apart from accident, ships will surrender before they sink; that there will still be, as there always has been, a point beyond which human endurance cannot go; that when this point has been reached and overpassed, the flag will be hauled down without further resistance; and that when a certain amount of damage has been done to a ship and her armament, and a certain degree of loss inflicted on her crew, that ship will certainly rather surrender than sink, in the attempt to prolong a struggle now become equally hopeless and useless.

As a corollary to this, the notion seems to be generally prevalent that the only object that should be, or that need be entertained in naval warfare, is to sink and destroy the enemy, whereas in real warfare it was always recognized that a preferable object was to defeat, preserve, and capture him, and that only when this was impracticable was it necessary to seek to sink and destroy him. The effect of capture is twofold that of destruction; for the latter only deprives the enemy of ship and crew, whereas the former both does that and brings them into the victor's possession for use, adds prize to victory, gives prisoners for exchange, effects a greater result with a less loss of life to the vanquished, produces a far greater moral effect to the advantage of the captor and the disadvantage of the captured, and so does far more to bring the war towards a conclusion by the submission of the enemy.

Another new notion of a still stranger nature has so taken possession of the naval mind, that whole flotillas have been built in the belief of its soundness, and elaborate systems of harbour-defence constructed to provide against these flotillas. This is the notion that warlike operations of the deadliest kind may

reasonably and advantageously be conducted by vessels of war without even previously ascertaining, of a certainty, whether those against whom they are directed are friends or foes. It is upon this notion, and upon this alone, that the whole conception of torpedo-boats and of torpedo warfare, as conducted by those boats, can alone rest. The torpedo-boat

claims to be a vessel of war, and her officers and crew would undoubtedly, in case of capture, expect and claim (what could hardly be denied to them) honourable treatment as prisoners of war. Yet the assumption upon which alone she can be expected to succeed, or even to come near to success, in her deadly work, is that she is to adopt a course of action wholly unlike that of a vessel of war-that she is to hoist no true colours, fire no affirming gun, nor even answer any hail, but is secretly to creep in unannounced, unheard, unseen, to discharge her torpedoes, and to fly for her life. Her methods are essentially those of the cloaked midnight assassin, not those of the man-of-war; and since, in the case of the assassin, it is essential that he should assure himself that the victim he dogs with his silent, upraised dagger is really his enemy and not his friend, since it is even more essential in his case than in the case of the open fighter, that before he strikes he should be sure, so is it equally essential in the case of the torpedoboat; for a mistake once made cannot be rectified or remedied. Yet the notion obtains that the business of the torpedo-boat is, if she can, to sink any battleship she meets at sea and takes for a foe, without previously verifying of a certainty whether it is a a friend or a foe. Verification, it is truly enough said, would involve the disclosure of herself and of her own character; and since, if she is once seen and

recognized, she would in all probability be herself destroyed, her only chance is to destroy without sign or question: wherefore she must hoist no colours, make no disclosure of her presence, no affirmation of her character, and no attempt to exchange with the battleship that "private signal" which in real war has always played so important, so salutary, so safeguarding, so necessary a part. She is to torpedo the battleship and to fly, trusting that it is an enemy she has sunk, but never sure that it is not a friend. The necessary corollary to this novel notion of warfare is the adoption of another new notion, namely, that as the torpedo-boat is to treat the battleship, so is the battleship to treat the torpedoboat; that all torpedo-boats whatever are to be held as vermin, and that the business of a battleship is to sink, without private signal, parley, or question, every single torpedo-boat or torpedo-destroyer that unexpectedly approaches her, either at sea or in harbour. The experience of real war has, however, established beyond all doubt the supreme necessity for absolute verification of the true character of any vessel unexpectedly met at sea, before proceeding to fight her; it has shown, moreover, that, even when this necessity has been fully understood and every security to meet it, including the private signal, has been duly used, the most appalling mistakes have often occurred; nevertheless, the notion is now entertained that, in the case in question, the necessity may be disregarded, and that all the securities bred of actual experience may be abandoned.'

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The following illustration of these remarks occurred during the Spanish-American War of 1898: "The great uncertainty and "risk of mistake, which are such serious arguments against "torpedo-boat warfare, are well illustrated by an incident which

If, indeed, this new notion should be acted upon, mistakes more appalling than any that have hitherto occurred will be inevitable. It is to be expected, however, that the new notion will be so modified as to become identical with the old conviction, that verification is absolutely necessary before fighting; in which case the private signal will recover all its uses and all its importance, and it will be recognized that the torpedo-boat can no more safely or prudently be used than any other vessel of war to sink a ship, unless and until it has absolutely ascertained to a certainty the enemy character of that ship, either by use of the private signal, by undoubted surrounding circumstances, or by the fact that the ship is actually lying in an enemy's port as part of that enemy's forces for the fact alone of her being in such a port would not of itself suffice, since she might be a neutral man-of-war. When the notion is brought back to this it will be reasonable enough. But it will then have lost all that is novel in it, and the torpedoboat will then also have lost many, if not most of the uses expected from it, and many if not most of the exaggerated terrors that surround it.

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"Lieutenant Fremont of the Porter' records. About 2 a.m. one morning a steamer was reported running the blockade into Havana. The 'Porter' gave chase, closed her fast, got within easy torpedo distance, and then made the night signal. It was not answered. A second time it was repeated and a gun "fired, followed by a second. The stranger replied with the wrong signal. The 'Porter' went full speed-the stranger "opened fire, and only in the very nick of time was the supposed "blockade-runner made out to be an American ship. Torpedo"boats, it should be said, were always fired upon first and "inquiries were only made subsequently. Nothing could have "saved the big ship in this instance, and the torpedo-boat "could not have been much injured."-The Downfall of Spain, by H. W. Wilson, London, 1900, p. 438.

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Again, the belief in the advantage of missile weapons over all others, which originated in actual fighting experience, which began with the successful pitting of the English bowman with his cloth-yard shaft against sword, lance, and body armour combined in their greatest perfection, and which has lasted from Sluys to Trafalgar, has in recent times been rudely assailed, and precisely there where it might have been expected to be most unassailable— in the case of the ship and the great gun. Admiral Sir Gerard Noel, a distinguished naval officer, who from 1893 up to 1898 was a sea lord of the Admiralty, recorded his own convictions in 1874 in an essay which, from among many others, was selected for the prize by such other distinguished officers as Admirals Milne, Ryder, and Cooper Key; and they are as follows:

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"In a general action I do not hold that the guns will be the "principal weapon; but should the ship's engines or steering"gear be disabled, temporarily or permanently, her guns will become all-important. Then let her show the enemy what gunners can do. . . . I am not myself of opinion that artillery "is the most important weapon in a fleet. It is, I believe, very generally held by those officers who have studied the arma“ment and manœuvring of fleets that the ram is fast supplant"ing the gun in importance."

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So too Captain (subsequently Admiral) Colomb in his Lessons from Lissa says:

"The serious part of a future naval attack does not appear to "be the guns but the rams."

And so also Captain Pellew in his lecture on Fleet Manoeuvring says:

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The Gun, Ram, and Torpedo, Prize Essay by Commander Gerard H. U. Noel, R.N. J. Griffin and Co., 1874.