me, and I will make you to become fishers of

men.

And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.

Now, as everyone in Kyōto knows, at the junction of Omiya and Shijo streets, where one takes the car for cherry-famed Arashiyama, there is a little store which, from the diversity and seasonableness of its wares, merits the name, Jack-of-all-Shops. In winter, it sells fried sweet potatoes to children (who gobble them hot out of the sack); in summer, vegetables; in fall, persimmons. At the time I am speaking of in spring its specialty was goldfish.

Addison and his troop, returning from church about nine o'clock, shot round the corner upon it, in full cry, so to speak.

They stopped-as who would n't? Goldfish, goldfish everywhere! In crystal globes on stands, on shelves, globes within globes; in pails, in tubs, in artificial ponds spanned by tiny bridges; of all bulks, from minnows to full-sized carp, the magic creatures swam, twinkling and blazing under the powerful electric light.

Beside one pond in the centre the largest and most populous of all lay displayed miniature bamboo rods, with black threads for lines, and microscopic filament-like hooks; while overhead, in Chinese characters, ran the explanatory legend: 'Buy a pole and take home your own catch. Fish as long as you like only two sen.'

'Oh-h-h-h!' shouted the younger contingent; and plunged recklessly be tween the rows of glass globes for the sport to be had inside.

Addison was not the last, be it said to his credit, to cast in a line. But fishing for goldfish with a hook many sizes smaller than a pin has its own technique. Goldfish are slippery as catfish, and must be caught gently under the belly or gills, and jerked quickly into a

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waiting pail of water without contact with the fingers, if they are to be taken home alive and unhurt. Time and time again he raised one to the surface of the water only to have it, by a sudden flirt of its lithe body, wriggle away again; and on a dozen occasions he let one flop loose when already in the air.

'Well,' he said disgustedly at the hundredth mishap, 'I quit. I'm going home have some work to prepare anyway.' To a questioning look of Suzuki's: 'All right, fellows-hang round a bit, if you care to. But don't forget not too late.'

"Sayonara, Sensei!' sang the two or three others who remembered that he existed.

Next morning, Addison opened his eyes, yawned, rose on one arm, noted that the sun already stood high in the heavens, and conscientiously got out of bed. The dormitory was unusually still. Throwing on a few clothes, he slipped down to the common washroom. There, too, unwonted silence reigned. Only the old woman cook could be heard puttering about in the adjoining kitchen.

He plunged his face into a basin of cold water and came to full consciousness. On the floor stood a tub, not a small one, bubbling with panting goldfish. Their scales shone in the morning sun, though here and there a paler upturned belly showed where some weaker warrior had given up the crowded fight.

He poured fresh water into the tub from a pail standing by, and watched it give new ease and life.

'By George, there must be a thousand of them!' he cried.

'Seven hundred and fifty-three,' yawned a voice.

He whipped round to find Suzuki standing at his elbow rubbing sleepfilled eyes.

'Seven hundred and fifty-three ex

actly. Oh, the man he is angry- bery, bery angry. But we stay and stay and stay, and of course pay no attention to heem. "As long as you weesh," we remind heem that he hab said. "We weesh to stay longer." And we stay until all are catched all. And, Sensei, eef you go there to-day you will find that the advertisement which we saw to-morrow night is no longer there. Twenty leettle sen for ten leettle poles and seven hundred fifty-three pretty leettle feesh. Also, you will find bery, bery angry man bery angry man!'

Dazed, hurt, and not a little angry himself, Addison sternly climbed the stairs, Suzuki close behind him.

Addison consulted his watch.

'Heck, only ten minutes till the first bell! No breakfast, no preparation, no anything! O Suzuki!'

Snores wafted softly down on them from six open transoms.

His voice trembled: 'Suzuki, how could you?'

'Sensei, do not trouble. I will awoke them before your stomach turn himself over once!'

The student touched his teacher's arm affectionately.

'Sensei, do not trouble. All right. Everyshing is all right. I will awoke them. Sh-h-h-h, listen to them, so brave, so innocent! I will awoke them

'Suzuki, when did you fellows turn in last night?'

'Pardon, dear Sensei, early'-shamefacedly this morning. One o'crock.'

my boys!'

Then turning away, reverently, with upraised Nishio-like face and finger to lips: 'Last night, feeshers in feesh. To-day, who know, feeshers in men!'

ble for the new emphasis given to naval forces during the forty years preceding 1914-two men whose minds and characters differed fundamentally. The American Mahan had been a midshipman in the Civil War, but had seen no other fighting, and was a student by nature. The Englishman Fisher saw, so far as one is apt to remember, no seafighting at all, his solitary experience of warships used in war being the bombardment of Alexandria. He, unlike Mahan, was no student. He was, indeed, proud of his ignorance of history and of his contempt for the so-called scientific doctrines of war. These are common failings of men who believe themselves to be practical, and have a native insight into the possibilities of physical science. Fisher was, in these respects, preeminent. His faith in what the inventors and manufacturers could do was unlimited. His impatience with the old-fashioned and the obsolescent was monumental. Like Mahan's, his memory ran back to the Civil War, and he was apt to think of the sea-war of the future in terms of big guns and thick armor, and the revolution in material of which he had seen so much. It was Fisher who, in the early eighties, started the late Mr. Stead in his journalistic campaign on the 'Truth about the Navy.' It roused England. But it did more. It roused the whole of Europe to a sudden realization that England was England only when her navy was supreme. And this agitation had hardly got well under way when Mahan's first book appeared. The world was now doubly awakened to the function of seapower in history. Here was Great Britain agitated from end to end in her effort to put her naval house in order; and here was Mahan seemingly giving away the secret of English greatness!

In little more than a generation the sea-aspect of the world had changed completely. Whereas in 1885 Great

Britain was spending only eleven millions and a half on her navy, in 1914 she had voted over fifty millions; whereas in 1884 she had no naval competitor but France, in 1914 the Russian, German, Austrian, and Italian fleets would have been greatly superior to her, could they have combined. Germany alone, which had no fleet at all at the first date, had capital ships in number and in power equal to nearly seventy-five per cent of the British force. So much for Europe. The war with Spain had resulted in America's having a very considerable navy; the war with Russia had done the same for Japan.

Yet on the eve of the World War, Great Britain had, built and building, forty-four dreadnought battleships and battle-cruisers, the United States had fourteen, and Japan seven. In other words, a brief seven years ago, Great Britain compared, in capital ships, with America as three to one, and with Japan as six to one. She was rather more than twice as strong as the two put together. Russia and France were allies, Italy was neutral, the Austrian and Turkish fleets could not combine with the German, and war was declared before Turkey could get the two battleships building for her in England. With no rivals outside Europe, and with allies in Europe, Great Britain had a comfortable superiority over the neighbor that shortly was to be her enemy.

But great as was the contrast between the situation of 1914 and that of forty years ago, the contrast between 1914 and 1921 is more striking still.

Since the engagement that took place off the Danish coast on the thirty-first of May, 1916, commonly-and erroneously talked of as the 'Battle of Jutland,' Great Britain has laid down and completed one battle-cruiser only

the Hood. She has built no other capital ships at all. To be strictly accurate, she has built other ships, bigger

than any battleships, but they were insane freaks, the offspring of fantastic and unwarlike notions, whose fabulous cost and complete futility would have excited angry comment except that the blunder of building them was submerged in other and more costly, more futile blunders still. The Hood, then, is the only ship we can show that can be said to embody any war experience at all. At Jutland, it will be remembered, the British battle-fleet did not get into action; it was the battle-cruisers that forced the fighting and suffered in the fighting. And the only ship we have completed is a battle-cruiser, and the only change we have made from the old design has been to eliminate the defects shown in action to be fatal in the other ships. Our only modern warship, therefore, is not a vessel of the most formidable fighting value, nor was she built after a full and mature examination of war experience.

Indeed, this experience was not available until after the surrender of the German fleet—it would, perhaps, be more correct to say, until we obtained from Germany, early in 1919, more or less complete data of what the German fleet had suffered from the attentions of Lord Beatty and his captains. But this information was shared with the Associated and Allied powers, and it was they, and not Great Britain, who made use of it. Thus, if the battleship is the most powerful of naval units, and if digested war experience is the best guide to building the best battleships, then it is the simple fact that the British fleet to-day does not possess a single unit that incorporates the lessons of the war. America and Japan, on the other hand, have either completed, or have due for completion within a year or two, sixteen battleships and battle cruisers apiece, all of which have been put in hand since the Hood was laid down, and most of which have, in one

way or another, benefited by the fuller knowledge of the action off Jutland. And nothing that Great Britain can do can alter this state of things, for the next four or five years at least. During this period the British fleet will, in the strongest fighting units, compare with either the American or the Japanese fleet, as a fraction of one to sixteen!

II

Now neither of the two following propositions can be doubted. Battleship strength is the foundation of all sea-power. Without it decisive victory at sea is inconceivable. These are doctrines laid down by the Board of Admiralty over which Lord Beatty presides, and we must remember that they have been endorsed, without qualification, by the General Board of the United States Navy. They were, of course, equally true in 1914. They have been true throughout the history of naval war. It is the most powerful ships that ultimately prevail, if they exist in adequate numbers, and are employed according to right principles.

But these are doctrines which have always been subject to qualification, and it seems to be indisputable that there are factors actually existing and growing in importance to-day that must qualify these principles still further. First, there has been a development of other forms of sea-force, and these make the effective employment of a battle-fleet an infinitely more difficult matter than it was in 1914. There has been a continuous progress, not only in the range and power, but in the accuracy of the torpedo. It is now feasible to employ it from aircraft as well as from seacraft, surface and submerged. And aircraft and submerged seacraft have gained in range, in certainty of action, and in speed, to a most marvelous degree. Again, the

means of communication at sea by wireless telegraphy and telephony have changed so greatly that the tactics for leading up to action or for avoiding it have been greatly facilitated; while the high perfection to which the hydrophone has been brought has made it possible to gain news, not only of submarines, but of surface craft, at far greater distances than was once thought possible, and with far greater precision. These things not only expose the huge and costly units of a battle-fleet to forms of attack undreamed of before the World War, so that there is a precariousness about battleship strength actually more real than the most sanguine believer in the German attrition theory supposed in pre-war days, but, what is probably more important, they increase the facility with which a weaker force can tire out a superior force by the successful evasion of action.

Again, each of the new factors I have mentioned is manifestly capable of increases in efficiency. Nor is it less manifest that to these factors new elements can at any moment be added, as invention, scientific research, and experiment bring new devices and new weapons into play. Putting these things together, two things become obvious: first, that a supreme battle-fleet will need a degree of anxious protection that will be both costly to prepare and embarrassing to use; and that, apart from this, the whole problem of employing a battlefleet to get its designed and desired effect will have been made incalculably more complicated and, therefore, more difficult.

The British Navy has actually had more experience of the novel factors in sea-war than has any other power; and it is natural to suppose should it have to go to war again that in this respect it must, for some years, enjoy a great advantage. If, then, it is true that there exist to-day forms of attack

on battleship strength that have not existed heretofore, we ought to have something, at least, to set against our crushing material inferiority in fighting-ships of the most modern kind. So that the actual threat to Great Britain of a battle-fleet more formidable than she possesses, viewed as a material problem alone, is very far from being what it was seven years ago.

But this, of course, is far from being the only technical difference between the situation in 1914 and that in 1921. Then our most formidable sea rival was geographically cornered. The mass of our island lay straight across his path to the open sea. He was free to go into the Baltic and free to go into the North Sea. But the first liberty was of little value to him until he gained the Russian seaports by land conquest. He had nothing to gain in the early stages by an action with the Russian Navy; for, although that fleet was small in numbers, it was formidable in power, and more formidable in view of its excellent war-trained officer personnel. And if he had little scope in the Baltic, he had apparently less in the North Sea. For here he could do nothing with effect unless he could force a very superior fleet into action and defeat it decisively. To a great extent, therefore, the German fleet was neutralized by the disadvantages of its situation. If it had been a superior fleet, the situation would not have been wholly reversed. It could have denied British access to the North Sea until it was itself defeated; but if it could not force the British fleet to action, it would be compelled to contain it before it could itself proceed to close our southern and western ports.

The neutralization of an inferior British fleet would have presented problems to a superior German fleet wholly different from those which we had to envisage. The point is simple. When