“The crew, wounded and reduced in numbers, will have lost their calm, and consequently the firing will have become wilder; finally, one of the two antagonists will get in a lucky shot that will disable the other. She will speedily become unmanageable, and her enemy will as speedily close into within the thousand metres which will permit of a torpedo being launched with every chance of success, or the battle may be concluded by a final rush and the point of the ram. “As the wounded hull sinks slowly beneath the waves, the flag which had put such heart into the crew, and the sight of which had spurred them to fight to the last, may well seem as it disappears to repeat to the enemy these sad words, ‘Thou but slayest one already dead.’ “Four ships in place of two, eight in place of four, will repeat in a perhaps more complex action the same phases of attack, and the same foolish waste of ammunition, which in these days causes the greatest preoccupation of those who, having to design warships, must decide on the quantity of ammunition and projectiles provided for each different calibre of the armament. * * * * * “There is, however, another method of fighting and sending your enemy to the bottom; but it is one that is capable of adoption only by a Navy at the same time most potent and very rich. “Let us imagine a vessel whose armour is so well distributed and so impervious as to be able to resist all the attacks of an enemy’s artillery with the exception of the projectiles of the 12-inch guns. Such a ship could approach her enemy without firing a shot, without wasting a single round of ammunition, absolutely regardless of all the scratchings that her antagonist might inflict on the exterior of her armour plates. “And as to-day the belts of fighting ships are generally of such thickness that, when we leave the results of the proving ground and come to the conditions of actual combat, we find that it would be more than difficult to penetrate them with 6-inch guns, we see at once that it would be useless to equip our contemplated ship with such artillery. “Further, if this ideal vessel which we have imagined to be so potently armoured is also very swift, and of a speed greater than that of a possible antagonist, she could not only prevent this latter from getting away, but also avail herself of her superiority in this respect for choosing the most convenient position for striking the belt of the enemy in the most advantageous manner. “For this swift vessel a numerous and uniform armament of 8-inch guns, such as was contemplated for the _Amalfi_ class,[27] would appear to be sufficient, if we had only to consider the penetration at right angles of modern belts, especially if capped projectiles are adopted.