Any general of high command must be surrounded by more pomp than an admiral in time of action.  A headquarters cannot have the simplicity of the quarter-deck.  The force which the general commands is not in sight; the admiral’s is.  You saw the commander and you saw what it was that he commanded.  Within the sweep of vision from the quarter-deck was the terrific power which the man with the broad gold band on his arm directed.  At a signal from him it would move or it would stand still.  That command of Joshua’s if given by Sir John one thought might have been obeyed.

One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred twelve-inch guns and larger, which could carry two hundred tons of metal in a single broadside for a distance of eighteen thousand yards!  But do not forget the little guns, bristling under the big guns like needles from a cushion, which would keep off the torpedo assassins; or the light cruisers, or the colliers, or the destroyers, or the 2,300 trawlers and mine-layers, and what not, all under his direction.  He had submarines, too, double the number of the German.  But with all the German men-of-war in harbour, they had no targets.  Where were they?  You did not ask questions which would not be answered.  The whole British fleet was waiting for the Germans to show their heads, while cruisers were abroad scouting in the North Sea.

At the outset of the war the German fleet might have had one chance in ten of getting a turn of fortune in its favour by an unexpected stroke of strategy.  This was the danger against which Jellicoe had to guard.  For in one sense, the Germans had the tactical offensive by sea as well as by land; theirs the outward thrust from the centre.  They could choose when to come out of their harbour; when to strike.  The British had to keep watch all the time and be ready whenever the enemy should come.

Thus, the British Grand Fleet was at sea in the early part of the war, cruising here and there, begging for battle.  Then it was that it learned how to avoid submarines and mine-fields.  Submarines had played a greater part than expected, because Germany had chosen a guerrilla naval warfare:  to harass, to wound, to wear down.  Doubtless she hoped to reduce the number of British fighting units by attrition.

Weak England might be in plants for making arms for an army, but not in ship-building.  Here was her true genius.  She was a maritime power; Germany a land power.  Her part as an ally of France and Russia being to command the sea, all demands of the Admiralty for material must take precedence over demands of the War Office.  At the end of the first year she had increased her fighting power by sea to a still higher ratio of preponderance over the Germans; in another year she would increase it further.