tioned. The
exigencies of war demand at times division, as well as concentration;
and, in fact, concentration, properly understood, does not mean
keeping ships necessarily within sight of one another, but so disposed
that they can unite readily at will,--a consideration which space
forbids me more than to state. Now, a big ship cannot be divided into
two; or, more pertinently, eight ships cannot be made into ten when
you want two bodies of five each. The necessity, or supposed
necessity, of maintaining the Flying Squadron at Hampton Roads during
the late hostilities exactly illustrates this idea. Under all the
conditions, this disposition was not wholly false to concentration,
rightly considered; but had the ships been fewer and bigger, it could
not have been made.

The net result, therefore, of the argument, supported, as the writer
believes, by the testimony of history, is: (1) that a navy which
wishes to affect decisively the issues of a maritime war must be
composed of heavy ships--"battleships"--possessing a maximum of
fighting power, and so similar in type as to facilitate that
uniformity of movement and of evolution upon which concentration, once
effected, must depend for its maintenance, whether during a passage or
in actual engagement; (2) that in such ships, regarded as fighting
factors, which is their primary function, size is limited, as to the
minimum, by the advisability of concentrating as much fighting power
as possible under the hand of a single captain; but, on the other
hand, size is also limited, as to its maximum, by the need of
retaining ability to subdivide the whole fleet, according to
particular exigencies; (3) as regards that particular form of mobility
called speed, the writer regards it as distinctly secondary for the
battleship; that, to say the least, the present proportions of weight
assigned to fighting force should not be sacrificed to obtain increase
of speed. Neither should the size of the individual ships be increased
merely to obtain rates of speed higher than that already shown by some
of our present battleships.

Concerning that particular function of mobility which is called coal
endurance,--that is, the ability to steam a certain distance without
stopping to recoal,--the convenience to military operations of such a
quality is evident; but it is obvious that it cannot, with the fuels
now available, be possessed beyond very narrow limits. A battleship
that can steam the greatest