Inconclusive though it was in actual results, the Dogger Bank action of January, 1915, proved to be most instructive. It showed clearly three things: first, that no decisive action could be fought by the big ships in the southern portion of the North Sea—there was not sufficient room to complete the destruction of the enemy. Secondly, it demonstrated the overwhelming power of the larger gun and the heavier shell. Thanks to the skill of the Navy’s engineering staffs it was also found that the actual speed of our battle cruisers was quite a knot faster than their designed speed, and since no similar advance in speed was noticeable in the case of the fleeing German cruisers it could be concluded that the training of our engineers was fully as superior to theirs as was unquestionably the training of our long-service seamen and gunners superior to that of their short-service crews. As the fleets grew larger our superiority in personnel tended to become more marked. We had an almost unlimited maritime population upon which to draw for the few thousands whom we needed—before the war the professional Navy was almost wholly recruited from the seaboards of the South of England—we had still as our reserves the east and west coasts of England and Scotland. But Germany, even before the war, could not man her fleets from her scanty resources of men from her seaboards, and more and more had to depend upon partially trained landsmen. If one adds to this initial disadvantage in the quality of the German sea recruits, that other disadvantage of tile cooping up of her fleets—sea training can only be acquired fully upon the open seas—while ours were continually at work, patrolling, cruising, practising gunnery, and so on, it will be seen that on the one side the personal efficiency of officers and men, upon which the value of machines wholly depends, tended continually to advance, while upon the German side it tended as continually to recede. It was the old story. Nelson’s sea-worn fleet, though actually smaller in numbers and weaker in guns than those of the French and Spaniards at Trafalgar, was so infinitely superior to its opponents in trained officers and men that the result of the battle was never for a moment in doubt.