French, by-the-bye), when their long, fragile ends had been smashed and water-logged, and their high speed consequently gone, is a question which I prefer not to speak of further. There was, there is, there ever will be, but one sound policy for a nation that desires to command the seas, and can afford to do so, and that is to reject all doubtful fads, all dangerous fancies, and to insure without ceasing pronounced superiority _in every known and measurable element of naval power_. New inventions will and must be made; new sources of power, new means of attack, will and must be discovered; but these things take time and money and skill to develop, and that power is the greatest and safest which from time to time and always prefers the thing which must succeed to that which may, and which others fear will, fail in the hour of trial. One hope I, the present writer, have, and it is that the terrible development of the weapons of war—for terrible it is with all its shortcomings—and the enormously increasing cost alike of single actions and of conflicts between squadrons and fleets, will tend to further, and to greatly further, those influences which are happily operating in favor of peace and good-will among men. NOTES. ITALY. The characteristic development of the Italian navy has been the abandonment of side-armor as a protection to stability, and the attempt to obtain high speed and great coal endurance. This bold departure in the matter of armor is due mainly to the fact that Italy’s sea policy is governed by conditions which appeal nowhere else with equal force. “It is the combination of a large army and a powerful fleet,” writes Sir Charles Dilke, “which really makes Italy formidable; for if Italy has only the fifth army it has the third navy of all the powers. Captain à Court has admirably pointed out how, for a young country, and a country with an overburdened budget, it was not possible to build ship for ship against France, and not within Italy’s power to create a fleet numerically equal to that of France, but that it was possible to build a small number of enormous sea-going iron-clads of the first class, ‘larger, stronger, swifter, and more heavily armed than any afloat.’ Were Italy not protected by a powerful fleet, such as might have some chance of holding its own against the French in its own waters, the French fleet could be used to destroy Italian mobilization if Italy had joined an alliance against France. The Italian railway lines could be cut at many places from the coast. Not only from Toulon and Ajaccio, but also from her new port at Biserta, on the Tunisian coast, France could keep watch and could pounce on Italy.