In the ten years preceding the war, Admiralty policy, as shown by the official apology for the Dreadnought design and by the course of naval ordnance administration, had been governed by the purely defensive idea of providing ships fast enough to keep outside of the zone of the enemy’s fire, armed with guns that outranged him. The professed object was to have a chance of hitting your enemy when he had no chance of hitting you. At the Falkland Islands there was given a classic example of the tactics that follow from this conception. On the assumption that twenty-five 12-inch gun hits would suffice to sink each of the enemy’s armoured cruisers, it appeared that in this engagement the 12-inch gun had attained the rate of _one hit per gun per 75 minutes_. This figure may be contrasted with the _one hit per gun per 72 seconds_ attained by the _Severn_ in her second engagement with the _Koenigsberg_ at the Rufigi. The contrast seems to show that it was only the obsession of the defensive theory that explained contentment with methods of gunnery so extraordinarily ineffective in battle conditions. For the difference in the rate of hitting was almost completely explained by the range being _constant_ at the Rufigi, and _inconstant_ at the Falklands. And the methods of fire control in use were proved at the Falklands to be unequal to finding, and continuously keeping, accurate knowledge of an inconstant range. Again at the affair of the Dogger Bank, _Lion_, _Tiger_, _Princess Royal_, _New Zealand_, and _Indomitable_ were in action for many hours against three battle-cruisers and an armoured cruiser, and for perhaps half the time at ranges at which good hitting is made at battle practice; and although two of the enemy battle-cruisers were hit and seen to be in flames they were able, after two and a half hours’ engagement, to continue their retreat at undiminished speed, and only the armoured cruiser, whose resisting power to 13.5 projectiles must have been very feeble, was sunk.