The scale of the task prescribes the scale of the instruments for its discharge. It was clearly beyond the scope of a single individual as chief professional adviser to the Admiralty, I will not say to solve, but even to keep account of, all the intricate problems which require investigation. Indeed, for many years before the war it was fully realized that only a properly organized war staff could even make a beginning from which a right understanding of naval war in modern conditions could derive. The necessity for this had constantly been urged upon successive governments. The matter came to a head when, in 1909, the Cabinet appointed a committee from its own members to consider Lord Charles Beresford’s very grave statements as to the condition of the Navy. This committee never published the evidence by which Lord Charles and his associates tried to establish their case. But in the course of a brief report which was published they said that they had been impressed “with the difference of opinion amongst officers of high rank and professional attainments regarding important principles of naval strategy and tactics, and they look forward with much confidence to the further development of a naval war staff, from which naval members of the Board and flag officers and their staffs at sea may be expected to derive common benefit.” Observe, that the most experienced officers of the day differed with regard to important principles of tactics! The technical officers of the navy knew that this absence of doctrine “among officers of high rank and professional attainments” arose very largely out of a total want of exact data as to the precise effect our weapons could be expected to have upon the enemy, and the effect the enemy’s weapons could be expected to have upon us. If there was no agreement as to how to use weapons there could be no agreement as to their value and, without such agreement, any common doctrine of tactics must be impossible. And with tactics in the melting-pot, strategy must be pure guesswork. The 1909 committee had hoped that an extended war staff would bring order out of chaos. But by 1911 there had still been nothing done to realize its pious aspirations. When Mr. Churchill took office, then, in the autumn of that year, he had the conclusions of the Beresford Committee to guide him as to the state of strategy and tactics and a state of things in the matter of guns, torpedoes, and mines, no less than the manifest trend of active naval thought, to show where the beginnings of reform must be made.