Losing reserve fleets made naval mass easier to ignore

Reserve ships made the expectation of wartime mobilization visible in the fleet. Regular crews operated a peacetime core, while reservists could commission additional ships during war. The Royal Navy's World War I personnel are described as roughly half reservists even in the early period. The interpretation offered is that removing reserve fleets made it easier to stop treating numbers as a requirement. This process is placed within the Cold War and earlier developments, before the later peace dividend.