the Japanese. There are few if any 'steam yachtsmen' in the German Navy, and, like the Japanese, German officers have few interests outside their profession. They are great people for 'spit and polish,' but this is just an instance of how 'spit and polish' is not of itself necessarily bad. A German engine-room is as clean almost as the gun deck of the ships of any other navy, but German steaming is invariably good.
There is next to no genius in the German Navy: indeed indications of its absence have been conspicuous features of German manœuvres. There is indeed nothing remarkable except a steady plodding thoroughness, obtained to some extent at the expense of initiative. But it is 'thorough' to the core. There is a peculiar business-like spirit, impossible to explain, but of the existence of which there is no question. The Japanese have something of the sort, but not quite of the same nature, not quite the same thing as the German naval spirit. It is, so far as one can judge in peace, the victorious spirit; certainly it savours much of fitness to win, though German guns are weak and German ships are poor.
As an instance of German thoroughness a visit of a German fleet to Plymouth may be mentioned. In that fleet every bluejacket knew, not only the forts and the guns in them, but the arcs of fire of all those fort guns and their dead angles. They knew everything there was to know. It was useless knowledge
