o means one in
_materiel_ only, and that the transformation in other matters has
been stupendous and revolutionary beyond all previous experience.
It follows inevitably from this that we shall wage war in future
under conditions dissimilar from any hitherto known. In this very
fact there lies the making of a great surprise. It will have
appeared from the historical statement given above how serious
a surprise sometimes turns out to be. Its consequences, always
significant, are not unfrequently far-reaching. The question of
practical moment is: How are we to guard ourselves against such
a surprise? To this a satisfactory answer can be given. It might
be summarised in the admonitions: abolish over-centralisation;
give proper scope to individual capacity and initiative; avoid
professional self-sufficiency.

When closely looked at, it is one of the strangest manifestations
of the spirit of modern navies that, though the issues of land
warfare are rarely thought instructive, the peace methods of land
forces are extensively and eagerly copied by the sea-service.
The exercises of the parade ground and the barrack square are
taken over readily, and so are the parade ground and the barrack
square themselves. This may be right. The point is that it is
novel, and that a navy into the training of which the innovation
has entered must differ considerably from one that was without
it and found no need of it during a long course of serious wars.
At any rate, no one will deny that parade-ground evolutions and
barrack-square drill expressly aim at the elimination of
individuality, or just the quality to the possession of which
we owe the phenomenon called, in vulgar speech, the 'handy man.'
Habits and sentiments based on a great tradition, and the faculties
developed by them, are not killed all at once; but innovation
in the end annihilates them, and their not having yet entirely
disappeared gives no ground for doubting their eventual, and even
near, extinction. The aptitudes still universally most prized
in the seaman were produced and nourished by practices and under
conditions no longer allowed to prevail. Should we lose those
aptitudes, are we likely to reach the position in war gained
by our predecessors?

For the British Empire the matter is vital: success in maritime
war, decisive and overwhelming, is indispensable to our existence.
We have to consider the desirability of 'taking stock' of our
moral, as well as of our materi