was provided only with guns of the heaviest calibre and deprived of those guns of medium calibre with which earlier battleships were well provided.  The theories thus embodied in the new class of ships were both of them doubtful, and even dangerous.  In the first place, it is in the highest degree injurious to the spirit and courage of the crew to have a ship which they know will be at a disadvantage if brought into close proximity with the enemy.  Their great object ought to be to get as near to the enemy as possible.  The hypothesis that more damage will be done by an armament exclusively of the largest guns is in the opinion of many of the best judges likely to be refuted.  There is some reason to believe that a given tonnage, if devoted to guns of medium calibre, would yield a very much greater total damage to an enemy’s ship than if devoted to a smaller number of guns of heavy calibre and firing much less rapidly.

There is, moreover, a widespread belief among naval officers of the highest repute, among whom may be named the author of the “Influence of Sea Power upon History,” than whom no one has thought more profoundly on the subject of naval war, that it is bad economy to concentrate in a few very large ships the power which might be more conveniently and effectively employed if distributed in a great number of ships of more moderate size.

Surely, so long as naval opinion is divided about the tactical and strategical wisdom of a new type of battleship, it is rash to continue building battleships exclusively of that type, and it would be more reasonable to make an attempt to have naval opinion sifted and clarified, and thus to have a secure basis for a shipbuilding programme, than to hurry on an enormous expenditure upon what may after all prove to have been a series of doubtful experiments.

All the questions above discussed seem to me to be more important than that of mere numbers of ships.  Numbers are, however, of great importance in their proper place and for the proper reasons.  The policy adopted and carried out by the British navy, at any rate during the latter half of the war against the French Empire, was based on a known superiority of force.  The British fleet set out by blockading all the French fleets, that is, by taking stations near to the great French harbours and there observing those harbours, so that no French fleet should escape without being attacked.  If this is to be the policy of the British navy in future it will require a preponderance of force of every kind over that of the enemy, and that preponderant force will have to be fully employed from the very first day of the war.  In other words, it must be kept in commission during peace.  But, in addition, it is always desirable to have a reserve of strength to meet the possibility that the opening of a war or one of its early subsequent stages may bring into action some additional unexpected adversary.  There are thus two reasons that make for a fleet of great numerical strength.  The first, that only great superiority renders possible the strategy known as blockade, or, as I have ventured to call it, of “shadowing” the whole of the enemy’s forces.  The second, that only great numerical strength renders it possible to provide a reserve against unexpected contingencies.