Theodore Ropp and the continuing debate over the Jeune École

Theodore Ropp, who advised Admiral Ernest J. King, helped preserve the Jeune École as a subject of modern debate. Later scholarship can disagree with an older account because historians have found evidence unavailable when it was written. Ropp's work remains useful when read with those limits in mind, both for its analysis and for its influence on later generations of historians. Other doctrines survive under newer labels such as targeted fires or long-range fires, while Ropp's influence is offered as one reason the Jeune École retained its own name. The Royal Navy absorbed the useful small-craft idea into a larger fleet, and Britain and France entered the First World War as the two leading submarine powers by numbers in this account. The practical argument is to combine flotillas and submarines with the capabilities needed for the wider war.