The standard work on this era was published as far back as 1940. In British Naval Policy, 1880–1905, Arthur Marder argued that there was a gradual weakening of the Navy after 1868 and an increasingly threatening international situation. War scares with Russia in 1885 and France in 1888 drove Lord Salisbury's Conservative government in the direction of greatly increased naval expenditure. The naval manœuvres of 1888 showed the difficulties of blockade under modern conditions of warfare and just how easily a blockaded fleet could break free of a blockading force. The ‘Three Admirals Report’ of that year stated that a standard of five British battleships to three French was the minimum requirement for effective blockade operations. Above all, the prospect of a Franco-Russian alliance produced the political climate which culminated in the Naval Defence Act of 1889. Marder moves with consummate speed through the 1880s, arrives at the Naval Defence Act, and devotes the remaining three-quarters of his book to the consequences of the Act. He does not discuss convoy as a strategic issue, ignores the Near East Crisis of 1878, and mentions the Carnarvon Commission just once. As far as Marder was concerned, from 1884 onwards there developed a powerful ‘blue water’ school of naval officers and writers whose persistent agitation was the prime motivation behind the Naval Defence Act.