Captain Mahan's second letter in Thursday's Times shows that he
is no believer in huge ships, but lays down the principle that in the battleship great speed is distinctly secondary to offensive power and coal endurance. Mobile power, says Captain Mahan, is always more effective than stationary force, bat, on the other band, is limited to the weight it can bear. Stationary force is restricted in that direction only by the ability of the designer of fortifications to cope with the conditions. As for the defences of seaports, or entrances of the sea, they should not only be stationary but permanent; and this remark led up to a most damaging criticism of the " monitor" system. The only naval force that can efficaciously supplement coast defence must be genuinely mobile, and not a hybrid semi-mobile gun-platform like the monitor. The Civil War was not a fair test, being a coast war. But in the recent conflict, when twenty-six thousand tons were sealed up in monitors, " there was not an hour from first to last when we would not gladly have exchanged all six monitors for two battleships of less aggregate displacement." This experience, which illustrated Napoleon's famous saying, " Exclusiveness of purpose is the secret of great successes and of great operations," is, we believe, completely confirmed by the best British naval experts.
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