This point came in for a good deal of public discussion at the beginning of 1915, and I venture to quote a contribution to it. Looking back upon this controversy, it is easy enough to see now wherein lay the chief disadvantage of the suppression of courts-martial. There was no general staff at the Admiralty, representative of the best Service opinion, and, deprived of court-martial, the Navy had no means of expressing a corporate judgment on the vital issues as they arose. The doctrine with regard to torpedo risk, which seems to have been acted on at the close of this action, was evidently one which either the Admiralty had laid down, or at least accepted as correct. Could it have been referred to the corporate judgment of the Service and had that judgment not endorsed it, the history of the war might have been altogether different. Mr. Churchill’s speech in the official reports is entitled ‘British Command of the Sea: Admiralty Organization.’ It would have been as well if this description had been given out before the speech was made, for, as it happened, many thought it was intended as a survey of the first epoch of the war and were disappointed that, in so eloquent and forceful a review, there was hardly a word of tribute to the incomparable services of our officers and men. There was lavish praise of the generosity of the House of Commons; of the foresight of Lord Fisher; of the excellence of the Admiralty’s preparedness at every point; of the amazing scale and success of the provisioning with coal and supplies of a vast fleet always at sea; of the astonishing perfection of the work of the engineering branch. But there was singularly little of the work of the fighting men. The officers were dismissed simply as ‘painstaking.’ No doubt the tribute will be made at another time. Is there any time, however, which is not the right time for acknowledging these services? On Tuesday we learned that between 300 and 400 officers have died for us--and over 6,000 men. Is it gracious to postpone their eulogy? And the absence of eulogy was emphasized by the forceful manner in which the First Lord asked that he and his colleagues should be entrusted with the most absolute and dictatorial powers. Indeed, he excused the departure from the Service custom of holding courts-martial whenever a ship was lost on the ground that modern conditions called for instant action, with which courts-martial were incompatible. But the court-martial, as I have before pointed out, is the palladium of the Navy’s liberties. To abolish it is like suspending the Habeas Corpus. It is so extreme a measure because it ignores the great unwritten law of the Navy, which is that, in spite of the authority of Whitehall over the Navy, of an admiral over a fleet, and of a captain over a ship’s company, being necessarily and in each case absolute, yet there must always be an appeal from authority to the profession itself. If this is necessary