The chief cause of unpreparedness for war is want of appreciation of the cumulative effect of daily small changes in our ships and armament on the whole question of strategy and shipbuilding.
Changes have slipped so gradually from wooden sailing ships through slow steam iron vessels to our present splendid ships of war that the tendency has always been to subordinate our strategy to our ship construction, rather than to mould our war ship design to suit our strategy.
Strategy should govern the types of ships to be designed.
Ship design, as dictated by strategy, should govern tactics.
Tactics should govern details of armaments.
In approaching the important question of ship design the first essential is to divest our minds totally of the idea that a single type of ship as now built is necessary, or even advisable, then to consider the strategic use of each different class, especially weighing the antagonistic attributes of nominally similar classes in the old wars.
To commence with the battleship.
The sole reason for the existence of the old line of battleship was that that ship was the only vessel that could not be destroyed except by a vessel of equal class. This meant that a country possessing the largest number of best equipped battleships could lay them alongside the enemy, or off the ports where the enemy were. Transports with the escort of a few battleships could then proceed to make oversea conquests. Squadrons of battleships or cruisers escorting the convoy of merchant ships and keeping the line of communications open. In each case the battleship, being able to protect everything it had under its wing from any smaller vessel, was the ultimate naval strength of the country. Then it was that, by means of the battleship only, was the command of the sea gained and held. Let us be quite clear on the matter, it was solely from the fact that the battleship was unassailable by any vessel except a battleship that made the command of the sea by battleships a possibility!
Hence battleships came to symbolise naval sea strength and supremacy. For this reason battleships have been built through every change of construction and material, although by degrees other vessels not battleships have arisen which can attack and destroy them.
Here therefore there is good ground for inquiry whether the naval supremacy of a country can any longer be assessed by its battleships. To build battleships merely to fight enemy’s battleships, so long as cheaper craft can destroy them, and prevent them of themselves protecting sea operations, is merely to breed Kilkenny cats unable to catch rats or mice. For fighting purposes they would be excellent, but for gaining practical results they would be useless.