Beginning about 1904, Great Britain set to work with energy to reform her naval policy.  Roused to action by the sense of coming danger, she augmented the size and number of vessels of all types; increased the personnel of all classes, regular and reserve; scrapped all obsolete craft; built (secretly) the epochal Dreadnaught, and modernized in all particulars the British navy.  In every great movement one man always stands pre-eminent.  The man in this case was Admiral Sir John Fisher, first sea lord of the admiralty, afterward Lord Fisher.  Fisher brought about vital changes in the organization, methods, and even the spirit of the navy.  He depleted the overgrown foreign squadrons, concentrated the British force in powerful fleets near home, established the War College, inculcated the study of strategy and tactics, appointed Sir Percy Scott as inspector of target practice, put the whole weight of his influence on the side of gunnery and efficiency, placed officers in high command who had the military idea as distinguished from the idea of the “blue-water school,” and imbued the entire service with the avowed idea that they must get ready to fight to the death, not the French navy, with its easy-going methods, but the German navy, allied perhaps with some other.  At the admiralty he introduced methods analogous to those of the General Staff, to maintain the navy ready for instant service at all times, to prepare and keep up to date mobilization plans in the utmost detail, and to arrange plans for the conduct of war in such wise that after a war should break out, all the various probable situations would have been studied out in advance.

The work required at the admiralty, and still more in the fleet—­night and day and in all weathers—­taxed mental and physical endurance to the limit; but the result was complete success; for when war broke out on the 1st of August, 1914, the British navy was absolutely ready.  Many complaints have appeared in print about the unreadiness of Great Britain; but no one who knows anything of the facts supposes that these criticisms include Great Britain’s navy.

The United States navy in the early part of this century occupied, relatively to others, a very ill-defined position; but the increased interest taken in it by our people after the Spanish War, combined with the destruction of the flower of the Russian fleet in the Russo-Japanese War, and the crushing blow inflicted on the French navy by the maladministration of Camille Pelletan, resulted in placing our navy, about three years ago, in a position second only to Great Britain’s—­a position which it recently has lost.  Owing to a common origin and language, our navy has always followed the British navy, though at a somewhat respectful distance; and while it is true that in point of mechanical inventions we are ahead, in seamanship, navigation, and engineering on a par, and in gunnery and tactics not far behind, yet we must admit that in policy and in policy’s first cousin, strategy, we are very far in the rear.