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common law. From many points of view there is much to be said for the adaptation of this idea to fishery purposes. Most of our inshore areas, such as Cardigan Bay or the Bristol Channel, have trawling-grounds which are demonstrably capable of being exhausted in a very short time by the depredations of steam-trawlers. The task of policing an area bounded by a straight line drawn between two definite and conspicuous objects (preferably lighthouses or lightships which would be visible by night) would be much simpler than the present work of patrolling a sinuous line following the coast at varying intervals from prominent landmarks. In actual practice the present territorial limit is, as regards England and Wales at any rate, either not policed at all or policed under considerable difficulties. Steam-trawlers fish with impunity right up to the limit line, and often, if there is any relaxation of vigilance on the part of the fishery officers, cross the line in order to make a profitable haul. The local Petty Sessional Benches are loath to convict in cases of infringement of the by-laws where the encroachment has been slight. Steam-trawlers are capable of moving with the trawl down at the rate of five miles an hour or more; and consequently, since the police vessels are well-known and are visible at some distance, it is difficult to overtake them before they have slipped outside the limits into the open sea. It follows that, in many cases, though the fishery officers are certain that the law has been infringed, proceedings cannot be taken to bring the trawlers into court owing to the difficulty of furnishing legal proof of the exact spot where the breach of the law occurred. In Scotland things are different. With a strong Fishery Board, uninfluenced by fluctuations of the political barometer, deaf to the clamour of the ignorant, and loyally supported by a staff of capable and energetic officials, the reports are a clear and illuminating guide to the progress of the fisheries of the nation, and the administration is a model to the rest of the world.

Art. 8.-THE BATTLESHIP AND ITS SATELLITES.

1. The Ship of the Line in Battle. By Admiral Sir Reginald Custance. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1912. 2. The British Battle Fleet. By Fred T. Jane. London: Partridge, 1912.

3. The Evolution of the Submarine Boat, Mine and Torpedo. By Commander M. F. Sueter, R.N. Portsmouth : Griffin, 1907.

4. The Navy League Annual. Edited by Alan H. Burgoyne, M.P. London: Murray, 1913.

5. The Naval Annual. Edited by Viscount Hythe. Portsmouth Griffin, 1912.

6. Essays and Criticisms. By the Military Correspondent of the Times.' London: Constable, 1911.

7. The Engineering of Ordnance. By Sir Trevor Dawson. The Gustave-Canet Lecture, Junior Institution of Engineers, 1909.

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THE first principle of naval warfare was practically taught to us when Offa, King of Mercia, built a fleet which deterred Charlemagne from invading England nearly twelve centuries ago. 'Offa bequeathed to England,' says the Saxon Chronicler, this useful lesson that he who would be secure on land must be supreme at sea.' Victories which are too easily won fail in their lessons; the worst baptism of a fighting principle is a bloodless victory. We took centuries to see the need of naval force, and centuries more to understand that strength is one thing and the right use of it another. In quite recent years we have had two leaders of parties and many lesser critics condemning Nelson for being 'decoyed' by Villeneuve to the West Indies. Better than any other man, and in his chase of Villeneuve more than anywhere else, Nelson taught us the purpose of navies. In what he called 'the great Order,' he laid down that every idea of attack and defence has but one supreme object-the destruction of the enemy's fleets. This can only be done by offensively designed ships; and, had Pitt understood the elementary principles of naval warfare, he would never have attacked St Vincent for failing to build coast-defence gunboats. The Duke of Wellington was but a blind leader of the blind when he opposed a

railway from Portsmouth to London as dangerously facilitating an invasion, and urged a division of expenditure to the sedentary defences of the coasts. In our own day Lord Roberts, contemplating the defensive, has written that every day that passes brings some new invention which lessens our position as an island Power and 'narrows the already narrow seas environing us.' Frederick the Great said that the English will stampede like wild horses before their own imaginations, and, if this has a certain truth, the habit of mind we have condemned is one doubly dangerous to our people. When it is in the ascendant, the springs of leadership are poisoned with false doctrine and England is in peril from within.

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It is the fascination of the defence which is the ruin of navies. We have had Royal Commissions which have considered the protection of our dockyards and coalingstations at vast expense without regarding the safety afforded by the offensive action of the Navy. We have had statesmen like Peel and Palmerston persuading people that steam had bridged the Channel.' Yet the offensive being the rôle of the strong, steam had really improved our position by freeing our navy from dependence on wind, which limited speed and course and made the lee shore a dreaded danger. Broadly speaking, indeed, the effect of every invention of capital importance in the last sixty years has been to strengthen the predominant naval Power, provided offensive warfare is kept steadily in the foreground. Had this been recognised, sailors might have been spared half their controversies and much loss of prestige as experts. Only flabbiness of principle could lead to the construction of coast-defence vessels and battleships in which seven times as much weight was given to armour as to guns. It is from this point of view that we welcome the work Sir Reginald Custance has done in his lectures at the War College, which have now been republished under the title of The Ship of the Line in Battle.' He takes as his starting-point the battle of Sinope, November 30, 1853, after which arose the great naval cry of the fifties, for God's sake keep out the shells.' In his concluding lecture he shows how something like the same ferment occurred after Tsushima over the 12-inch shells, or 'portmanteaux' as they were christened by the

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Russians. By the closest analysis of the historical facts he leads us to the view that there is but one lesson from Sinope to Tsushima, and that is to overwhelm the enemy's weapons by a superior fire of your own.

In the discussion in 1889 at the Institution of Naval Architects on Sir William White's paper defending the Admiralty designs, Sir Edward Reed laid down the view that defence or safety came first.

'I, for one, close at once' (he said) 'with the doctrine that in building a first-class battleship for this country armament considerations ought to take the first place... When you are dealing with a line-of-battle ship to go out into the Channel and destroy the enemy and to protect our coasts, the first consideration, I think, should be that a ship should be kept afloat by thick armour, which can keep her afloat under any fire that the enemy can bring to bear upon her; and certainly should this be true, that the small armament of an enemy should never be able to destroy her. . . . All we know is that they (the naval officers who conferred with the First Lord of the Admiralty) were invited to decide on what the armament . . . should be, and that that was made the matter of primary consideration, whereas I think it ought to be a matter of secondary consideration.'

There is here no realisation that the best armour is to put out of action the enemy's hitting power. The desire for safety has led to even worse fallacies than are disclosed in Sir Edward Reed's words, for the trials of guns and armour at proof butts, where the conditions unduly favour the gun, have led to the use of an exaggerated weight of armour in order to gain safety from an enemy's shells, and have therefore indirectly conferred a measure of safety on the enemy owing to a reduced weight being given to the guns behind the armour.

Two great principles, then, lie at the root of British supremacy-the one, that this supremacy is the gift of seapower; the other, that the offensive is the best means of defence and yet these have only been discovered or rediscovered in the face of real danger. The inventive genius of war needs this stimulant. In the design of battleships such development as took place before the middle of the 19th century was forced on us by the danger of rival ships carrying a more numerous battery, the threat of fireships, and the ordinary risks of the sea. The fire

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ship, from the time of its birth in 1646, inspired a dread somewhat similar to that caused by the torpedo. The sailors met it by improving the mobility of their ships, their gunnery and their tactics-in other words by advancing and not by retreating. When the dangers were overcome, progress practically ceased until the introduction of shell fire hastened the advent of iron ships. In face of new risks, both real and imaginary, there began an era of continuous changes. Taking the guns and the ships at the middle of the 19th century, it may be broadly stated that they represented no advance in gunnery since the 16th century and no advance in the type of battleship since the 17th. If supply always follows demand, the sense of danger is the most insistent of demands, for the last half of the 19th century was one of successive panics. The first steps in guns and armour came together. The committee, which led to armoured ships, sat almost simultaneously with the committee on rifled ordnance, in 1858, which led to the improvements on the old smooth-bore guns. At the same time we began to act on the idea that a navy, dependent for manning on the merchant service, was out of harmony with an era of mechanism which was bound to differentiate the two seafaring professions, and from that time on, the divorce between them proceeded apace. All these changes are thus seen to have begun in a time of acute alarm-the time of Cobden's 'Three Panics!'

The day has gone for ever when a 'Royal Harry' could remain in service until, after a life of sixty years, she was accidentally destroyed by fire, or a 'Victory' proudly bear the flag of an admiral who was younger in the service than herself. In 1859 we began blinking our eyes to the fact that the adoption of iron ships was our salvation. We were inferior to several rivals in all that appertained to shipbuilding in wood, and the American mercantile marine was consequently overtaking our own. If we shied at the first, we ought by now to be accustomed to pass the milestones on the road; for the pace has grown more and more rapid, and still shows every sign of gathering momentum. The war of brains goes on with feverish energy-a war utterly beyond the control of admiralties. A battleship is the blue ribbon of the market, since the order is worth about twenty or more

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