“Give me iron in the men, and I shall not mind much about the iron in the ships,” said the American admiral Farragut, when some of his officers were discussing the changes that would be introduced into naval warfare by the new ironclad navies. And Farragut was right in holding that, whatever the ships might be made of, the most important thing was to have enough “iron in the men” who worked and fought them. We are sometimes too apt to think that the power of rival fleets can be estimated by setting off their weight of guns and thickness of armour in two parallel columns, and striking a balance, as if it were an account in a ledger. But all naval history goes to prove that, within certain wide limits, the power of navies depends chiefly upon an element that can only be tested by the stress of storm and battle--namely, the courage, the nerve, and the “grit” of their officers and men. No more striking proof of this was ever given than that which is afforded by the sea-fight of Lissa, the only battle between ironclads that has yet taken place in European waters. In ships, in guns, in armour the Italian fleet was superior to the Austrian. On paper there could be no doubt on which side lay the power that would secure, in event of war, the command of the Adriatic. The war came, and its grim reality showed how fallacious was the comparison made beforehand. The object of the Italians in 1866 was to drive the Austrians out of Venetia, by attacking them there while they were occupied elsewhere by the struggle with Prussia. The Italian plan of campaign was to march against the Austrians in northern Italy, and, after defeating their land army, besiege Venice by sea and land. The fleet was to crush the Austrians at sea, in the early days of the war, so to be ready to co-operate in the operations against Venice. It all worked out beautifully on paper. But the plan was never reduced to practice. War was declared on June 20th, and four days later the Italian field army was defeated by the Austrians at Custozza.