Thus, without having lost a battle at sea--but because we had failed to win one--a complete reverse in the naval situation was brought about. Instead of enjoying the complete command Mr. Churchill had spoken of, we were counting the months before surrender might be inevitable. During the ten weeks leading up to the culminating losses of April, a final effort was made to make the public and the Government realize that failure of the Admiralty to protect the sea-borne commerce of a seagirt people was due less to the Government’s reliance on advisers ill-equipped for their task, than that the task itself was beyond human performance, so long as the Higher Command of the Navy was wrongly constituted for its task. It was, of course, an old warning vainly urged on successive Governments year after year in peace time, and month after month during the war. Evidences of inadequate preparation of imperfect plans, of a wrong theory of command, of action founded on wrong doctrine but endorsed by authority, had all been numerous during the previous two and a half years. THE FOURTH CRISIS But where reason and argument had been powerless to prevail, the logic of facts gained the victory. At last, in the fourth naval crisis of the war, it was realized that changes in personnel at Whitehall were not sufficient, that changes of system were necessary. Before the end of May the machinery of administration was reorganized and a new Higher Command developed, largely on the long resisted staff principle. Thus, after repeated failures--not of the Fleet but of its directing minds in London--a complete revolution was effected in the command of the most important of all the fighting forces in the war, viz., the British Navy. It was actually brought about because criticism had shown that the old régime had first failed to anticipate and then to thwart a new kind of attack on sea communications--just as it had failed to anticipate the conditions of surface war. It was at last realized that two kinds of naval war could go on together, one almost independent of the other. A Power might command the surface of the sea against the surface force of an enemy, and do so more absolutely than had ever happened before, and yet see that command brought, for its main purposes, almost to nothing by a new naval force, from which, though naval ships could defend themselves, they seemingly could not defend the carrying and travelling ships, upon which the life of the nation and the continuance of its military effort on land depended. The revolution of May saved the situation. At last the principle of convoy, vainly urged on the old régime, was adopted, and within six months the rate at which ships were being lost was practically halved. In twelve months it had been reduced by sixty per cent.