It affects the existence of the Empire, because just as we were in peril by the non-adoption of the breech-loading gun until after every Foreign nation had it, and just as we were in peril when Napoleon the Third built “La Gloire” and other French ironclads, while we were still stubbornly building wooden three-deckers, and just as we were in peril when, before the Boer War, we were waiting to perfect our ammunition and in consequence had practically no ammunition at all, so are we in peril now by only having 20 per cent. of our very minimum requirements in Submarine Boats, because we are waiting for perfection! We forget that “half a loaf is better than no bread”--we strain at the gnat of perfection and swallow the camel of unreadiness! We shall be found unready once too often! In 1918 I wrote the following letter to a friend on “Submarines and Oil Fuel.” You ask for information in regard to a prophecy I made before the War in relation to Submarines, because, you say, that my statement made in 1912 that Submarines would utterly change Naval Warfare is now making a stir. However, I made that same statement in 1904, fourteen years ago. I will endeavour to give you a brief, but succinct, synopsis of the whole matter. I have to go some way back, but as you quite correctly surmise the culmination of my beliefs since 1902 was the paper on Submarine Warfare which I prepared six months before the War.[9]... In May, 1912 (I am working backwards), Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, and Mr. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, came to Naples, where I then was, and I was invited to be Chairman of a Royal Commission on Oil Fuel for the Navy, and on Oil Engines. What most moved me to acceptance was to push the Submarine, because oil and the oil engine had a special bearing on its development. Continuing my march backwards in regard to the Submarine, there was a cessation in the development of the Submarine after I left the Admiralty as First Sea Lord on January 25th, 1910. When I returned as First Sea Lord to the Admiralty in October, 1914, there were fewer Submarines than when I left the Admiralty in January, 1910, and the one man incomparably fitted to develop the Submarine had been cast away in a third-class Cruiser stationed in Crete. No wonder! An Admiral, holding a very high appointment afloat, derided Submarines as playthings! In one set of manœuvres the young officer commanding a Submarine, having for the third time successfully torpedoed the hostile Admiral’s Flagship, humbly said so to the Admiral by signal, and suggested the Flagship going out of action. The answer he got back by signal from the Admiral was: “You be damned!”