Accordingly, if we were to maintain our superiority in those
classes, the Admiralty must be able to give orders for armour, grans, and gun-mountings in advance so that we might make certain of having twenty Dreadnoughts ' and ' Invincibles ' by March, 1912. But the question would be asked,—What about such vessels as the 'Lord Nelson," King Edward,' and Formidable ' ? Are these to be reckoned as useless P His answer was that though these ships had not yet been rendered obsolete by the advent of the 'Dreadnoughts' and Invincibles,' their life would inevitably be shortened. A day would come when by an almost automatic process the older types would be relegated to the scrap-heap, and our supremacy would depend entirely upon our strength in 'Dreadnoughts.' Our superiority over other nations in armoured cruisers other than ' Invincibles ' was great, but in war those ships could not be called home from foreign stations. "It is our maritime obligation to keep open the highways of the sea." Our national existence depended on that, and the loss of control would be fatal to us, whereas to other nations it would be only an inconvenience.
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