
"Without those seven years of experience at the Navy Department," Roosevelt's voice declared, "I would never have known how to manage a vast federal agency with hundreds of thousands of employees."
"I would never have known how to draft and execute a national budget worth tens of billions of US dollars."
"I would never have known how to wheel and deal with greedy arms dealers and cunning congressmen."
"Without that experience, it would have been impossible for me to command our nation's entire war machine during the Second World War."