For what it is worth, however, it may here be put on record that junior opinion in the Navy was then becoming opposed not only to “super-Dreadnoughts” but to Dreadnoughts in any shape or form. Hardly any naval officer under the rank of Commander, and an ever-increasing percentage over that rank, was to be found who was not more or less convinced that the days of the Dreadnoughts and “super-Dreadnoughts” might be nearly numbered, and that we were possibly on the verge of some as yet indeterminate revolution in naval construction as great as any that the “fifties” saw. As yet no very clear argument can be produced. Only vaguely it is put forward that with torpedo range what it is, the big ship’s chance against torpedo craft is practically relegated to not being found, and “not being found” depends mainly upon the “super-Dreadnought” being screened with very numerous smaller craft. When Lord Charles Beresford put it on record that a hundred anti-torpedo attack guns would be useless in a battleship, he spoke for all progressive naval ideas. A destroyer may be hit and hit vitally, but it is hard to imagine a hit which will stop her drifting within easy range of her quarry before going down. If hostile destroyers get in, the only real chance of big ships is to sweep their decks with the modern variant of “case shot” and so kill the crews, a difficult proposition at the best owing to the small amount of time available. The proposition is rendered tenfold harder by the certainty that attack, if it comes, will not come from one quarter only, but from several. Consequently to preserve the Dreadnoughts, an ever increasing number of auxiliaries is demanded. Of these no Navy can be said to have a sufficiency. Hence it is argued that a destroyer attack is bound to succeed sooner or later, while even did a sufficiency of small craft exist, the big ship has to be so nursed and protected that her sphere of usefulness is enormously reduced. Submarines also are a deadly danger. On the other hand it is argued that, given sufficient bulk to the big ship, torpedoes are likely to be relatively harmless to her; it is also asked how can the small craft protect their own big ships and also search out and attack the enemy’s mastodons? There, till the war proves something definite one way or the other, the matter must be left. The big ship has been doomed so often, and so often adapted itself to changed conditions, that it may well do so again, despite the seemingly heavy odds against it. _PROTECTED CRUISERS OF THE DREADNOUGHT ERA._ The original conception of the Dreadnought era was “nothing between the most powerful armoured ships and torpedo craft,” though so far as second class cruisers were concerned the last of these had been laid down in 1901.