in practice is only the product of its
possible performance and the effective skill with which it is used.

Applying this idea to naval matters, we see why the very maximum
of skill is required in our war mechanisms and war organizations,
in their almost infinite variety and complexity. The war mechanisms
and war organizations of the military nations are capable of enormous
results, but only when they are used with enormous skill. There
are no other instruments or organizations that need so much skill
to handle them, because of the difficulties attending their use
and the issues at stake. Their development has been a process long
and painful. On no other things has so much money been spent; to
perfect no other things have so many lives been sacrificed; on
no other things, excepting possibly religion, have so many books
been written; to no other things has the strenuous exertion of so
many minds been devoted; in operating no other things has such
a combination of talent and genius and power of will and spirit
been employed.

A battleship is an instrument requiring skill to handle well, considered
both as a mechanism and as an organization. Its effective handling
calls for skill not only on the part of the captain, but on the
part of all hands. The finest dreadnaught is ineffective if manned
by an ineffective crew. The number and complexity of the mechanisms
on board are so great as to stagger the imagination; and the
circumstances of modern warfare are so difficult that, as between
two forces evenly matched as to material, a comparatively slight
advantage in errors made will turn the scale in favor of the more
skilful. A difference in errors, for instance, in the relation of
9 to 8, under the conditions mentioned above, between two fleets
having an equal number of similar ships, would give one side twice
as many hits as the other in any given length of time.

In March, 1905, the writer published an essay in the _Proceedings
of the U. S. Naval Institute_ called "American Naval Policy," in
which the effect of initial superiority in gun-fire was shown in
tables. One table showed that an initial advantage of only 10 per
cent secured an overwhelming victory by an accumulative effect.
Now a difference of 10 per cent in hits, under conditions in which
the hits were about 10 per cent of the maximum, would mean, roughly
speaking, the difference between 10 hits and 9 hits in a given
length of time, or a difference between 90