ts to go into battle so fully protected as to be in no danger had bet

Upon one point alone, the necessity of high speed, is there substantial agreement.
Less than four years ago fifteen or sixteen knots were accepted as a maximum beyond
which profitable design could not be urged. Greater speed, it is true, had been
attained by our first type of commerce destroyer. In February, 1868, the Wampanoag
ran at the rate of 16.6 knots for thirty-eight hours, and made a maximum of 17.75
knots; but great as was the achievement, there is a general acceptance of the fact
that this vessel was a racing-machine, and not in the modern sense a man-of-war.

From this very hasty and incomplete review it may be gathered that the first and
most lasting influence in the development of battle-ships is due to France and
England, though the Monitor had no little share in the result. It is difficult to
say, in the ceaseless struggle for something which, if not good, is new, what may
be the outcome of the latest efforts to revolutionize the question, or, curiously
enough, to bring it back to the point whence its departure was taken. Whatever may
be the courage of one’s opinion, there is not sufficient data—a first-class war can
only supply these—upon which to say, Yea, yea! or Nay, nay! and prophecy is certain
to be without honor, especially as the discussions given in the appendices
demonstrate how the wisest and most experienced have no substantial agreement in
views.

An editorial in a late number of the Broad Arrow declares that “the days of armored
plate protection are, in the opinion of many thinking men, coming to a close. The
gun is victorious all along the line, and the increased speed given to the torpedo-
boat, taken in conjunction with the destructive efficiency attained by the torpedo,
makes it a questionable policy to spend such large sums of money as heretofore upon
individual ships.” There is no room here to give the various arguments, though very
clever and ingenious they are, by which this position is fortified; it may be
added, however, that to a large degree this is the opinion of Admiral Aube, the
late French Minister of Marine, and undoubtedly this declaration re-echoes the
shibboleth of those other French officers who, in the absolute formula of their
chief, Gabriel Charmes, insist that “a squadron attacked at night by torpedo-boats
is a squadron lost.”

English authorities, with a few notable exceptions, do not go so far as their more
impulsive, or, from the Gallic stand-point, less conservative neighbors. Chief
Constructor White believes that at no time in the war between gun and armor has the
former, as the principal fighting factor, so many chances of success. He concedes
the value of light, quick-firing guns in association with heavy armaments, grants
the importance of rams, torpedoes, submarine boats, and torpedo-vessels generally,
but denies that the days of heavily armored battle-ships are ended. Lord[9] Charles
Beresford asserts that the value of large guns at sea is overestimated, advocates
from motives of morals and efficiency mixed armaments, agrees to the great, yet
subordinate, importance of the usual auxiliaries, and insists that England builds
cumbersome and expensive battle-ships only because of their possession by her
dangerous rivals.

There are equally rigorous disagreements upon all the other types of armored,
unarmored, and auxiliary vessels, as needs must be, so long as the naval policies
of no two nations can be alike. England and Russia are at opposite poles, so far as
their environments are concerned, and between France and Turkey the differences are
as radical as their national instincts and ambitions. But, among all, England is as
isolated as her geographical situation. Whatever fleets other nations may assemble,
whatever types other countries may deem best for their interests, England, whose
existence depends upon her naval strength, must have all; not only the best in
quality, but so many of every class that she will be able to defend her integrity
against any foe that assails it. England can take no chances.
development, because the conditions that surround any attempt at speed-increase
are such as can be properly understood only by those who have technical training;
and then, too, the great ocean racers have so much accustomed the public to
wonderful sea performances that the results are accepted without a knowledge of the
credit which is due the mechanical and marine engineers who have achieved them. But
with greater experience the higher, surely, will be the appreciation which every
one must give; for, in the words of Chief Constructor White, “when it is realized
that a vessel weighing ten thousand tons can be propelled over a distance of nine
knots in an hour by the combustion of less than one ton of coal—the ten-thousandth
part of her own weight—it will be admitted that the result is marvellous,” and that
“‘the way of a ship in the midst of the sea’ is beyond full comprehension.”

It is often asked which has the better fleet, France or England. Who can tell? No
one definitely. Admiral Sir R. Spencer Robinson, late Comptroller of the British
Navy, declares, in the Contemporary Review of February, 1887, that “the number of
armored vessels of the two countries may be stated approximately as fifty-five for
England and fifty-one for France. Without going into further details, taking
everything into consideration, giving due weight to all the circumstances which
affect the comparison, and assuming that the designs of the naval constructors on
each side of the Channel will fairly fulfil the intentions of each administration
(a matter of interminable dispute, and which nothing but an experiment carried to
destruction can settle), the iron-clad force of England is, on the whole, rather
superior to that of France. A combination of the navy of that Power with any other
would completely reverse the position. I should state as my opinion, leaving others
to judge what it may be worth, that in fighting power the unarmored ships of
England are decidedly superior to those of our rival’s; but if the raison d’être of
the French navy is—as has been frequently stated in that country, and by none more
powerfully and categorically than by the French Minister of Marine—the wide-spread,
thorough destruction[11] of British commerce, and the pitiless and remorseless
ransom of every undefended and accessible town in the British dominions, regardless
of any sentimentalities or such rubbish as the laws of war and the usages of
civilized nations; and if at least one of the raisons d’être of the British navy is
to defeat those benevolent intentions, and to defend that commerce on which depends
our national existence and imperial greatness—then I fear that perhaps they have
prepared to realize their purpose of remorseless destruction rather better than we
have ours of successful preservation.”

A long sentence this, but it emphasizes the great axiom that war is business, not
sentiment, and teaches a lesson which this country will do well to learn.
Fortunately, we are at last out of the shallows, if not fairly in the full flooding
channel-way, though many things are yet wanting with us. Perhaps this over-long
chapter cannot be made to end more usefully than by quoting in proof of this the
concluding paragraph of that brilliant article on naval policy which Professor
James Russell Soley, United States Navy, contributed to the February (1887) number
of Scribner’s Magazine:

“It is the part of wisdom,” he writes, “to study the lessons of the past, and to
learn what we may from the successes or the failures of our fathers. The history of
the last war is full of these lessons, and at no time since its close has the navy
been in a condition so favorable for their application. At least their meaning
cannot fail to be understood. They show clearly that if we would have a navy fitted
to carry on war, we must give some recognition to officers on the ground of merit,
either by the advancement of the best, or, what amounts to nearly the same thing,
by the elimination of the least deserving; that we must give them a real training
for war in modern ships and with modern weapons; that the direction of the naval
establishment, in so far as it has naval direction, must be given unity of purpose,
and the purpose to which it must be directed is fighting efficiency; that a naval
reserve of men and of vessels must be organized capable of mobilization whenever a
call shall be made; and, finally, that a dozen or a score of new ships will not
make a navy, but that the process of renewal must go on until the whole fleet is in
some degree fitted to stand the trial of modern war. Until this rehabilitation can
be accomplished the navy will only serve the purpose of a butt for the press and a
foot-ball for political parties and its officers—a body of men whose intelligence
and devotion would be equal to any trust will be condemned to fritter away their
lives in a senseless parody of their profession.”

[12]
THE BRITISH NAVY.

By SIR EDWARD J. REED.

When timber gave place to iron and steel in the construction of war-ships, the
naval possibilities of Great Britain became practically illimitable. Prior to that
great change the British Admiralty, after exhausting its home supplies of oak, had
to seek in the forests of Italy and of remote countries those hard, curved,
twisted, and stalwart trees which alone sufficed for the massive framework of its
line-of-battle ships. How recently it has escaped from this necessity may be
inferred from the fact that the present writer, on taking office at the Admiralty
in 1863, found her Majesty’s dockyards largely stored with recent deliveries of
Italian and other oak timber of this description.

And here it ma