Waren we gave extracts last week from the London papers on the subject of the sinking of the Victoria, we had not received the Times of the 24th of June, It points out that no one could then presume to apportion the blame for the catastrophe, but inquiry, it says, must be searching and exhaustive, and if blame is due in any quarter, punish: ment, adequate and unflinching, most inexorably follow. It continues, ina tone worthy of the leading journal Only so can the lesson of this great calamity be turned to its proper account. Furthermore, no countenance must be given in any authoritative or responsible quarter to the mischievous and even fatal notion that such evolutions as the Mediterranean Squadron was engaged in when the Victoria was destroyed, and one of the best of our staff of Ad perished nobly in his country's service, are too hazardous for ironclad squad rons to undertake, The true lesson is exactly the reverse of this. It is only by incessant practice, and by the employment of officers trained to such practice and known to be fit for it, that the hazards incidental to fleet evolutions under steam at high speed can Be overcome, These evolutions have been practised constantly by our sea-going squad. rons for more than a quarter of a country, and the loss of the Victoria is the first serious and fatal disaster they have directly entailed. It is certain that in time of war fleets must manceuvre at high speed and at close quarters, and the only way to fit them for doing this is to drill them incessantly in similar evolutions in time of peace. It may be that the disaster should teach us not to rely upon ships of the vast size and cost of the Victoria and her even larger consorts of later date, but that is quite a different matter. We must have battleships, squadrons, and our sea-going squadrons must our battleships must be organised in aca-going be commanded and officered by men who can uetivre them sith ease and precision in all the evolutions required to give them mobility and tactical cohesion. This is so clear ani indisputable that in ordinary circumstances it would hardly need to be stated, But on the morrow of a great national loss ever imperative to insist that no flinching from our naval responsibilities and no misunderstanding of what they really. mean and entail. Whatever lesson the loss of the Victoria may have to teach us hereafter, when the facts are more fully known and the responsibilities more definitely distributed, it, teaches us this lesson at once—that unless our ships and fleets were incessantly practised in such manceuvres as are adapted to give them mobility in evolution and steadiness in the line of battle, we should have to endure in time of peace, not merely one, but a succession of such calamities as have cost us the lives of a great Admiral and of hundreds of lant seamen, while in time of war we should inevitably encounter constant and irreparable disaster.
What a contrast this is to the pretentious Daily Telegraph, from which Since our fleets must and will year by year con!
these lessons of war, and must' will, whatever the cost, still perfect themselves in evolutions which would not be useful if they did not contain an element of constant, danger, we must before long thoroughly understand the reasons for this calamity. Its and utmost equity, and if it be found that no origin must be sifted with the minutest care skill, and no courage, and no long habit of management can prevent these marine monsters of war from sometimes bolting away in charge of their own tremendous selves, then, indeed, close order will have to be more of Tess abandon While the Daily Chronicle is not much wiser The movement which was described on Saturday, and which seems to be the same og
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.