includes the greater part of the administration of the navy, especially
as the same officer is held responsible for advice on all large
questions of naval policy and maritime warfare, as well as for the
control of the naval ordnance department. Thus in each case the very
constitution of the office entrusted with the design of operations
prevents the officer at its head from concentrating himself upon that
vital duty. The result is that the intellectual life both of the army
and of the navy lags far behind that of their German rivals, and
therefore that there is every chance of both of them being beaten, not
for lack of courage or hard work, but by being opposed to an adversary
whose thinking has been better done by reason of the greater
concentration of energy devoted to it.

The first reform needed, at any rate in the navy, is a definition of the
functions of the First Sea Lord which will confine his sphere to the
distribution and movement of ships and the strategical and tactical
training of officers, so as to compel him to become the embodiment or
personification of the best possible theory or system of naval warfare.
That definition adopted and enforced, there is no need to lay down
regulations giving the strategist control over his colleagues who
administer _matériel_ and _personnel_; they will of themselves always be
anxious to hear his views as to the methods of fighting, and will be
only too glad to build ships with a view to their being used in
accordance with his design of victory. But until there is at the
Admiralty department devoted to designing victory and to nothing else,
what possible guarantee can there be that ships will be built, or the
navy administered and organised in accordance with any design likely to
lead to victory?