Thus while we see in Great Britain’s navy an example of the effect of a strategy continuous and wise, conducted for three hundred years, we see in the Japanese and German navies equally good examples of a strategy equally wise, but of brief duration, which started with the example of the British navy, and took advantage of it.

The German and Japanese navies did not follow the British navy slavishly, however; for the national military character of their people required the introduction and control of more military and precise methods than those of the primarily sailor navy of Great Britain.  We see, therefore, a curious similarity between the German and Japanese navies, and very clear evidence in each of the engrafting of purely military ideals on maritime ideas.  And we see not only this, we see the reaction on the British navy itself of the ideals of the German and the Japanese, and a decided change during the last ten years from the principles of “the blue-water school”; as evidenced mainly by the institution of a Naval War College, including a war staff, the employment at the admiralty of General Staff methods, though without the name; and the introduction into naval methods, especially naval gunnery, of mathematical procedures.

Previous to the Japanese-Russian War, ten years ago, the strategy of the British navy may be characterized as physical rather than mental, depending on a superior number of ships and men; those ships and men being of a very high grade individually, and bound together by a discipline at once strict and sympathetic.  All the personnel from the highest admiral to the humblest sailor prided themselves on being “British seamen,” comrades of the sea, on whom their country placed her ultimate reliance.  Maneuvers on a large scale were held, target practice was carried on with regularity—­and navy ships carried the banner of Saint George over every sea, and displayed it in every port.  Tactics and seamanship filled the busy days with drills of many kinds; but strategy, though not quite forgotten, did not command so large a portion of the officers’ time and study as it did in Germany and Japan.  The rapid success of the Germans and Japanese, however, in building up their navies, as instanced by the evident efficiency of the German fleet almost under the nose of England, and the triumph of the Japanese fleet in Tsushima Strait startled the British navy out of her conservatism, and caused her to proceed at full speed toward the modernization of her strategy.  With the quick decision followed by quick action that characterizes the seaman everywhere, the British instituted a series of reforms, and prosecuted their efforts with such wisdom and such vigor, that, in the brief space of ten years, the British navy has been almost revolutionized.  As in all such movements, the principal delay was in bringing about the necessary mental changes; the mental changes having been accomplished, the material changes followed automatically.