Mr. King takes note of this total abandonment of side armor as a means of preserving stability when a ship is pierced at the water-line, and regards this abandonment as a bold defiance of the principles which I have laid down for some years past. I cannot say that I take this view of the matter. I have always discussed this matter from the British navy point of view, and had these ships of the _Italia_ type been built for the British navy in substitution of real iron-clads, while France, Russia, and other European countries were still building such iron-clads, I should have certainly condemned them. The primary requirement of British first-class ships is that they shall be able to close with and fight any enemy of the period whatever, and any defect which unfits them for this work, or makes it extremely dangerous to perform it, is a disgrace to England. Even if armor were given up by other powers, it would be a matter for careful consideration in England whether enough of it for the protection of their existence against contemporary guns should not be retained in her principal ships. England’s ability to live as a nation and as the head of an empire is dependent upon her naval superiority, and no price to purchase that can be too great for her to pay. But with Italy the case was and is wholly different. She could not compete with England in naval power, and would not wish to if she could, for she is without an ocean empire to preserve. But Italy has European neighbors, and when she began to build these _Italias_ and _Lepantos_ she had for neighbor one power, France, which had unwisely persisted for years in building wooden armor-clads, neither strongly protected nor swift, nor very powerfully armed; and I am not at all sure that, to such a navy as France then had, a few extremely fast and very powerfully armed ships such as Italy built were not excellent answers. The _Italia_ would have been available also against a very large proportion of the British iron-clad fleet, and of the fleets of Austria, Turkey, and Russia. The idea of the Italian ministers clearly was to give weaker ships no time for long engagements with them, but to pounce upon them by means of enormous speed, and to destroy them at a blow by means of their all-powerful ordnance. They might well expect to have with such ships so great a command over the conditions under which they would give battle as to be well able to repair in time, and at least temporarily, such dangerous wounds as they might receive. But more than this cannot be said for such ships: they are not fit to engage in prolonged contests, or to fight such actions as by their assaults on superior numbers and their endurance of close conflict have won that “old and just renown” of which England is so deservedly proud. It seems to me as obvious as anything can possibly be that such ships as the _Italia_, if once adopted as models for other great powers, would admit of easy and cheap answers. Ships of equal speed,