Can "Moderate Dimensions" work in the Dreadnought era?

There was discontent about the large size of new battleship construction starting with William H. White's Royal Sovereign class. The argument, made in The Naval Annual, was that you didn't build a sailing warship fleet of entirely 100 gun ships. Instead, most were 74's. The idea was that the same concept applied to warships in the age of steel and steam. The problem was that when you built second class ship from scratch, they were not competitive with the largest battleships. If you faced a battlefleet with all large ships, while you had a larger fleet of second class ships, you were at a great disadvantage. Lord Armstrong advocated the extreme of a large number of protected cruisers armed with either large, medium caliber guns, or small major caliber guns. They would be fast and perhaps only have two large guns (say, 10.2in). He couldn't convince anyone that it was a reasonable thing to do. Those navies which had such ships found that they were too small for the guns, even if there were only two. The dreadnought age analog to "Moderate Dimensions" were the "Large Light Cruisers", such as the Courageous, Glorious, and Furious. You could also argue that the Renown and Repulse, as originally conceived with a moderate displacement and draft also filled the bill. Post Jutland, noone in Britain treated such ships seriously. To some degree, they ignored the fact that the main vulnerability was from a combination of unstable propellant (Cordite). They also suffered from the poor AP shot performance. The thin side armour abreast the magazines in the Lion, Princess Royal, Queen Mary, and Tiger never caused a problem. It was also not a contributing factor in the loss of Invincible or Indefatigable, as well. D.K. Brown thought that Jutland validated Admiral Fisher's original battle cruiser concept. At least, that is what he wrote when describing the Invincibles.