lated. If they had not been, the damage they could have done would never have borne comparison with the damage they actually suffered by the capture of two out of three of them. In other words, the advantage to an enemy of raiding our coasts while we have an unbroken and superior fleet is not worth the risk of disaster to the raider. What we need, then, to ensure immunity for our coasts is a superior fleet of battleships and sufficient means of intelli

gence, both by cruisers and coaststations, to keep touch with the enemy. As long as this is done he cannot hurt us. If he recognises our superior force, we have the command of the sea. If he does not, he will fight for the command; and it is our own fault if he does not recognise our superiority after that.

As Tryon was largely instrumental in the experimental enforcement of these theories, so he was unwearied in his efforts to bring the fleet into a condition to act on them advantageously. Many branches of such effort, admirably presented as they are by the biographer, are perhaps too technical to be here discussed with confidence or profit. Tryon's system of manœuvres without signals, for example, ought to be left to the expert judgment of sailors, though any landsman can see that in the naval actions of the future signalling may easily become impossible, and some such system therefore imperative. To the general reader the subject will perhaps be of most interest as leading up to the awful tragedy of the Admiral's end. This is of course discussed by Admiral Fitzgerald. But let it be said to the infinite credit both of his feeling and his good sense, that this part of his story is far from being the

most insisted on. It is not Tryon's death but Tryon's life that Admiral Fitzgerald has professed to set before us. This is only decent justice to a man whose country was prosperous in him in all things up to his death; and it is also only judicious towards the reader, since he can learn nothing from Tryon's death, but very much that is of great profit from his life. For the rest, the account of the final catastrophe is clear, succinct, and sensible. To the frequent questions why somebody did not do something other than was done, and so avert the disaster, Admiral Fitzgerald gives the only rational reply. "The whole British nation," he reminds us, "admired and rejoiced in the fine display of discipline manifested by the officers and ship's company of the Victoria. . . . The foundation of that discipline, the spirit which gave it life, was precisely the same spirit which forbade Captain Bourke to give the order for the closing of water-tight doors in the presence of Sir George Tryon. We may regret it; but at the same time it is not logical to expect to have the discipline just when we want it, and to dispense with it, or to have it overridden, when we do not want it." As for the reason of the Admiral's fatal order, our author is equally sensible. This was the position. The two columns, headed respectively by Victoria and Camperdown, were six cables cables apart. Tryon wanted to bring them to two cables, preparatory to anchoring. The turning circle of the squadron he always estimated at four cables. To bring the columns from the cruising to the anchoring distance, therefore, it was enough for one column to circle inwards, thus reducing the interval by four cables. Tryon ordered both to turn, thus halving the necessary

distance, or, more correctly, as Admiral Fitzgerald explains, failing to double it on account of both columns turning inwards one towards the other. There are two circumstances, he adds, "which are apt to act as traps and snares to our memory and our mental arithmetic" in estimating the space required for ships to turn. One is confusion between diameter and radius of turning circles; the other, confusion between cables and distances of one hundred yards. Each is double the other. No doubt Tryon fell into some such snare.

The most infallible

of us, as our author says, have done the same again and again in matters with which we are perfectly familiar. This, the most simple explanation of the tragedy, is also the most plausible. All men may err so. But it is not given to all men to do what Tryon did for the Navy and for the country. In his death he lost us a battleship. In his life he gave us an example and a tradition worth a squadron.

The three remaining books of our five deal rather with the theory than the practice of naval war. We said at the beginning that it is a significant phenomenon that five books dealing with naval affairs should be published and read within six months. It is still more significant that these three should all be informed and inspired by the same strategical ideas. We find throughout the three of them what may now be called the authorised version of British naval policy. Its fundamental principles were discerned, as Sir George Clarke and Mr Thursfield repeatedly point out, by the great seamen and thinkers of the Elizabethan age. But only in very recent times has the doctrine of the command of the sea been at VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXVII.

all understood by the plain Englishman. Probably it is hardly understood even now; but with instructors like those before us it is the plain Englishman's own fault if he still dwells in error. For this enlightenment we are indebted perhaps in equal measure to Captain Mahan and to Admiral Colomb -to the first for showing us the overmastering influence of seapower on all warfare, and to the second for explaining how this influence is exerted The theory has been briefly hinted at in considering Admiral Tryon's connection with naval manœuvres. It is briefly this. The sea is com

manded-not, as was once curiously believed, by land positions in or upon it, but by a dominant fleet upon it. This fleet may either have defeated and crushed its enemy or its enemy may have recognised his inferiority. In the latter case, he shuts himself up in some friendly port, and it is the business of the commanding fleet to keep him there. He may get out; but if he is watched and followed he will be powerless to injure the party which commands the sea. Either he must be driven to an action or he must be driven ingloriously into port again. Meanwhile his enemy, possessing the sea as an occupying army possesses territory, possesses therewith the resources of the sea

its commerce-and can also deliver attacks over sea at any point desired. The application of this theory to our own country is simple. We need a force to gain command of the sea if an enemy disputes it, to enforce it if he does not. This force, therefore, must in the first place be superior in fighting ability to any enemy that may assail us. Secondly, it must be able to keep touch with the enemy, so that he may never attempt any enterprise without bringing a superior fleet

2 F

us.

upon his back. So long as we have this, our trade and our coasts are secure against any but isolated raids, which can never fatally hurt Our territory is secure from invasion unless our enemy should be so mad as to plant a force on our shores without the ability to maintain communication with it. And in that case invasion would inevitably turn to his greater disadvantage.

This view is vigorously pressed from different sides by Mr Steevens, Major Call well, and the joint authors of The Navy and the Nation.' Mr Steevens's book is in essence a pamphlet, devoting itself to the consideration of the navies of the world at the present moment and the policy which this country should follow having respect to these. He is plainly the least expert of our authors, and yet, perhaps from this very reason, he will probably be the most useful. 'Naval Policy,' in short, as its author freely admits, is an attempt to popularise its subject, and we think that in some measure it will be successful. It is not at all free from blunders. Port Darwin, to take an example, is not in Queensland; while the attribution to Sir George Clarke of a desire to evacuate the Mediterranean is especially unhappy in view of the fact that he has republished in 'The Navy and the Nation' an essay which severely condemns that project. It must also be said that the book-though perhaps for the same reason that makes some of us talk nineteen to the dozen when we are especially shy-somewhat belies its bashful preface by a very confident tone throughout. On the other hand, Mr Steevens writes always with ease and point, sometimes with humour. He is able to make his subject interesting, which cannot always be said

of some really better qualified to deal with it. Moreover, whether he be right or wrong, he is always candid. He puts his facts before the reader so clearly that it is perfectly possible for him, if he dislikes Mr Steevens's conclusions, to draw others of his own. He begins at the very beginning of the subject, and ends with a useful catalogue of the chief navies. One very ingenious feature of the book is a chapter on "Relative Strength," wherein the author gives a series of tables comparing the principal navies in respect of various degrees in the several elements of force-gun-power, protection, speed, and coal-capacity. It would be easy to pick holes in the figures

indeed their compiler admits that these must needs be somewhat arbitrary; but the presentation is not only exceedingly effective, but also less misleading, because more fully explained and reasoned, than most of its kind. For the rest, Mr Steevens is an uncompromising advocate of additions to the Navy, both in ships and men, together with a certain limited amount of fortification and garrison for our stations abroad. At one point he reduces us to numb horror by the suggestion that we need sixtyseven new battleships to be fit for war on this year's figures and ninety by 1899. Presently, however, he relents, and lets us off with fourteen. This he claims as a moderate figure, and so, indeed, we think it. At any rate, the reasoning which leads up to it is very plain, and its basis is indicated at each step. In his final chapter Mr Steevens seems to touch the heart of the matter when he asks, "Are we ready for war?" The answer, of course, is that we are most unready. And though at times he seems to overstate his case, it is difficult to dis

sent from his final conclusions. We are, no doubt, unready, and this book may be of considerable use in conveying the fact to the citizen, on whose initiative most of the recent increases in our naval preparations have been made.

Major Callwell's rather cumbrously entitled book is in essence a continuation of Captain Mahan. That eminent historian carries his narrative to the battle of Waterloo; Major Call well takes up the story at that period and brings it down to the year before last. The campaigns he considers are for the most part less attractive to the imagination than the great struggle which ended in 1815; but to the student of modern military history they are sometimes even more instructive. The introduction of steam, to take only one case, has enormously altered the conditions attaching to the transport of troops by sea. The advance in the destructiveness of weapons has modified these conditions almost to an equal extent. Major Callwell takes in these and all other conditions of strategy with rich knowledge and a thorough grasp of the principles of his subject. The necessary historical retrospects are marked by discretion and the rare power of omitting all but the essential. As for the principles laid down they are now widely recognised, and may in time attain to the Nirvana of the commonplace. Every leader-writer can explain to you how the defeat of Balmaceda during the last Chilian war was directly traceable to the maritime power exerted by the Congressionalists. Even in wars from which unthinking criticism eliminates naval influence altogether, Major Callwell has no difficulty in pointing out and estimating its weight. The most interesting and pointed of these is found, perhaps, in the

two struggles between Germany and Denmark for the possession of Schleswig and Holstein. In the war of 1848 Denmark possessed maritime command and used it. The German Confederation was prodigiously superior on land. The Danes were decisively beaten at the battle of Schleswig. But when they retired to their islands, or to the lines of Düppel, where they rested on the sea, they were not only invulnerable, but were able to concentrate sudden attacks on the weak points of the enemy. The most brilliant example of this was the relief of Fredericia. A large German army was besieging this coast - fortress. The Danes landed troops both north and south of them, and then, with the garrison, executed a sudden and combined attack. The Germans lost all their siegeguns and 3000 men, whereon they abandoned the war. In the war of 1864 the story is very different. During the early part of the campaign the Danes made little use of their superiority at sea; during the later the advent of Tegethoff's Austrian squadron put that superiority in doubt. Instead of using sea-command to deliver bold attacks at critical points, the Danes wasted it in what the modern French writers call a guerre des côtes et de course-attacking coasttowns and merchantmen, whose loss was not felt by Prussia. Their firmest stands they chose to make in positions where sea-power could not help them; they had neglected the strategic points of the former war where it could. Therefore they were defeated. The contrast between the two wars-in one of which maritime command neutralised an enormous inferiority on land; in the other of which it was not put into effect, and then disappeared altogether-could hardly

be bettered as an example of the value of sea-power if it had been invented for the purpose.

On this point Major Callwell's essay finds a parallel in a similar deduction from the first Danish war, to be found in Mr Spenser Wilkinson's 'The Command of the Sea. In another of his examples -the Crimea-he unconsciously doubles an interesting passage of Mr Thursfield's from The Navy and the Nation.' These coincidences are of interest, not as suggesting any hint of plagiarism on one side or the other, but because -if we may quote what the jointauthors of The Navy and the Nation' say of themselves "the lack of co-operation emphasises the essential unity of purpose which pervades them." The theory of the command of the sea has become, as we said above, a kind of authorised version. Its vital influence on the Crimean campaign is well brought out by both Major Call well and Mr Thursfield. This war, says the latter, has been paradoxically taken by some not unintelligent people "as a convincing proof that the days of naval warfare are over. What did the Navy do for us, they ask, in the Black Sea or in the Baltic? It could not destroy Cronstadt, and it could not take Sebastopol." Yet, as both authors urge, it was the British and French fleets, and they alone, which made the expedition to the Crimea possible at all. It was the fleets, and they alone, which made the reduction of Sebastopol possible. Had the Sea Had the Sea of Azov been occupied earlier, Major Callwell acutely suggests, so much the earlier would the place have fallen. The Baltic fleet, which has been taken as an especial indication of naval impotence, did inestimable service. By the threat of a new Allied inva

sion in that quarter it paralysed many legions whose influence might have turned the fortune of war in the Crimea. In the very FrancoGerman war, where nobody could pretend that sea-power had much weight where the French fleet only kept a German corps in the maritime provinces during the time there was not transport to send them to the front even here Major Callwell can still award its due influence to maritime command. For if France made little use of the supremacy in the North Sea, she enjoyed that of the Mediterranean to the full. She was able to bring over seasoned troops from Algiers and Rome, and these played no inconsiderable part in stiffening the desperate resistance which the Germans had to break down after Sedan. Briefly, we may say that Major Callwell demonstrates with cogency that naval power has exerted its influence in nearly all the wars of the century, and that in many of them that influence has been decisive.

There is one point of controversy upon which this author embarks, which, as it is also emphatically argued in 'The Navy and the Nation,' will perhaps repay a short examination. This is the doctrine of "the fleet in being." The phrase is taken from Torrington's defence of himself after his defeat at Beachy Head in 1690. Admiral Colomb has taken it up and elevated it into a technical term, and Mr Thursfield follows him. We quote his succinct statement of the theory which underlies the phrase: "A fleet in being, too large to be treated as a negligible quantity by an adversary opposed to it, is an absolute bar to all serious enterprise, maritime or territorial, on the part of that adversary." "Command of the sea," he says elsewhere, "and a