rtery,
and the old troublesome disturbance can be avoided without a vital
dislocation of our commercial system.

The probability, then, is that in the future the whole problem will be
found to be simplified, and that the work of commerce protection will lie
much more within the scope of large strategical treatment than it ever did
before, with the result that the change should be found to tell
substantially in favour of defence and against attack.

The reduction of range of action is scarcely less important. In the old
days a cruising ship could be stored for six months, and so long as she
could occasionally renew her fuel and water, she was free to range the sea
outside the defended areas for the whole of the period with unimpaired
vitality. For such pelagic operations her movement was practically
unrestricted. She could run for two or three days from a superior enemy or
chase for as long without loss of energy, and she could wait indefinitely
at a likely spot, or change her ground, as danger or hope of plunder
dictated. So long as she had men left to man her prizes, her power of
mischief was almost unlimited. All this is now changed. The capacity of
each cruise of a ship to-day is very small. She is confined to short dashes
within a strategically defended area, or if she is bent on pelagic
operations, is compelled to proceed so far to find undefended waters that
her coal will scarcely permit of more than a few days' actual cruising. A
couple of chases at high speed during that period may force her to return
at once, subject only to the precarious possibility of renewing her coal
from a prize. She has, further, to face the fact that manning prizes must
necessarily reduce her capacity for speed, which depends so much on a fully
manned engine-room. This will tend to jeopardise her chances of return
through or near defended areas. The only escape from this difficulty is to
sink the captured ship. But this course has objections scarcely less
weighty than the other. No Power will incur the odium of sinking a prize
with all hands, and their removal to the captor's ship takes time,
especially in bad weather, and the presence of such prisoners in a cruiser
in any number soon becomes a serious check on her fighting power. In the
case of large ships, moreover, the work of destruction is no easy matter.
In the most favourable circumstances it takes a considerable time, and thus
not only eats into the cruiser's endurance, but decr