How Our Navy is Bun. By Archibald S. Hurd. With
a Pre- face by Lord Charles Beresford. (C. A. Pearson. 5s.)—In this volume there is a combination of actual fact and what we may call hypothetical fact. By this latter we mean descriptions of what would happen if things were to go as they are intended to go. No one has had actual experience of a conflict between an English ironclad fitted out with the latest improvements in the way of defence and destruction and a foreign adversary. But it is possible to imagine what would happen in such a case. There is such an imagining on pp. 55-60, and again, in greater detail, on pp. 71-87, when an English cruiser is supposed to fight and capture an enemy.--and a very bloody affair it is ; land fighting is not to be compared with it. We get into a different region when we turn to the chapter "Feeding a Battleship," and a very discreditable story it is. Let us hope that some change will be shortly made. But to think that for the millions of pounds which we have paid for the management of the Navy we should have got no better return than this is enough to make one write over the Admiralty door," Who enters here leaves common-sense behind." This, we need hardly say, is a most interesting book.
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