This had not only compelled an immediate response in every navy throughout the world, but had once more secured for us the margin of vital security that had seriously been encroached upon before these reforms were initiated. That in spite of changes of Government and the natural reluctance of the nation, in view of social necessities, to increase its naval expenditure, Lord Fisher had succeeded in carrying through his programme, was the best evidence of his strength; and men of all parties had become increasingly united in endorsing the general wisdom of his attitude. So swift, even since then, however, had been the advance in naval construction that, when Sir John Jellicoe stepped on board the _Iron Duke_, the first of the dreadnoughts was almost obsolete. Itself since outstripped by the ships of the _Queen Elizabeth_ class, when war was declared on August 4th, the _Iron Duke_, as regarded battleships, was perhaps the flower of the British Navy. In full commission displacing 27,000 tons, and costing more than £2,000,000 to build, she had attained on trial, in spite of her enormous armament, a speed of no less than 22 knots. Each of her large guns, of which she carried ten, so arranged as to be able to fire on each broadside, was capable of hurling a shell from twenty to twenty-five miles, during which it would rise far higher than Mont Blanc; and, besides these, she had a dozen 6-inch guns with which to repel possible destroyer attacks. Her armour at the water-line was twelve inches thick; she was fitted with four submerged torpedo-tubes, and carried on board three thousand tons of fuel {22} and a complement of over a thousand officers and men. No less powerful, though not so heavily armoured, and capable of a speed when pressed, of about thirty knots an hour, was the _Lion_, the flagship of the battle-cruisers, of whom Sir David Beatty was in command. She, too, carried ten 13.5-inch guns, with sixteen smaller quick-firing guns, and two submerged torpedo-tubes. Typical of yet another class was the since famous _Arethusa_ flying the pennant of Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt, as he then was--a light armoured cruiser, or, in Mr. Churchill's phrase, "a destroyer of destroyers," displacing a little less than 4,000 tons, but capable of a speed, when pressed, approaching forty knots. Lastly should be mentioned the _L_ class, then the latest of our destroyers, consuming oil fuel only--those antennæ of the Fleet, as fast as an express train, and the very incarnation of vigilance and daring.