The one experience of war which ships really contemporary have had was in the battle of the Yalu. Its teachings lose some value from the fact that the well-drilled Japanese used their weapons to advantage, while the Chinese were ill trained; still, some fair inferences can be made. The Japanese had a great many rapid-fire guns, with few very heavy ones, and their vessels were not battle-ships properly so-called. The Chinese, besides other vessels, had two battle-ships with heavy armor and heavy guns. Victory remained with the Japanese. In the opinion of the writer two probable conclusions can be reached: That rapid-fire guns in due proportion to the entire battery will beat down a ship dependent mainly upon turret guns; that is, between two ships whose batteries are alike the issue of the contest will depend upon the one or the other gaining first a predominance of rapid fire. That done, the turret guns of the predominant ship will give the final blows to the engines and turrets of the other, whose own turret guns cannot be used with the necessary deliberation under the preponderant storm of projectiles now turned upon them. The other conclusion, even more certain than the first, is that rapid-fire guns alone, while they may determine an action, cannot make it decisive. Despite the well-established superiority of the Japanese rapid fire in that action, the Chinese battle-ships, though overborne, were not taken. Their heaviest armor being unpierced, the engines and turret guns remained effective, and they withdrew unmolested. BATTLE-SHIPS THAT ARE TOO LARGE The battle-ship constituted as described remains for the present the fighting ship upon which the issues of war will depend. The type is accepted by all the leading naval states, though with considerable variations in size. As regards the latter feature, the writer believes that the enormous tonnage recently given is excessive, and that the reasons which support it, too numerous and various to be enumerated at length, have the following fundamental fault: they look too much to the development of the individual ship and too little to the fact that the prime requisite of the battle-ship is facility for co-operating with other ships of its own type—facility in manœuvring together, facility in massing, facility also in subdividing when occasion demands. It may be remarked, too, that the increase of size has gone much more to increase of defensive power than of offensive—a result so contrary to the universal teachings of war as of itself to suggest pausing.