Add to all this, that while wireless introduced an almost instant means of sending orders to or getting news from such distant spots that space was annihilated, airships and aeroplanes--with some, as many thought, with a decisive capacity for attacking fleets in harbour--seemed to make scouting possible over unthought of areas. Can we blame the landsman who set himself patiently to learn the rudiments of the naval art if, after a painful study of the past, he found himself so bemused by the changes of the present as to wonder if a single accepted dogma could survive the high-explosive bombardment of to-day’s inventions? It almost looked as if nothing could be learned from the past and less, if possible, be foretold about the future. If the understanding of sea-power in the days of old had been the possession of but a few, it seemed that to-day it must be denied to all. It is, therefore, not surprising that extraordinary misunderstandings were--and are--prevalent. Only one truth seemed to survive--the supremacy of the capital ship. But this, too, became an error, because it excluded other truths. To the vast bulk of laymen the word “navy” suggested no more than a panorama of great super-Dreadnought battleships. From time to time naval reviews had been held, and the illustrated papers had shown these great vessels, long vistas of them, anchored in perfectly kept lines, with light cruisers and destroyers fading away into the distance. Both in the pictures and in the descriptions all emphasis was laid upon the ships. And in this the current official naval thought of the day was reflected. If any one wished to compare the British Fleet with the German or the German with the American, he confined himself to enumerating their respective totals in Dreadnoughts, and let it go at that. His mental picture of a fleet was thus a perspective of vast mastodons armed with guns of fabulous reach and still more fabulous power, gifted, some of them, with speed that could outstrip the fastest liner, and encased, at least in part, in almost impenetrable armour.