“It may be taken for what it is worth, but I declare that the abandonment of armor has not at all been forced upon us by unavoidable circumstances, nor is it from any intrinsic necessity that we go on refusing to provide our ships with torpedo defence. On not immoderate dimensions, at not immoderate cost, ships might be built, still practically invulnerable to gun, ram, and torpedo alike, ships which could dispose of the _Admiral_ class of ships more quickly and certainly than she could dispose of the feeblest antagonist that she is likely to encounter. But in order to produce such ships we must revive the now abandoned principle that armor, and armor alone can save from destruction those ships whose business it is to drive our future enemies from the European seas and lock them up in their own ports.” The Committee on Designs of 1872, previously alluded to, contained sixteen members, of whom six were naval officers. Two of those members, Admiral George Elliot, R.N., and Rear-admiral A. P. Ryder, R.N., dissented so far from their colleagues that they could not sign the report, and accordingly they submitted a very able minority report embodying their views. The first of the “general principles” laid down in their report is as follows: “That it is of the last importance that the modifications in existing types of men-of-war which the committee have been invited to suggest should be calculated not merely to effectually meet the necessities of naval warfare now and in the immediate future, but in full view of the probable necessities of naval warfare in the more remote future.” It must be a source of satisfaction to these gallant officers to observe in some designs of the present day a confirmation of their forecast in many particulars. The following extracts from a letter bearing upon the present controversy, by Admiral Elliot, appeared in the _Times_ (London) of April 24, 1885, and contain the pith of his oft-quoted arguments: “My first impression on reading these letters in the _Times_ is one of disappointment that the point at issue between these two experts has not been more closely confined to the comparative merits of side-armor _versus_ cellular-deck armor, but that their attention has been directed to this feature of design only as connected with a particular type of ship, namely, the _Collingwood_, which vessel is a hybrid, or cross between the two systems of protection to buoyancy, and therefore not truly representative of either. Mr. White’s defence of the unarmored ends of the _Collingwood_ is so far unsatisfactory that it treats of a very imperfect development of the cellular-deck mode of protection, and therefore he is not an exponent of the real merits of this system. * * * * *