th her eight fifteen-inch guns on a platform which could
travel at nearly the speed of the average railroad train.

The contrast of sea and land warfare appealed the more vividly to
one fresh from the front in France. What infinite labour for an army to
get one big gun into position! How heralded the snail-like travels of
the big German howitzer! Here was ship after ship, whose guns
seemed innumerable. One found it hard to realize the resisting power
of their armour, painted to look as liquid as the sea, and the stability
of their construction, which was able to bear the strain of firing the
great shells that travelled ten miles to their target.

Sea-power, indeed! And world-power, too, there in the hollow of a
nation's hand, to throw in whatever direction she pleased. If an
American had a lump in his throat at the thought of what it meant,
what might it not mean to an Englishman? Probably the Englishman
would say, "I think that the fleet is all right, don't you?"

Land-power, too! On the continent vast armies wrestled for some
square miles of earth. France has, say, three million soldiers;
Germany, five; Austria, four--and England had, perhaps, a hundred
thousand men, perhaps more, on board this fleet which defended the
English land and lands far overseas without firing a shot. A battalion
of infantry is more than sufficient in numbers to man a Dreadnought.
How precious, then, the skill of that crew! Man-power is as
concentrated as gun-power with a navy. Ride three hundred miles in
a motor-car along an army front, with glimpses of units of soldiers,
and you have seen little of a modern army. Here, moving down the
lanes that separated these grey fighters, one could compass the
whole!

Four gold letters, spelling the word Lion, awakened the imagination to
the actual fact of the Bluecher turning her bottom skyward before she
sank off the Dogger Bank under the fire of the guns of the Lion and
the Tiger astern of her, and the Princess Royal and the New Zealand,
of the latest fashion in battle-cruiser squadrons which are known as
the "cat" squadron. This work brought them into their own; proved
how the British, who built the first Dreadnought, have kept a little
ahead of their rivals in construction. With almost the gun-power of
Dreadnoughts, better than three to two against the best battleships,
with the speed of cruisers and capable of overpowering cruisers, or of
pursuing any battleship, or getting out of range, they