In August, 1914, our Battle Fleets available for the North Sea—and at the moment of supreme test no vessels, however powerful, which were not on the spot were of any account at all—were not at their full strength. The battleships were all at home—the ten Dreadnoughts, each with ten 12-inch guns, the four Orions, the four K.G.V.s and the four Iron Dukes, each with their ten 13.5-inch guns far more powerful than the earlier Dreadnoughts,—and were all fully mobilised by August 3rd. But of our nine fast and invaluable battle cruisers as many as four were far away. The _Australia_ was at the other side of the globe, and three others had a short time before been despatched to the Mediterranean. Beatty had the _Lion_, _Queen Mary_, and _Princess Royal_, each with eight 13.5-inch guns and twenty-nine knots of speed, in addition to the _New Zealand_, and _Invincible_ each with eight 12-inch guns. The First Lord of the Admiralty announced quite correctly that we had mobilised thirty-one ships of the battle line, but actually in the North Sea at their war stations upon that fateful evening of August 4th—which now seems so long ago—Jellicoe and Beatty had twenty-seven only of first line ships. They were enough as it proved, but one rather grudged at that time, those three in the Mediterranean and the _Australia_ at the Antipodes. Had there been a battle of the Giants we should have needed them all, for only numbers can annihilate. Jellicoe had, in addition to those which I have reckoned, the _Lord Nelson_ and _Agamemnon_—pre-Dreadnoughts, each with four 12-inch guns and ten 9.2-inch guns—useful ships but not of the first battle line. Opposed to our twenty-seven available monsters the Germans had under their hands eighteen completed vessels of their first line. I do not count in this select company the armoured cruiser _Blücher_, with her twelve 8-inch guns, which was sunk later on in the Dogger Bank action by the 13.5-inch weapons of Beatty’s great cruisers. Neither do I count the fine cruiser _Goeben_, a fast vessel with ten 11-inch guns which, like our three absent battle cruisers, was in the Mediterranean. The _Goeben_ escaped later to the Dardanelles and ceased to be on the North Sea roll of the German High Seas Fleet.