Comparing navies reveals the assumptions behind their ships

What did these books teach you that you did not already know?

Their main value was comparative context: setting navies alongside one another clarified design choices and the limits of procurement driven by a rival's latest ship.

Alex Clarke already knew the treaty provisions through his own work but found the comparisons between navies especially useful. His principal research area was the Royal Navy, with more uneven familiarity elsewhere. Placing designs alongside one another made fast, lightly protected cruisers easier to understand, even where wartime experience exposed their weaknesses. High speed had a real operational attraction and the designs followed a recognisable logic. The criticism is that a prolonged contest with a rival could carry both sides towards ships whose assumptions had received little practical testing. The comparison asks whether a navy is building for its own strategic needs or primarily to defeat another navy's latest design.