four ships of the 1909 programme were officially stated to be 30 per cent. more powerful than the first four, and it subsequently transpired that this was because they had 13-inch guns instead of 12-inch. The ships of the 1913 programme have 15-inch guns with 36 per increase of bursting charge in their shells, but are going to stop there, since a gunnery expert last ye announced the existence of an 18-inch gun? Are the rapid changes based on well-considered judgments, or a a mere theory that the fleet which scores the first ha will win the battle, owing to the morale of the opposing gunners being upset? If this theory is wrong, we have to consider the effect of the changes on rapidity and accuracy of fire, the structural strength of the ship, and the life of the gun, for, unless the science of gunnery has undergone some marvellous change, the effect must be adverse in every one of these directions. We think however, we can put the argument a little more favour ably for the big gun than its own advocates, if it is once assumed that a broadside of 15-inch guns can deal s disabling blow with greater effect than a broadside of 12-inch guns of equivalent weight. The range of 10,000 yards is roughly the average limit of vision for the g The torpedo has reached that range as an effect weapon, and can deal a disabling blow as soon as t range is reached. It therefore becomes imperative i the guns to get in the heaviest possible blow in the very first minutes of an action. Mr Jane in The Britis Battle Fleet' reproduces, from the 1903 edition of 'Fight ing Ships,' the arguments of the Italian constructor Cuniberti, in which he deals with the process of fighting by wearing down the resistance, and the other process killing at one blow. In 1903 the wearing down process had more argument on its side than it can have to-day when the torpedo comes into action at the same time & the gun, and, in spite of subdivision of watertight co partments, comes very near to killing at one blow. Its true it may not hit, and the big broadside may not b but that is just what the winning of battles turns We supply ammunition to our ships to the extent eighty rounds per gun. Is there any likelihood of the battle lasting long enough to fire even half of it away i view of the lastest development in torpedoes?

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Then in regard to the armour-so long as the question as one of guns versus armour, the chief value of armour y in protecting those working the ship and her guns om the attack of smaller quick-firing guns. Beyond is it was contended by the historical school of the navy at the best defence was by your own gunnery to put it it of the power of the enemy to hurt you. Once again, owever, the matter needs very careful consideration in iew of the development of the torpedo, for if a proctive deck will in any case allow the torpedo attack to → developed in spite of a gunnery defeat, the defensive eight can claim an offensive quality.

The war problem of Nelson's time was simpler from le tactical point of view, because inventions did not ase ships to the scrap heap. Strategically, however, it as complicated by the ease with which small nations uilt up respectable fleets' which could be commandeered y a Power with a predominant army. The glamour of Dreadnoughts has led to an attempt on the part of mall nations to possess one or two, but this is only a 10mentary phase, and broadly speaking it is the supreme ervice of invention to the predominant naval Power at the game has become too expensive for the smaller untries to play. Its other service has been to confound le pessimist, as we have seen with steam and iron. formation was formerly our one anxiety, being of finitely greater importance to the strong than to the eak, to the hunter than to the hunted; and now wireless legraphy and hydroplanes have brought us gifts in enerous measure. Both by day and night, in absolute crecy, and without interference, we can talk from Whitehall to Alexandria; and every description of vessel in send messages. The patrol is now perfect, for hydrolanes can see for fifty or sixty miles on a clear day. he new development of the torpedo has for ever laid he spectre of invasion. Without an unchallenged ommand of the sea no conceivable disposition of protecion can safely husband across the North Sea a fleet of ransports, the leading ships of which must necessarily e out of sight of the rear ships, and which can be fired nto from every quarter at a range of ten or twelve housand yards.

On the other hand, Great Britain can send her forces Vol. 218.-No. 435.

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piecemeal to the territory of her allies or to Egypt, as the Japanese did to Korea. Her military policy need not therefore be complicated by the organisation of her forces for the defensive as well as the offensive, which has been the ruin of her army from time immemorial. In other words, we have gained the great object of war preparation both for the army and the navy in the ability to organise on a purely offensive basis. It is hard to think that the country which is so favourably circumstanced will permit a government to throw all its advantages into the lap of a rival Power, by an inadequate standard of preparation for her Navy. And yet the spectacle of political parties, turning eyes inwards to social questions instead of outwards to world issues, when joined to the timidity of statesmen and publicists who have stimulated a cult for defensive rather than offensive warfare, is a melancholy reminder of the partial truth of Lord Palmerston's aphorism that opinions are stronger than armies, since within a nation they can overthrow its fighting force.

Art. 9.-THE RUMANIAN FACTOR IN THE BALKAN PROBLEM.

THE grounds upon which the Rumanian Government bases its claim to territorial compensation from Bulgaria are of an entirely practical nature. The rectification of the Dobrudja frontier is described as indispensable to the security of the trans-Danubian kingdom. The necessity for such a demand, it is affirmed, is not of Rumania's own creation, but the logical consequence of a political crime committed against her by Russia in 1878, when the valuable assistance rendered by the Rumanian army to Russia in her war against Turkey was rewarded by the loss of Bessarabia a Rumanian province of which the Russians, with a cynicism rare even in Eastern Europe, robbed their allies and the grant, in exchange, of the Bulgarian district of Dobrudja, which Rumania did not covet. At the time the trans-Danubian kingdom was obliged to bow to the will of the Powers, as expressed in the Treaty of Berlin, and it tried to make the best of a very bad bargain by constructing the port of Constantza at an immense cost. In the absence, however, of a defensible frontier, and in view of the fear that Bulgaria will one day endeavour to recover the territory taken from her in 1878, the Bucharest Government cannot but feel its position precarious; and it is the duty of the Powers which have placed it in that position to strengthen it by a new delimitation. As long as the status quo established by the Treaty of Berlin remained in substance inviolate, Rumania refrained from raising a question calculated to cause a disturbance. But since the order of things has been completely altered by the Balkan Allies, and to their enormous advantage, equity, expediency and necessity alike dictate the voluntary compensation which Rumania, but for her deference to the Powers and her regard for peace, could have seized by force of arms.

Such is the Rumanian case as set forth by the Rumanian Government. But, in addition to this official plea, there is another claim which the Rumanian press has loudly advocated during the last fifty years, and perhaps never more loudly than at the present moment. It is a claim based on the argument that, owing to the

conquests effected by Bulgars, Serbs, and Greeks, the Rumanians are losing a large section of their own racenamely, the Kutzo-Vlachs; a Romance-speaking population scattered along the mountain ranges and valleys of the Balkan Peninsula from Olympus to Rhodope in one direction, from Pindus to Shar Dagh in another. The most important groups of this population to be found at the present day are in Ætolia and Acarnania, in Thessaly, in Western Macedonia, and in Epirus; but smaller detach ments dot Albania, Servia, and Bulgaria. All these fragmentary colonies, though widely separated in space, present in their character and mode of living a uniformity that marks them out as a homogeneous branch of the semi-Latinised family of nations which at one time inhabited the Eastern Roman Empire. They live partly as hardy shepherds who wander with their flocks and herds over the plains in winter, and over the green uplands in summer, partly as settled communities engaged in commerce and industry. Whether nomad or stationary, they are distinguished by a spirit of enterprise and thrift which secures to them a degree of prosperity quite out of proportion to their numbers.

What their exact numbers are, in a part of the globe where a census in the western sense of the word is practically unknown, and where people prefer to go to their imagination for their figures as for their facts, it would be hazardous to say; and the difficulty is increased, first, by the erratic habits of the race, and secondly, by the gross disingenuousness of such statistics as are available. The British Minister at Bucharest a few years ago tried to obtain some light on the subject, and the measure of his success is recorded in a letter to Lord Lansdowne which runs as follows: The Kutzo-Vlachs are generally stated by Rumanians of the kingdom to number from 400,000 to 800,000; but I learn from a good Bulgarian authority that they number at most 100,000."

Greek authorities, while differing from the Bulgarian on every other disputable point, agree with them in this matter, and many private observers who have endeavoured to solve the problem have arrived at results approximating the Greco-Bulgarian rather than the Rumanian figure. However, the truth usually lies between extremes; and by halving the lowest estimate