battle-fleet became a more imperfect
organism than ever. Formerly it was only its offensive power that required
supplementing. The new condition meant that unaided it could no longer
ensure its own defence. It now required screening, not only from
observation, but also from flotilla attack. The theoretical weakness of an
arrested offensive received a practical and concrete illustration to a
degree that war had scarcely ever known. Our most dearly cherished
strategical traditions were shaken to the bottom. The "proper place" for
our battle-fleet had always been "on the enemy's coasts," and now that was
precisely where the enemy would be best pleased to see it. What was to be
done? So splendid a tradition could not lightly be laid aside, but the
attempt to preserve it involved us still deeper in heresy. The vital, most
difficult, and most absorbing problem has become not how to increase the
power of a battle-fleet for attack, which is a comparatively simple matter,
but how to defend it. As the offensive power of the flotilla developed, the
problem pressed with an almost bewildering intensity. With every increase
in the speed and sea-keeping power of torpedo craft, the problem of the
screen grew more exacting. To keep the hostile flotilla out of night range
the screen must be flung out wider and wider, and this meant more and more
cruisers withdrawn from their primary function. And not only this. The
screen must not only be far flung, but it must be made as far as possible
impenetrable. In other words, its own power of resistance must be increased
all along the line. Whole squadrons of armoured cruisers had to be attached
to battle-fleets to support the weaker members of the screen. The crying
need for this type of ship set up a rapid movement for increasing their
fighting power, and with it fell with equal rapidity the economic
possibility of giving the cruiser class its essential attribute of numbers.

As an inevitable result we find ourselves involved in an effort to restore
to the flotilla some of its old cruiser capacity, by endowing it with gun
armament, higher sea-keeping power, and facilities for distant
communication, all at the cost of specialisation and of greater economic
strain. Still judged by past experience, some means of increasing numbers
in the cruising types is essential, nor is it clear how it is possible to
secure that essential in the ranks of the true cruiser. No point has been
found at which it was