William's Thoughts

The extent of the sensation this naval shipbuilding order caused worldwide could be set aside for now, but the boost it gave the people of Australasia was very real.

At the end of the day, this was still an age of ironclads and heavy guns. The people might have had little concept of the army's size, but they attached great importance to the size and strength of the navy they possessed.

Why was the British Empire the undisputed hegemon of the world? Wasn't it because it possessed a navy powerful enough to crush the second- and third-ranked powers of the world?

As for the British Empire's feeble army, the people of other countries kindly ignored it. Britain was an island nation, after all, and the navy was the first line of defense for the homeland.

What could other countries do, no matter how powerful their armies were? As long as they could not defeat Britain's navy, they could never land on British soil.

Of course, there was currently another way to land in Britain: using transport planes to drop paratroopers.

The development of the air force was also one of the subjects of the arms race between Britain and France.

The French knew full well that they could no longer catch up with Britain in naval power, so they focused more on building submarines capable of threatening merchant ships.

Submarines were usually underwater, after all, and as long as they were careful and cautious, they basically would not be detected by fleets.

When submarines went on the offensive, they became the nightmare of merchant ships and small warships. During World War I, Germany had used submarines to sink large numbers of British merchant ships, and the French pursued submarine development for precisely the same reason—to learn from the Germans.

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