"As he prepared to leave office, Admiral Nimitz was sick at heart to see the national defense being endangered by political considerations- for such appeared to him to be the case. He was almost equally disturbed by an apparent change in the character of the U.S. Navy. He had expected that in wartime, with the great influx of reservists, the Navy would undergo change. But somehow he expected that, after the war, it would again become the almost intimate association of friends he had known in, say, his Augusta days. He gradually realized that, so far as he was concerned, the Old Navy had gone forever. The Navy Department seemed to him now less like an association than like a corporation. In his own class of 1905, 144 midshipmen had been graduated. Even the immediate prewar classes never produced as many as 500 graduates. By 1947 the Naval Academy was turning out graduates by the thousand, and to these was added an increasing influx of officers from the NROTCs. The Navy was acquiring more potential commanders than there were ships to command. Nimitz, walking the corridors of the Navy Department building, was continually encountering officers he had never seen before. Above all, Nimitz was tired. For six years he had been carrying heavy burdens and had had no leave to speak of. There had been times when he regretted and rather resented Secretary Forrestal's having cut his tenure as Chief of Naval Operations from the usual four years to two. But, as December 1947 approached, he could hardly wait to lay down his burdens and get out of Washington."