a few years since reported that, having
in view the difficulty of the operation in itself, and the chances of
the force detailed falling below its _minimum_ by accidents, or by
absence for coal or refits, British naval supremacy, vital to the
Empire, demanded the number of five British battleships to three of
the fleet thus to be controlled. Admiral Sampson's armored ships
numbered seven to Cervera's four, a proportion not dissimilar; but
those seven were all the armored ships, save monitors, worthless for
such purpose, that the United States owned, or would own for some
months yet to come. It should be instructive and convincing to the
American people to note that when two powerful armored ships of the
enemy were thus on their way to attack at one end of the world an
admiral and a division that had deserved so well of their country, our
whole battle-fleet, properly so called, was employed to maintain off
Santiago the proportions which foreign officers, writing long before
the conditions arose, had fixed as necessary. Yet the state with which
we were at war ranks very low among naval Powers.

The circumstance possesses a furthermost practical present interest,
from its bearing upon the question between numbers and individual
size in the organization of the naval line of battle; for the ever
importunate demand for increase in dimensions in the single ship is
already upon the United States Navy, and to it no logical, no simply
rational, limit has yet been set This question may be stated as
follows: A country can, or will, pay only so much for its war fleet.
That amount of money means so much aggregate tonnage. How shall that
tonnage be allotted? And, especially, how shall the total tonnage
invested in armored ships be divided? Will you have a few very big
ships, or more numerous medium ships? Where will you strike your mean
between numbers and individual size? You cannot have both, unless your
purse is unlimited. The Santiago incident, alike in the battle, in the
preceding blockade, and in the concurrent necessity of sending
battleships to Dewey, illustrates various phases of the argument in
favor of numbers as against extremes of individual size. Heavier ships
were not needed; fewer ships might have allowed some enemy to escape;
when Cervera came out, the _Massachusetts_ was coaling at Guantanamo,
and the _New York_ necessarily several miles distant, circumstances
which, had the ships been bigger and fewer, would have ta