32 MY MEMOIRS

questions connected with advances, and similar problems disappear here; there are only a few individuals, namely, the ships, to lead. Even in the epoch of wireless telegraphy, the fact still remains in naval warfare that the commander must be sole ruler on board his ship; and in just the same degree the chiefs of the squadron staffs cannot have gentlemen under them who have outside connections. Stosch's Naval Staff course was therefore put on one side again; those officers who are now appointed to the Naval Staff are preferably taken from the fleet. This very proper abolition of the Naval Staff course rendered it more difficult to promote gifted young leaders to responsible posts at an early age, but this difficulty could be overcome by other means in case of necessity.

How far Stosch proceeded from the standpoint of a land-general is indicated by the scheme for the es-tablishment of a fleet that he drew up on taking over office. His ship-building programme aimed at a small concentrated raiding or " sally " fleet as the kernel of the navy—the "sally " was a land term to begin with —whilst the remaining ships were to be distributed along the coast as a kind of garrison facing the sea. The nature of the Baltic harbours then made it necessary to construct these ships with flat bottoms, thus producing a cross between a sea-going ship and a coastal-defence vessel without any outstanding character. The idea of distributing a portion of the forces along the coast was not a good one, for when the moment came to strike they all had to be concentrated