Corbett and Mahan explained sea power for the Navy

The late Victorian and Edwardian Royal Navy had grown accustomed to being accepted as the foundation of empire. Its officers could justify particular procurement programs, but many no longer practiced explaining the wider value of sea power to civilians. Julian Corbett and Alfred Thayer Mahan became useful partly because they supplied that public and political language. Churchill's cavalry and journalistic background did not automatically equip him to reconstruct naval theory when senior officers had not briefed him clearly. Jutland's political aftermath also reflected a long-running failure to maintain an effective civil-military interface.