He would know generally, of course, that such things as cruisers, destroyers, and submarines not only existed, but were indeed necessary. He would know vaguely that cruisers were useful for cruising, and destroyers for their eponymous duties--though he would have been sorely puzzled if he had been asked to say exactly what the cruising was for, or what the destroyers were intended to destroy. He would have heard of the mystic properties of torpedoes, and of mines, and of certain weird possibilities that lay before the combination of the torpedo with the submarine. Similarly, if one challenged him, he would admit, of course, that guns could only be formidable if they hit, and that fleets could only succeed in battle if their officers and crews were properly trained and skilfully led. But these were things that could not be tabulated or scheduled. They did not figure in Naval Annuals, nor in Admiralty statements. They were stumbling blocks to the layman’s desire to be satisfied--and he took it for granted that they were all right, and was content to measure naval strength by the number of the biggest ships, and so rate the navies of the world by what they possessed in these colossal units only. Thus, he would always put Great Britain first, and recently Germany second, with the United States, Japan, and France taking the third place in succession, as their annual programmes of construction were announced. And just as he thought of navies in terms of battleships, so he thought of naval war in terms of great sea battles. A reaction was inevitable. Four years have now passed since Germany struck her felon blow at the Christian tradition the nations have been struggling to maintain--and so far there has been no Trafalgar. The German Fleet, hidden behind its defences, is still integral and afloat, and though the British Fleet has again and again come out, its battleships have got into action but once, and then for a few minutes only. For four years, therefore, the two greatest battle fleets in the world seem to have been doing nothing; and to be doing nothing now! And so, if you ask the average layman for a broad opinion on sea-power to-day, he will tell you that battle fleets are useless. For a year or more he has heard little of any work at sea except of the work of the submarine. To him, therefore, it seemed manifest that the torpedo has superseded the gun and the submarine the battleship. His opinions, in other words, have swung full cycle. Was he right before and is he wrong now, or was his first view an error and has he at last, under the stern teachings of war, attained the truth?