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.
Does the present hold out any probabilities of important changes in the
near future, of revolutionary changes? No. For twenty-five or thirty
years now we have been expecting from the ram and from the torpedo
results which would displace the gun from its supremacy of centuries.
Those results, however, are not yet visible. No one disputes the
tremendous effects of the ram and of the torpedo when successfully
used; but I believe I am correct in saying that the great preponderance
of professional opinion does not attribute to them a certainty, or an
approach to certainty, impairing the predominance of the gun. This
is not the conclusion of mere conservation in a profession naturally
conservative. The fluctuations of professional opinion have been
sufficiently marked and the matter sufficiently argued to dispose of
that contention. Nor is this supremacy of the gun probably a transient
matter, liable to pass away with improvements greater than those of
the last quarter of a century. The advantage of the gun depends upon
conditions probably permanent—upon its greater range, its greater
accuracy, its greater rapidity. The individual effect of each shot may
be less than that of a torpedo or of a ram thrust; but, as was said in
comparing very heavy guns with rapid fire, the probability of many hits
prevails over the possibilities of one great blow.