fect
of a strategy continuous and wise, conducted for three hundred years,
we see in the Japanese and German navies equally good examples of a
strategy equally wise, but of brief duration, which started with
the example of the British navy, and took advantage of it.

The German and Japanese navies did not follow the British navy
slavishly, however; for the national military character of their
people required the introduction and control of more military and
precise methods than those of the primarily sailor navy of Great
Britain. We see, therefore, a curious similarity between the German
and Japanese navies, and very clear evidence in each of the engrafting
of purely military ideals on maritime ideas. And we see not only
this, we see the reaction on the British navy itself of the ideals
of the German and the Japanese, and a decided change during the
last ten years from the principles of "the blue-water school";
as evidenced mainly by the institution of a Naval War College,
including a war staff, the employment at the admiralty of General
Staff methods, though without the name; and the introduction into
naval methods, especially naval gunnery, of mathematical procedures.

Previous to the Japanese-Russian War, ten years ago, the strategy
of the British navy may be characterized as physical rather than
mental, depending on a superior number of ships and men; those
ships and men being of a very high grade individually, and bound
together by a discipline at once strict and sympathetic. All the
personnel from the highest admiral to the humblest sailor prided
themselves on being "British seamen," comrades of the sea, on whom
their country placed her ultimate reliance. Maneuvers on a large
scale were held, target practice was carried on with regularity--and
navy ships carried the banner of Saint George over every sea, and
displayed it in every port. Tactics and seamanship filled the busy
days with drills of many kinds; but strategy, though not quite
forgotten, did not command so large a portion of the officers'
time and study as it did in Germany and Japan. The rapid success
of the Germans and Japanese, however, in building up their navies,
as instanced by the evident efficiency of the German fleet almost
under the nose of England, and the triumph of the Japanese fleet in
Tsushima Strait startled the British navy out of her conservatism,
and caused her to proceed at full speed toward the modernization
of her strategy. With t