while the War Office was in Berlin itself, near the corner of the Wilhelmstrasse, was only one mile distant from the War Office, when it should have been two.  For he held that the exactness of demarcation of function, which was only to be attained if strategy and tactics were studied continuously by a specially chosen body of experts, could not be made complete if the War Office could get too easily at the General Staff.  But what he accomplished at least gave rise to a school of exact military thought far in advance of any that had preceded it.  The fruits of this were reaped in the war with Austria in 1866, and still more in that with France in 1870.  And when the navy was first organized this principle was introduced into its organization, first by Stosch and then by Caprivi.  Both of these had been trained in the great Moltke’s ideas, and it was because of this that, altho soldiers, they were chosen to model the organization of the German Navy.  It is true that we have beaten the German Navy.  That was because, as Tirpitz himself admits, we possessed, not only superior numbers, but a tradition of long standing and a spirit in our fleet which Germany had not built up.  But we shall do well not to overlook what he has to say about the procedure of basing strategy and tactics on exact knowledge, and careful study, especially when such ideas as that of landing small expeditionary forces on enemy territory by means of a naval expedition, are being considered, nor what he says of his efforts to make this procedure real.  Numbers are not always sufficient.  They are not likely to be large for a long time to come, and the study of all possibilities and of modern conditions is therefore more important than ever.  The British Army knows this.  It is not so clear that the British Navy is equally informed about the necessity of bearing the principle in mind.

Tirpitz never served in the army, but he was brought up under the influence of these great soldiers.  His first experience was indeed mainly in technical matters of construction.  But he never let go the true principle of an Admiral or War Staff, and the result was that he considered, and not wholly without reason, that he was leading the German Navy on lines which were in the end likely to make it, when fully developed, a more powerful instrument than the British Navy.  Instead of studying merely the lessons of the past, as we here seek them in, for instance, the history of the Seven Years’ War of more than a century and a half ago, or in the operations of Nelson carried out a hundred years since, he insisted that the German Navy should study systematically modern problems, and in particular combined naval and military operations.  In England we had no War Staff for the Navy until 1911, and our Senior Admirals disliked the idea.  Consequently such staff study of military problems has never been properly developed, the wishes of our junior naval officers notwithstanding.  In Germany the idea was regarded as a vital one throughout by Tirpitz.