This same writer concluded his account of the spectacle with the remark that "A grander, a more magnificent demonstration of England's Fleet it would indeed be difficult to imagine." But behind the seeming of things there stood revealed an organization which, though it had recently been greatly improved, still left much to be desired in rapid and efficient action. Moreover, at this time even in the Channel Fleet, which then consisted of five ships, and was the only fully commissioned force in home waters, the main purpose of sea-power, to shoot straight, was certainly not kept in view. In his interesting book of reminiscences, "The Navy as I have Known It," Admiral the Hon. Sir Edmund Fremantle, describing the conditions which existed in the Jubilee year, records: "We had large crews and, as all the ships were masted, there was a fair amount of sail drill, while I fear gunnery was little attended to." There is no record of the impressions which the German Emperor carried home with him from Spithead, but it is more than probable that, while his Majesty was impressed by the great display of ships and men, he was not less impressed by the failure to utilize these resources to the best possible advantage. The British Navy was living on its past achievements. Though it possessed a mass of material and a large personnel, neither was well organized for war. The available resources exceeded anything belonging to any other nation, but the fleet still basked, content, in the glow of the triumphs achieved in the early years of the nineteenth century. The Navy was unreformed. Steam had taken the place of sails, wood had been superseded, first by iron and then by steel, but the routine of the squadrons, the training of officers and men had undergone little change. The conditions of naval warfare had altered, but the British Fleet remained faithful to the old regime, holding fast to the belief that when war occurred there would be a sufficient interval to allow it to complete its arrangements, elaborate its plans, and place all its resources on a war footing. As the British Navy in its influence on world policy inspired German ambitions, so German thoroughness in organization, when applied to the growing German Fleet, reacted upon the British Navy and gave it a new and vigorous life. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 7: This ship was, of course, the predecessor of the present _Dreadnought_.] CHAPTER V The German Navy Acts Among the political developments of the last quarter of a century there is none more remarkable than the evolution of German naval ambitions as revealed in the legislation passed since 1898.