“The average layman probably supposes that a fleet action between the English Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet would be fought through on the lines of previous engagements in this war, and of the two naval battles of the Russo-Japanese war. They would expect the contest to be an artillery fight in which superior skill in the use of guns, if such superiority existed on either side, would be decisive; and if equality of skill existed, that victory would go to the side possessing a superior number of guns of superior power. But other naval weapons have advanced enormously in the last eight years. We not only have torpedoes that can run five and six miles with far greater accuracy and certainty than the old torpedo could go a third of this distance, but we know that Germany--almost alone amongst nations--has carried the art and practice of sowing mines to a point hitherto not dreamt of. When the first raid was made on Yarmouth, it will be remembered that the German ships retreated from a British submarine, and that the submarine ran into and was blown up and sunk by a mine left by the German ship in its wake. Again, after the North-Eastern raid, many ships--some authorities say over a dozen--were blown up by running into German mines left in the waters which the raiders had been through. The German naval leaders are perfectly aware that in modern capital ships they have an inferiority of numbers, and that gun for gun their artillery force is inferior to ours in an even greater degree. It is certain, therefore, that in thinking out the conditions in which they would have to fight an English fleet they are fully determined to use all other means that can possibly turn the scale of superiority to their side. Just as they have relied on the torpedo and the mine to diminish the general strength of the English Fleet, while it was engaged in the watch and ward of the North Sea, so as to redress the balance before the time for a naval action arrived; so, too, they have counted, when actually in action, on crippling and destroying English ships by mines and torpedoes, so that the artillery preponderance may finally be theirs. If we suppose that the German admirals have really thought out this problem, and we must suppose this, it is not difficult to see that with a fast advance battle-cruiser squadron engaged in mine laying, the problem of so handling a fleet as to pursue and cut off this squadron without crossing its wake must be extremely intricate and difficult. If further we imagine that this fast squadron has drawn the hostile squadron towards its own waters, where mine-fields unknown to us have been laid, we have not only the problem of the mines left in the wake of the enemy, but the further difficulty of there being prepared traps, so to speak, lying across the path which the attacking squadron would most naturally take. If we imagine the problem still further complicated by an attack on a battleship line by flotillas of