Let it be clearly understood that none of these things has been mentioned with the intention of criticising them either favourably or unfavourably.  They have been cited in order that it may be seen that the change in naval affairs is by no means one in materiel only, and that the transformation in other matters has been stupendous and revolutionary beyond all previous experience.  It follows inevitably from this that we shall wage war in future under conditions dissimilar from any hitherto known.  In this very fact there lies the making of a great surprise.  It will have appeared from the historical statement given above how serious a surprise sometimes turns out to be.  Its consequences, always significant, are not unfrequently far-reaching.  The question of practical moment is:  How are we to guard ourselves against such a surprise?  To this a satisfactory answer can be given.  It might be summarised in the admonitions:  abolish over-centralisation; give proper scope to individual capacity and initiative; avoid professional self-sufficiency.

When closely looked at, it is one of the strangest manifestations of the spirit of modern navies that, though the issues of land warfare are rarely thought instructive, the peace methods of land forces are extensively and eagerly copied by the sea-service.  The exercises of the parade ground and the barrack square are taken over readily, and so are the parade ground and the barrack square themselves.  This may be right.  The point is that it is novel, and that a navy into the training of which the innovation has entered must differ considerably from one that was without it and found no need of it during a long course of serious wars.  At any rate, no one will deny that parade-ground evolutions and barrack-square drill expressly aim at the elimination of individuality, or just the quality to the possession of which we owe the phenomenon called, in vulgar speech, the ‘handy man.’  Habits and sentiments based on a great tradition, and the faculties developed by them, are not killed all at once; but innovation in the end annihilates them, and their not having yet entirely disappeared gives no ground for doubting their eventual, and even near, extinction.  The aptitudes still universally most prized in the seaman were produced and nourished by practices and under conditions no longer allowed to prevail.  Should we lose those aptitudes, are we likely to reach the position in war gained by our predecessors?

For the British Empire the matter is vital:  success in maritime war, decisive and overwhelming, is indispensable to our existence.  We have to consider the desirability of ‘taking stock’ of our moral, as well as of our material, naval equipment:  to ascertain where the accumulated effect of repeated innovations has carried us.  The mere fact of completing the investigation will help us to rate at their true value the changes which have been introduced; will show us what to retain, what to reject, and what to substitute.