Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/314

288 sea-aptitude qualities of their crews. Then once more there came a time when the military element being unduly exaggerated it fell before sea-aptitude. The working of a cycle is apparent, so apparent that the thing right for one age may be the thing quite wrong for another. And yet it is difficult to avoid some inkling of a thought that the military idea is the really right one, that though sea-aptitude and intelligence may win naval battles, the brute force and weight of the soldier-at-sea idea is the more likely to triumph in the long run. The besetting danger of the 'seaman' appears ever to have been a tendency to lose sight of the end in the means, gradually to concentrate upon details and skill at those details for the sake of the details alone. The sin of the 'military' element on the other hand was usually to forget and neglect the means in seeking the end.

The probable course of future naval warfare may at least be suspected upon these lines, once the all-round man asserts his predominance. In the post-Nelson days the all-round seaman took to 'spit and polish,' the neat orderliness which assisted his work became a fetish as important to him as the work itself, once there was a period of peace; the absence of specialists each interested in the predominant importance of his own particular line told. The all-round navy of the immediate future is not likely to fail from 'spit and polish,' because there is nothing, or very little, in the modern warship to cause a re-birth of it