As an inevitable result we find ourselves involved in an effort to restore to the flotilla some of its old cruiser capacity, by endowing it with gun armament, higher sea-keeping power, and facilities for distant communication, all at the cost of specialisation and of greater economic strain.  Still judged by past experience, some means of increasing numbers in the cruising types is essential, nor is it clear how it is possible to secure that essential in the ranks of the true cruiser.  No point has been found at which it was possible to stop the tendency of this class of vessel to increase in size and cost, or to recall it to the strategical position it used to occupy.  So insecure is the battle-squadron, so imperfect as a self-contained weapon has it become, that its need has overridden the old order of things, and the primary function of the cruising ship inclines to be no longer the exercise of control under cover of the battle-fleet.  The battle-fleet now demands protection by the cruising ship, and what the battle-fleet needs is held to be the first necessity.

Judged by the old naval practice, it is an anomalous position to have reached.  But the whole naval art has suffered a revolution beyond all previous experience, and it is possible the old practice is no longer a safe guide.  Driven by the same necessities, every naval Power is following the same course.  It may be right, it may be wrong; no one at least but the ignorant or hasty will venture to pass categorical judgment.  The best we can do is to endeavour to realise the situation to which, in spite of all misgivings, we have been forced, and to determine its relations to the developments of the past.

It is undoubtedly a difficult task.  As we have seen, there have prevailed in the constitution of fleets at various times several methods of expressing the necessities of naval war.  The present system differs from them all.  On the one hand, we have the fact that the latest developments of cruiser power have finally obliterated all logical distinction between cruisers and battleships, and we thus find ourselves hand in hand with the fleet constitution of the old Dutch wars.  On the other, however, we have armoured cruisers organised in squadrons and attached to battle-fleets not only for strategical purposes, but also with as yet undeveloped tactical functions in battle.  Here we come close to the latest development of the sailing era, when “Advanced” or “Light” squadrons began to appear in the organisation of battle-fleets.

The system arose towards the end of the eighteenth century in the Mediterranean, where the conditions of control called for so wide a dispersal of cruisers and so great a number of them, that it was almost imperative for a battle-squadron in that sea to do much of its own scouting.  It was certainly for this purpose that the fastest and lightest ships-of-the-line were formed into a separate unit, and the first designation it received was that of “Observation Squadron.”  It remained for Nelson to endeavour to endow it with a tactical function, but his idea was never realised either by himself or any of his successors.