we get to Fritz the better our gunners become and the more completely his system goes to bits. Which is just what one would expect. Our long-service gunners can lay by sight against any ships in the world and beat them to rags, but when it comes to blind laying directed from the spotting tops much of the advantage of individual nerve and training is lost. Like Salt Horse, I am all for in-fighting, at 10,000 yards or less, and believe that our gun-layers can simply smother Fritz if they are allowed to get him plainly on the wires of their sighting telescopes.” “There is not a petty officer gunlayer who wouldn’t agree with you,” remarked the Gunner thoughtfully, “but the young scientific Gunnery Lieutenants would shake their heads. For what would become of the beautiful fire-direction system which they have been building up for years past if we are to run in close and pound in the good old fashion? Ten thousand yards to a modern 15-inch gun is almost point blank.” “Our business is to sink the enemy in the shortest possible time,” cried Admiral Salt Horse, “and to fight in the fashion best suited to what Copplestone here rightly calls the Soul of the Navy. Long-range fighting is all very well when one can’t do anything else—during a chase, for example—but when one can close in to a really effective distance, then, I say, close in and take the risks. In the Jutland Battle we lost two battle cruisers at long range and one only after the ranges had shortened. Fritz shot well at long range, but got worse and worse as we drew nearer to him, until at the end his gunnery simply did not count. Our ancestors had a similar problem to solve, and solved it at the Battle of the Saints in brutal fashion by breaking the French line and fighting at close quarters. There is a lot to be learned from the Jutland Battle, though it is not for an old dog like me to draw the lessons. But what does seem to shout at one is that the way to fight a German is to close in upon him and to knock the moral stuffing out of him. The destroyers always do it and so do our submarines. I am told that the way the destroyers charged battleships by night, and rounded up the enemy’s light stuff by day, was a liberal education in naval psychology. We are at our best when the risks are greatest—it is the sporting instinct of the race that sustains us. But Fritz, who is no sportsman, and has a good deal more of imagination than our lower deck, cracks when the strain upon his nerves passes the critical point. Our young officers and men have no nerves; Fritz has more than is good for him; let us take advantage of his moral weakness and hustle him beyond the point when he cracks. He is a landsman artificially made into a seaman; our men are seamen born. In a battleship action the personal factor tends to be over-borne by the immensity of the fighting instruments, but it is there all the time and is the one thing which really counts. We give it full scope in the destroyers, submarines, and