Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/325

 Furthermore, size now entails no loss of speed or handiness, but instead means, if anything, more of both, and certainly entails superior endurance, sea-worthiness and ability to receive heavy blows. There is, in fine, no single argument against the 'mastodon' except that her loss is more heavily felt than the loss of a smaller unit.

Even this, however, is mostly an imaginary drawback, since there is no evidence of five moderate-sized ships ever having been built instead of four larger ones. Thus Germany has adhered strictly to her five-battleships-a-class rule, as much with the Kaisers as with the larger Deutschlands.

The United States, acting under the influence of one of the most extraordinarily illogical fits that ever seized men responsible for Naval construction, did in the Idaho and Mississippi, construct two moderate ships as part of a programme consisting mostly of big units. But it is clear that these two moderates were built instead of two monster ships, so that the net result was the loss of a knot speed in two fighting units, also a loss of power both for offence and defence. And what was gained? Nothing, save the triumph of a principle which has nothing to recommend it, and the establishment of the fact that certain Americans are unable to read history except through their own glasses.

It would be little more illogical to demand sails