fast destroyers firing high-speed, long-range torpedoes, to intersect the course that that squadron is taking, we have the third element of confusion. It does not need much imagination then to see that with mines actually dropped during the manœuvres that lead up to or form part of the battle, with mine-fields scattered over the chosen battlefield, and with the possibility of a battle fleet being rendered liable at the shortest notice to a massed attack of long-range torpedo fire, a naval battle will be a totally different affair from the comparatively simple operations that took place in the engagement of August 10, or at the battle of Tsushima. “Such conditions as these demand extraordinary sagacity on the part not only of the Commander-in-chief, but of all the squadron commanders under him. It requires insistent vigilance; but then, for that matter, such vigilance is the daily routine of the Navy always. Finally, it makes demands on the art of gunnery of which we have hitherto had no practical experience at all. For reasons that hardly need discussion, all practice gunnery is carried out in conditions almost ludicrously unlike war, and quite absurdly unlike the kind of naval engagement that seems to me probable. The principal difference between the two is that it is impossible to practise with the big guns at a fast target. There is no way of manœuvring and running a target at high speed unless it is propelled by its own power, and that power is kept supplied and is got by human agents, and obviously you cannot fire at a ship which is full of people. And when you fire at a towed target the differences are, first, that no target can be towed beyond perhaps a third of a battleship’s speed, and next, that it cannot be manœuvred as a ship can. Lastly, the firing ship, so far as I am aware, is never called upon to fire while executing the kind of manœuvres, or subject to the kind of limitations, that would be incident to a modern battle. “To sum up my argument. The present indications are that Germany, carrying out its previously expressed intentions, has made a first, and is now aiming at getting the information for a second, attempt to draw the English Fleet into fighting on ground which she can mine before we are drawn on to it, and to fight in conditions in which she can use a fast advance squadron to compel our ships to adopt certain manœuvres, and to turn that advance squadron into mine-layers, so as to limit our movements or make them exceedingly perilous. She will try to make the battlefields as close as she can to her own ports, both so as to facilitate the preliminary preparation by mines and to surprise us with unexpected torpedo attacks. I interpret the fulminations of Captain Persius and others as expressions of their anger at the failure of their first attempt, and I interpret the air raids as attempts to get information for making a second.