sufficient superior speed to pick up a particular ship of the enemy? That is the point to rivet your attention upon. We must always in our Navy have ships of greatly superior speed to any one particular ship in the enemy’s fleet, otherwise over the face of the sea you will have ships of the enemy roaming about that we cannot overhaul and that nothing can touch.” The above words were spoken by Admiral Bacon two and three-quarter years before Admiral von Spee and his fast Squadron were caught up and destroyed by the British fast Battle Cruisers, “Invincible” and “Inflexible.” Admiral Bacon was a prophet! In other words, Admiral Bacon had Common Sense, and saw the Obvious. It’s difficult for a shore-going person to realise things obvious to the sailor. For instance: in the case of a Big Gun, if twice two is four, then twice four isn’t eight, it’s sixteen, and twice eight isn’t sixteen, it’s sixty-four; that is to say, the bursting effect of a shell varies with the square. So the bigger the calibre of the gun the more immense is the desolating effect of the shell, and, incidentally, the longer the range at which you hit the enemy. The projectile of the 20-inch gun that was ready to be made for H.M.S. “Incomparable” weighed _over two tons_, and the gun itself weighed 200 _tons_. Such a projectile, associated with a Howitzer, may effect vast changes in both Sea and Land War, because of the awful and immense craters such shell explosions would effect. To illustrate the frightful devastating effect of such huge shell I will tell a story that I heard from a great friend of mine, a Japanese Admiral. He was a Lieutenant at the time of the Chino-Japanese War. The Chinese vessels mounted very heavy guns. One of their shells burst on the side of the Japanese ship in which my friend was. The Captain sent him down off the bridge to see what had happened, as the ship tottered under the effect of this shell. When he got down on the gun deck, he saw, as it were, the whole side of the ship open to the sea, and not a vestige of any of the crew could he see. They had all been blown to pieces. The only thing he rescued was the uniform cap of his friend, the Lieutenant who was in charge of that division of guns, blown up overhead between the beams. The huge rope mantlets that acted as splinter nettings hung between the guns had utterly disappeared and were resolved into tooth powder! (so he described it).