battle cruisers--that the French showed better efforts as builders of
speedy ships, for they made 23 knots or more. In the list of French
fighting ships there are in addition two protected cruisers, the
_D'Entrecasteaux_ and the _Guichen_, together with ten light cruisers.
But the French "mosquito fleet," consisting of destroyers, torpedo boats
and submarines, is comparatively large. Of these she had 84, 135, and
78, respectively.

After the Russo-Japanese War the battle fleets of Russia were entirely
dissipated, so that when the present conflict came she had no ships
which might have been accounted worthy aids to the navies of England and
France. In so far as is known, her heaviest ships were the _Andrei
Pervozvannyi_ and the _Imperator Pavel I_, each displacing only 17,200
tons, and of the design of 1911.

Against these fighting naval forces of the allied powers were ranged the
navies of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The former had, at the outbreak
of hostilities, 36 battleships, 5 battle cruisers, 9 armored cruisers,
and 48 cruisers. Instead of giving attention to torpedo boats she gave
it to destroyers, of which she had 130. And of submarines she had 27.

In detail her naval forces consisted, first, of the _Kaiser Friedrich
III_, _Kaiser Karl der Grosse_, _Kaiser Barbarossa_, _Kaiser Wilhelm
II_, and _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, all built as a result of the first
agitation of Von Tirpitz, between the years 1898 and 1901. They each
displaced 10,614 tons, had a speed of 18 knots, required 13,000
horsepower, were protected with from 10 to 12 inches of armor, and
carried four 9.4-inch guns, fourteen of 5.9 inches, twelve of
3.4-inches, and twenty of smaller measurement. Roughly they corresponded
to the British ships of the _Canopus_ class, both in design and time of
launching.

Following this class came that of the _Wittelsbach_, including also the
_Wettin_, _Zaehringen_, _Mecklenburg_, and _Schwaben_, built between 1901
and 1903, displacing 11,643 tons, making 18 knots, protected with from 9
to 10 inches of armor and carrying a primary battery of four 9.4-inch
guns, eighteen 5.9-inch guns, and a large secondary battery. The similar
type in the British navy was the _Canopus_--for England was far ahead of
Germany, both in the matter of displacement and primary battery. During
the same years England had launched ships of the type of the
_Implacable_.

In 1904 came the German ships _Hessen_, _Elsass_, and _Braunschwe