The fleets of capital ships thus organized, and disposed as occasion may require and sound strategy dictate, are not, however, by any means to be regarded as autonomous and self-sufficing organisms. They are rather to be regarded as the moving base of a much larger organization, much more widely dispersed, consisting of lighter vessels not fit to lie in a line, but specially adapted to discharge functions which capital ships cannot as such discharge, yet which are indispensable either to the full efficiency of the latter or to the maintenance of an effective command of the sea. The first of these functions is the collection and rapid transmission of intelligence as to the enemy's dispositions and movements over as wide an area of the waters in dispute as is compatible with communication rapid enough to allow of counter-movements being made before it is too late. The development of wireless telegraphy has largely extended this area, but it is not without limits in practice, and those limits are already narrower than the extreme range of a single transmission by wireless telegraphy. For example, a warship in the Levant might, if the conditions were exceptionally favourable, communicate by direct wireless with another warship in the Orkneys. But the information thus transmitted would hardly be likely directly to influence the movements and dispositions of the latter. If it did it would probably not be through the immediate initiative of the Admiral commanding in the North Sea, but through the supreme control of all the naval forces of the belligerent affected, exercised through the General Staff of the Navy at the seat of Government. It may here be remarked in passing that the development of wireless telegraphy will probably be found in war to strengthen this supreme control and to weaken to that extent the independent and isolated initiative of individual Commanders-in-Chief. But that is not necessarily a disadvantage, and even so far as it is disadvantage at all it is more than balanced by the immense corresponding advantage of keeping the War Staff at all times in direct touch with every part of the field of naval operations, and thereby making it the focus of all available information, and the directing authority for all the larger strategy of the campaign. Except in degree, moreover, there is nothing new in this. When Nelson was returning across the Atlantic, after chasing Villeneuve out of the West Indies, his only way of informing the Admiralty of the nature of the situation was to send on Bettesworth in the brig "Curieux" with his news. Nowadays a modern "Curieux" would be able to send on the news as soon as she came within fifteen hundred or possibly two thousand miles from the British Isles, and Nelson at the same distance might have received his orders direct from the Admiralty. But the special point to note is that as soon as Bettesworth's information was received at the