Owing to the enormous mechanical power made available in ships by the floating properties of water, machinery is more used by navies than by armies; but this does not mean that machinery can take the place of men more successfully in navies than in armies, except in the sense that navies can use more mechanical power.  The abundant use of machines and instruments in navies does not mean that machinery and instruments can take the place of trained intelligence—­but exactly the reverse.  Under the guidance of trained intelligence, a machine or instrument can perform wonders.  But it is not the machinery that does the wonders; it is the trained intelligence that devised the instrument or machine, and the trained intelligence that operates it.  Let the trained intelligence err, or sleep, and note the results that follow.  The Titanic, a mass of 40,000 tons, moving through the water at 20 knots an hour, a marvel of the science and skill of man, crashes into an iceberg, because the trained intelligence directing her errs—­and is reduced at once to an inert mass of iron and brass.  The mighty fleet of Russia meets the Japanese fleet in Tsushima Straits; and because the trained intelligence that directed its movements seriously erred, in an engagement decided in less than an hour, is stripped of its power and glory, and transformed into a disorganized aggregation of separate ships—­some sunk, some sinking, some in flight.  The Japanese fleet, on the other hand, because it is directed with an intelligence more highly trained than that which directs the Russian fleet, and because, in consequence, the officers and enlisted men perform their various duties not only in the actual battle, but in preparation for it, with a skill greater than that used in the Russian fleet, suffers but little damage in the fight—­though the advantage in number and size of ships is slightly with the Russians.  As a consequence of that battle, the war between Russia and Japan was decided in favor of Japan, and terms of peace were soon agreed upon.  Russia lost practically all the ships that took part in the battle, and several thousand of her officers and sailors—­and she lost the whole object for which she went to war.

The difference between the Russian and Japanese fleets that gave the victory to the Japanese was a difference in trained intelligence and in the relative degrees of preparedness which that difference caused.

During the actual battle, the intelligence was that of the officers and men in the respective fleets, in managing the two fleets, the ships themselves, and the guns, engines, and machines of all kinds that those ships contained.  It is this factor—­trained intelligence—­that has decided most of the battles of history, and the course that nations thereafter followed.  Battles have usually been fought between forces not very different in point of numbers and material, for the reason that a force which knew itself to be weaker than another would not fight unless compelled