Thousands of engineering soldiers lined up to get off the train, ready to change the waterway to the Patagonia region in the south of the mainland to continue the railway construction work, and after most of the passengers got off the train, a group of middle and high-ranking officers in gray autumn and winter military uniforms and large-brimmed hats (in the winter of South America in July, August, and September) walked into the station, escorted by two columns of soldiers.

For this reason, Li Mingyuan specially summoned the principal generals of the navy and the army to Chang'an, the capital city, to make suggestions and suggestions, and to express many useful suggestions and opinions on the change of the military's administrative organization and functions.

Against this background, Chen Sen, commander of the Navy's First Fleet, Li Han, commander of the Second Fleet, Feng Guoan, commander of the Marine Corps, Hou Taiyuan, commander of the Caribbean Fleet, commanders of the 1st to 7th Divisions of the Army, commanders of the Praetorian Division, and former commanders of various departments of the General Staff Headquarters set out from different stations, or by train, bicycle, or waterway, and headed for the same destination.

Chen Sen, Li Han, Feng Guoan, and Hou Taiyuan walked side by side, each of them carrying a stack of heavy official documents in their hands, which contained the suggestions and opinions that they and their staff officers had jointly sorted out, and were ready to submit them when they met Li Mingyuan.

The main purpose of separating the General Staff Headquarters and establishing the Admiralty and War Departments, which are not subordinate to each other, is to further improve the system of separating military administration from military orders, to separate the daily management of the armed forces, the management of weapons and equipment, and the transportation of war materials from the operational command of the armed forces, and to form a well-organized and highly efficient wartime and non-wartime military management system, so as to ensure that the development of the armed forces does not fall out of the control of the emperor and the government.

According to the preliminary functional reorganization document issued by the central government, the Navy Department has under the jurisdiction of the War History Department, the Fleet Affairs Department, the Ship Construction Directorate, the Waterway Management and Mapping Department, the Internal Audit Department, and the Navy Education Director, with a total of four departments and two directors and six first-level functional departments, which are responsible for the daily administrative management, education, personnel, weapons procurement, ship construction and bidding related to the Navy.

The Naval Staff, which is in parallel with the Admiralty, is under its jurisdiction

The five major departments of the Military Affairs Department, the Operations Department, the Intelligence Department, the Communications Department, and the Training Department,

The Military Affairs Department is responsible for general affairs and military affairs management, and the Operations Department is responsible for the establishment of the fleet, the formulation and implementation of operational plans, and military discipline and control.

The Intelligence Department is responsible for the collection of military intelligence, the investigation of shipping lanes and weather conditions in the operational sea area, and the translation of war history and foreign intelligence.

The Communications and Training Divisions are responsible for the liaison between the fleet and the mainland and naval bases, as well as the training and selection of naval personnel and reserve personnel.

The establishment of the Navy General Staff Headquarters and the Navy Department means that the military power of the chief officers of the two ministries has been reduced, and at the same time, after the functions have been subdivided and perfected again, the administrative status of both the Navy Department and the Navy Staff Headquarters has been greatly improved.

Under the original General Staff system, although the Navy and the Army were listed as subordinate units of the General Staff, more than 70 percent of the divisional and bureau-level units under the General Staff Headquarters were occupied by army officers, and the Navy's voice in the General Staff was greatly restricted and compressed. This can easily be seen from the number of officers in the army and navy.

On the army side, the division commanders of the seven field units and the commanders of the Praetorian Guard Division are all officers at the rank of major general or lieutenant general, while in the navy, there are only two officers above the rank of general, Chen Sen and Li Han, and both of them are major generals, and the only major officers below the rank of general are Feng Guoan and Hou Taiyuan.

The navy was established a little later than the army, and the strategic position is not small compared with the army, and various reasons combine to lead to the imbalance of the army and navy, but with the opportunity of the reorganization of the naval organization, Chen Sen and Li Han saw the opportunity for the rise of the navy, and Hou Taiyuan and Feng Guoan were pleased that the navy was valued by the emperor and the government, and at the same time, they also saw the possibility of further military ranks.

Feng Guoan was a subordinate of Li Sandou, a veteran of the Han Kingdom, because he was transferred from the Army to the Marine Corps and did not get a major combat mission in the Argentine War, thus missing a valuable opportunity to be promoted to major general.

On the one hand, Hou Taiyuan lacked the opportunity to perform meritorious service because he was stationed in the Caribbean Sea all the year round, and on the other hand, Hou Taiyuan, who was not born in the lineage, had a brief hesitation when he faced the recruitment of the army, and was not liked by the main generals of the Han State.

Therefore, when Li Han, who he originally sent out to contact the Chinese army, had been promoted to the commander of the Second Fleet of the Han Navy, and was awarded the hereditary title of nobility at the enthronement ceremony, Hou Taiyuan was still in the position of lieutenant colonel.

Or Li Mingyuan saw that he had served dutifully in the Caribbean for more than ten years, and he had no merit and hard work, so he temporarily promoted his military rank to colonel, and then added a new hereditary baron title to the list of hereditary noble titles.

Otherwise, according to the ideas of most Han officers, Hou Taiyuan has been deliberately ignored a long time ago, and can only wait for the age to retire, if the situation develops like that, not to mention the hereditary baronial title, I am afraid that when he retires, he will still hold the original rank of lieutenant colonel.

Unlike Chen Sen, Li Han and even Feng Guoan and others, Hou Taiyuan is more than ten years older than them, and the time left for him to serve in the navy is only eleven or twelve years at most.

Riding in the carriage sent by the Navy Division in Beijing, Hou Taiyuan pondered the situation in the Caribbean and the purpose of his trip.

Under the pretext of changes in the international situation, Canada and Cuba under the rule of Spain unilaterally violated the repatriation agreement signed with Han and continuously repatriated local Chinese workers ahead of schedule, which brought great transportation and maintenance pressure to Hou Taiyuan's department.

The Han State had only a small island with an area of 160 square kilometers in the Caribbean as a base, and because of the interference of the United States, Britain, and the two countries, the location of the Caribbean detachment was still nominally under the jurisdiction of the Haitian black government.

After the outbreak of the Chinese exclusion crisis in North America, due to the small size of the island, Hou Taiyuan had to move some Chinese to the side of the island of Haiti under the administration of the warlords, so that in the past year or so, the number of Chinese who have emigrated to the island of Haiti has unconsciously increased to 20,000, which is twice the number of Chinese resident on Tolti Island.

The last resort opened up a new way of thinking for Hou Taiyuan: Didn't the United States engage in the Monroe Doctrine in the Caribbean region and not allow outside countries to occupy Caribbean island countries? Then the Han State used Chinese immigrants to quietly and secretly infiltrate the island of Haiti, and then waited until the number of Chinese on the island of Haiti expanded to a certain extent, and then occupied the whole of Haiti in the name of Haitian natives.

Anyway, in the roots, the original inhabitants of the island of Haiti were Indians who also belonged to the yellow race, and the black Haitians were just latecomers, in a sense, they were the real colonizers, and the Indians were the victims.

When the Chinese were dissatisfied with the oppression of the black colonists and were ready to drive them out of Haiti, they insisted on claiming that they were descendants of Haitian Indians and Chinese, and later forced the land to be occupied by blacks and whites, so they were displaced to other parts of the Americas, and now they are launching an uprising to take back the land that originally belonged to them, not illegal invasion.

According to the growth rate of the Chinese in the former Haiti and the changes in the native population of the Han State and the comprehensive national strength of the country, Hou Taiyuan estimated that it may take decades to complete the entire plan.

However, once this plan is completed, Han has a forward base in the Caribbean with an area of more than tens of thousands of square kilometers, so even if the world situation changes drastically in 20, 30, or even 100 years, Han will be able to rely on the island of Haiti, the most solid base, to push the front line of the Sino-US confrontation from South America to the Caribbean Sea, and stop the threat of the United States to the Han mainland.