Traditionally, the Royal Navy expected autonomy.
保守的海军希望自己拥有自主权，
As possessor of the world's largest fleet, the Admiralty might be supposed capable of organising warfare for itself.
作为世界上最大舰队的拥有者，海军认为自己有能力控制战争。
Yet it had signally failed to learn the lesson that navies depended not only upon force but upon information, for guns and torpedoes were impotent unless in the right place at the right time.
但它实际上却失败了，它们没有学会这一点：海军不仅要依赖力量，还要依赖信息，因为枪炮和鱼雷必须在正确的时间打到正确的地方，否则打了就是白打。
Like the giant Cyclops, 'Our Fighting Navy' was decidedly one-eyed.
我们英勇的海军，实际上就像独眼巨人一样。
Naval Intelligence was embodied in an organisation that anyone of the new generation would find absurdly Victorian, if not criminally incompetent.
海军的情报组织，在新生代的任何人看来，都是维多利亚时代的落后产物。
Only in the First World War had any Naval Intelligence Division been set up, and this had declined in peacetime into Kafkaesque fantasy.
海军在第一次世界大战时成立了情报部门，到了和平时期，这个部门基本上成了摆设。
In 1937, the NID was11 '… neither interested in nor equipped to collect or disseminate information about the organization, dispositions, and movements of foreign fleets …
在1937年，海军情报部门既没有兴趣、也没有能力来收集或宣传关于外国舰队的组织、部署与行动信息，
the situation was very little better than it had been … in 1892….
这个情况比1892年好不到哪里去，
Large old-fashioned ledgers were used in which to enter in longhand the last known whereabouts of Japanese, Italian and German warships….
他们使用过时的大量卷纸来记录日本、印度和德国战舰的行动……
These reports were often months old, and only once a quarter were the supposed dispositions of foreign navies … issued to the Fleet.'
这些报告经常是滞后好几个月，而且只有四分之一是真实可靠的。