enterprising than the Russian ships in the Crimean War success was quite possible—in the light of these parallels nothing was wanting save fitness to win.
With sufficient fitness to win, that is to say with crews individually superior to the Japanese, Rogestvensky would have won with the ships at his disposal, and Medina Sidonia, had he and his men been all that they were not, would also have won in all probability. The causes of defeat surely lay elsewhere than in the ships or strategies: or how shall we explain the success of Scipio Africanus's armada against greater odds? In all the history of such failures is written the way that might have led to success, or rather the things without which success is impossible. It is a platitude to say that the Spanish Armada would have succeeded had it been the fitter to win, but history conveys very little lesson beyond that its failure was due to lack of this fitness. Whatever its relative inferiority in heavy guns cost the Spanish Armada, its inability to use effectively such guns as it had, and to secure sufficient ammunition for them— both personnel matters—cost it a great deal more. Whatever Spanish ships lost from being unable to close with the English, technical inability to manœuvre to do so—a personnel thing again — cost still more. In the Great War with France slower English ships time and time again brought swifter and handier Frenchmen to battle; and Drake's men in the Spanish ships fighting Sidonia's in the English ones would in all probability have succeeded
