not
only by Germans but by the rest of the world. England, jealous of her
sea power, then began her maintenance of two ships for each one of her
rival's. Germany answered by laying more keels, till the ratio stood
three to two, instead of two to one.

Two years before the firing of the pistol shot at Sarajevo, which
precipitated the Great War, the British admiralty announced that
henceforth the British naval base in the Mediterranean would be
Gibraltar instead of Malta. Conjectures were made as to the significance
of this move; it might have meant that England had found the pace too
great and had deliberately decided to abandon her dominance of the
eastern Mediterranean; or that Gibraltar had been secretly reequipped as
a naval base. What it did mean was learned when the French Minister of
Marine announced in the following September that the entire naval
strength of France would thereafter be concentrated in the
Mediterranean. This was the first concrete action of the _entente
cordiale_--the British navy, in the event of war, was to guard the
British home waters and the northern ports of France; the French navy
was to guard the Mediterranean, protecting French ports as well as
French and British shipping from "the Gib" to the Suez.

What was the comparative strength of these naval combinations when the
war started?

From her latest superdreadnoughts down to her auxiliary ships, such as
those used for hospital purposes, oil carrying and repairing, England
had a total of 674 vessels. Without consideration of ages and types this
total means nothing, and it is therefore necessary to examine her naval
strength in detail. She had nine battleships of 14,000 tons displacement
each, built between 1895 and 1898--the _Magnificent_, _Majestic_,
_Prince George_, _Jupiter_, _Caesar_, _Mars_, _Illustrious_, _Hannibal_,
and _Victorious_--with engines developing 12,000 horsepower that sent
them through the water at 17.5 knots, protected with from nine to
fourteen inches of armor, and prepared to inflict damage on an enemy
with torpedoes shot from under and above the water, and with four
12-inch guns, twelve 6-inch guns, sixteen 3-inch guns, and twenty guns
of smaller caliber but of quicker firing possibilities.

Her next class was that of the _Canopus_--the _Goliath_, _Vengeance_,
_Ocean_, _Albion_, and _Glory_--2,000 tons lighter than the first class
named above, but more modern in equipment and construction, having been
built be