It is often asked which has the better fleet, France or England. Who can tell? No one definitely. Admiral Sir R. Spencer Robinson, late Comptroller of the British Navy, declares, in the _Contemporary Review_ of February, 1887, that “the number of armored vessels of the two countries may be stated approximately as fifty-five for England and fifty-one for France. Without going into further details, taking everything into consideration, giving due weight to all the circumstances which affect the comparison, and assuming that the designs of the naval constructors on each side of the Channel will fairly fulfil the intentions of each administration (a matter of interminable dispute, and which nothing but an experiment carried to destruction can settle), the iron-clad force of England is, on the whole, rather superior to that of France. A combination of the navy of that Power with any other would completely reverse the position. I should state as my opinion, leaving others to judge what it may be worth, that in fighting power the unarmored ships of England are decidedly superior to those of our rival’s; but if the _raison d’être_ of the French navy is—as has been frequently stated in that country, and by none more powerfully and categorically than by the French Minister of Marine—the wide-spread, thorough destruction of British commerce, and the pitiless and remorseless ransom of every undefended and accessible town in the British dominions, regardless of any sentimentalities or such rubbish as the laws of war and the usages of civilized nations; and if at least one of the _raisons d’être_ of the British navy is to defeat those benevolent intentions, and to defend that commerce on which depends our national existence and imperial greatness—then I fear that perhaps they have prepared to realize their purpose of remorseless destruction rather better than we have ours of successful preservation.” A long sentence this, but it emphasizes the great axiom that war is business, not sentiment, and teaches a lesson which this country will do well to learn. Fortunately, we are at last out of the shallows, if not fairly in the full flooding channel-way, though many things are yet wanting with us. Perhaps this over-long chapter cannot be made to end more usefully than by quoting in proof of this the concluding paragraph of that brilliant article on naval policy which Professor James Russell Soley, United States Navy, contributed to the February (1887) number of _Scribner’s Magazine_: