FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
Since I have not been so foolish as to set myself the task of writing a
history of the Naval War, I am not hampered by any trammels of
chronological sequence. It is my purpose to select those events which
will best illustrate the workings of the British Naval Soul, and to
present them in such a manner and in such an order as will make for the
greatest simplicity and force. Naval warfare, viewed in the scattered
detail of operations taking place all over the world, is a mightily
confusing study; but, if it be analysed and set forth in its essential
features, the resultant picture has the clarity and atmosphere of the
broad sea horizon itself. There is nothing in naval warfare, as waged by
the Royal Navy, of that frightful confusion and grime and clotted horror
which has become inseparable from the operations of huge land forces.
Sailors live clean lives—except when the poor fellows are coaling
ship!—and die clean deaths. They have the inestimable privilege of
freedom both in the conception of their plans and in their execution.
The broad distinction between land and sea service was put clearly to me
once by a Marine officer who had known both. “At sea,” he observed, “one
at least lives like a gentleman until one is dead.” It must be very
difficult to live or to feel like a gentleman when one is smothered in
the mud of Flanders’ trenches and has not had a bath for a month.
Although, as I have shown, the Grand Fleet at the outbreak of war was,
in effective battle power, of twice the strength of its German
opponents, no time was lost in adding largely to that margin of
strength. Mines, with which Germany recklessly sowed the seas whenever
she could evade the watchful eyes of our cruisers and destroyers, and
the elusive and destructively armed submarine, were perils not lightly
to be regarded by our great ships. We took the measure of both these
dangers in due course, but in the early months of war they caused a vast
amount of apprehension. In addition, therefore, to dealing directly with
these perils the whole power of our shipyards, gun shops, and
armour-rolling mills was turned to the task of increasing the available
margin of battle strength so as to anticipate the possibility of serious
losses.
And here we had great advantages over Germany. We not only had a far
longer and far greater experience, both in designing and constructing
ships and guns, but we had a larger number of yards and shops where
battleships and battle cruisers could be completed and equipped.
Throughout the fourteen years of the peace contest Germany had always
been far behind us in design, in speed of construction, and in the
volume of output. We built the first Dreadnought in little more than
fifteen months—by preparing all the material in advance and taking a
good deal from other ships—but our average time of completing the later
models was rather more than two years apiece. The exalted
super-battleships occupied about two years and three months before they
were in commission. Germany—which so many fearful folk seriously look
upon as superhuman in efficiency—never built an ordinary Dreadnought in
peace time in less than two years and ten months, and always waited for
the chance of copying our designs before she laid one down. It is
reasonable to suppose that in the early days of war the German yards and
gun shops worked much more rapidly than during the peace competition,
but as our own quicker rate of construction was also enormously
accelerated it is in the highest degree unlikely that our speed of war
output was ever approached by our opponents. We had at the beginning far
more skilled labour and, what is more important, far more available
skilled labour. Since it was only by slow degrees that we enlisted a
vast army for Continental service while Germany had to mobilise the
whole of hers at the beginning of hostilities and to call upon the
millions of untrained men, the drain upon our manhood was for a long
time far less than the drain upon hers. As time went on labour became
scarce with us, even for naval work, but it could never have been so
scarce as with the Germans when after their immense losses they were
driven to employ every possible trained and untrained man with the
colours.
We had yet another advantage. In August, 1914, as the result of the
far-seeing demands of the British Admiralty we had twice as many great
ships under construction in this country as Germany had in the whole of
her North Sea and Baltic yards. This initial advantage was an enormous
one, since it meant that for eighteen months Germany could make no
effective efforts to catch up with us, and that at the end of that
period we should inevitably have in commission an increase in battle
strength more than twice as great as hers. The completed new lead thus
secured early in 1916, added to the lead obtained before the outbreak of
war, then made our position almost impregnable. We were thus free to
concentrate much of our attention upon those smaller vessels—the
destroyers, patrol boats, steam drifters, fast submarine catchers and
motor boats—which were urgently needed to cope with Germany’s attacks
upon the world’s merchant ships.
Early in 1915, six months after the outbreak of War, our shipyards and
gun shops had turned out an extraordinary quantity of finished work.
There had been some loss in skilled labour through voluntary enlistment
in the Army, but the men that were left worked day and night shifts in
the most enthusiastic and uncomplaining spirit. The war was still new
and the greatness of the Empire’s emergency had thrilled all hearts.
Some coolness came later, as was inevitable—poor human nature has its
cold fits as well as its hot ones—and there was even some successful
intriguing by enemy agents in the North, but the great mass of British
workmen remained sound at heart. The work went on, more slowly, a little
less enthusiastically, but it went on.
During the first six months we completed the great battle cruiser
_Tiger_, a sister of the _Lion_ with her eight 13.5-inch guns, and the
sisters fought together with those others of their class—the _Queen
Mary_ and _Princess Royal_—in the Dogger Bank action in January, 1915.
We took over and completed two battleships which were building for
Turkey and under their new names of _Erin_ and _Agincourt_ they joined
Jellicoe in the north. The second of these great vessels—ravished from
the enemy—had fourteen 12-inch guns (set in seven turrets) and the
other ten 13.5-inch. We completed two vast super-ships, the _Queen
Elizabeth_ and another like to her, both with a speed of twenty-five
knots and eight 15-inch guns apiece. The battle cruisers, _Indomitable_
and _Indefatigable_, speeding home from the Mediterranean, had raised
the Battle Cruiser strength in the North Sea to seven fine vessels of
which four carried 13.5-inch guns and the three others 12-inch weapons.
Even though the _Inflexible_ and _Invincible_ were still away—they were
not yet back from fighting that perfect little action in which the
German Pacific Squadron had been destroyed—we had a battle cruiser
force against which the rival German vessels could not fight and hope to
remain afloat.
After six months, therefore, Jellicoe had received four new
battleships—two of them by far the most powerful at that time
afloat—and Beatty had been joined by three battle cruisers, one of them
quite new. The Grand Fleet was the stronger for six months of work by
seven ships.
As compared with our increased strength of seven ships (five quite new),
Germany had managed to muster no more than three. She completed two
battleships of a speed of twenty and a half knots, each carrying ten
12-inch guns. Neither of these vessels were more powerful than our
original Dreadnought class and they were not to be compared with our
King George V’s, Orions or Iron Dukes and still less with our Queen
Elizabeths. That Germany should, six months after the war began, be
completing battleships of a class which with us had been far surpassed
fully four years earlier is the best possible illustration of her
poverty in naval brains and foresight. Germany had also completed one
battle cruiser, the _Derfflinger_, of twenty-seven knots speed and with
eight 12-inch guns, which in her turn was not more powerful than our
Invincibles of five years earlier date. The _Derfflinger_ could no more
have stood up to our new _Tiger_ than the two battleships just completed
by our enemies could have fought for half an hour with our two new Queen
Elizabeths. So great indeed had our superiority become as early in the
war as the beginning of 1915 that we could without serious risk afford
to release two or three battle cruisers for the Mediterranean and to
escort the Canadian and Australian contingents across the seas, and to
send to the Mediterranean the mighty _Queen Elizabeth_ to flesh her
maiden guns upon the Turkish defences of the Dardanelles. Ship guns are
not designed to fight with land forts, and though the _Queen
Elizabeth’s_ 15-inch shells, weighing over 1,900 lbs. apiece, may not
have achieved very much against the defences of the Narrows, their
smashing power and wonderful accuracy of control were fully
demonstrated.
Inconclusive though it was in actual results, the Dogger Bank action of
January, 1915, proved to be most instructive. It showed clearly three
things: first, that no decisive action could be fought by the big ships
in the southern portion of the North Sea—there was not sufficient room
to complete the destruction of the enemy. Secondly, it demonstrated the
overwhelming power of the larger gun and the heavier shell. Thanks to
the skill of the Navy’s engineering staffs it was also found that the
actual speed of our battle cruisers was quite a knot faster than their
designed speed, and since no similar advance in speed was noticeable in
the case of the fleeing German cruisers it could be concluded that the
training of our engineers was fully as superior to theirs as was
unquestionably the training of our long-service seamen and gunners
superior to that of their short-service crews. As the fleets grew larger
our superiority in personnel tended to become more marked. We had an
almost unlimited maritime population upon which to draw for the few
thousands whom we needed—before the war the professional Navy was
almost wholly recruited from the seaboards of the South of England—we
had still as our reserves the east and west coasts of England and
Scotland. But Germany, even before the war, could not man her fleets
from her scanty resources of men from her seaboards, and more and more
had to depend upon partially trained landsmen. If one adds to this
initial disadvantage in the quality of the German sea recruits, that
other disadvantage of tile cooping up of her fleets—sea training can
only be acquired fully upon the open seas—while ours were continually
at work, patrolling, cruising, practising gunnery, and so on, it will be
seen that on the one side the personal efficiency of officers and men,
upon which the value of machines wholly depends, tended continually to
advance, while upon the German side it tended as continually to recede.
It was the old story. Nelson’s sea-worn fleet, though actually smaller
in numbers and weaker in guns than those of the French and Spaniards at
Trafalgar, was so infinitely superior to its opponents in trained
officers and men that the result of the battle was never for a moment in
doubt.
At the time of the Dogger Bank action, which confirmed our Navy in its
growing conviction that Speed and Power of guns were of supreme
importance, the Germans had no guns afloat larger in calibre than
12-inch and seven of the ships in their first line were armed with
weapons of 11 inches. They then mustered in all twenty big ships which
they could place in the battle line against our available thirty-two,
and of their twenty not more than thirteen were of a class comparable
even with our older Dreadnoughts. They had nothing to touch our twelve
Orions, King Georges, Iron Dukes, all with 13.5-inch guns, and upon a
supreme eminence by themselves stood the two new Queen Elizabeths which,
if need be, could have disposed of any half-dozen of the weaker German
battleships. In the Jutland Battle four Queen Elizabeths—_Barham_,
_Warspite_, _Valiant_ and _Malaya_—fought for an hour and more the
whole High Seas Fleet. It is no wonder, then, that the Germans did not
come out far enough for Jellicoe to get at them. And yet there were
silly people ashore who still prattled about the inactivity of the Royal
Navy and asked one another “what it was doing.”
There is a good story told of the scorn of the professional seamen
afloat for the querulous civilians ashore. When the _Lion_ was summoned
to lead the battle cruisers in the Dogger Bank action she was lying in
the Forth undergoing some slight repairs. As she got up steam a gang of
dockyard mateys, at work upon her, pleaded anxiously to be put ashore.
They had no stomach for a battle. But there was no time to worry about
their feelings; they were carried into action with the ship, and when
the shots began to fly they were contemptuously assured by the grizzled
old sea dogs, that they were in for the time of their lives. “You wanted
to know,” said they, “what the b——y Navy’s doing and now you’re going
to see.”
While the power of the Grand Fleet dominated the war at sea, some thirty
supply ships and transports safely crossed the English Channel every
day, and troops poured into Britain and France from every part of our
wide-flung Empire. But for that silent, brooding, ever-expanding Grand
Fleet, watching over the world’s seas from its eyries on the Scottish
coast, not a man or a gun or a pound of stores could have been sent to
France, not a man could have been moved from India or Australia, Canada
or New Zealand. But for that “idle” Grand Fleet the war would have been
over and Germany victorious before the summer and autumn of 1914 had
passed into winter. During the war sea power, as always in naval
history, has depended absolutely upon the power in men, in ships, and in
guns of the first battle line.
At the beginning of 1915, in addition to the completed ships which I
have already mentioned, Great Britain had under construction three
additional Queen Elizabeths—_Malaya_, _Barham_, and _Valiant_—all of
twenty-five knot speed and carrying eight 15-inch guns apiece. She had
also on the stocks in various stages of growth five Royal Sovereign
Battleships designed for very heavy armour, with a speed of from
twenty-one to twenty-two knots, and to be equipped with eight 15-inch
guns each.
* * * * *
It will be seen how completely during the war the Royal Navy had “gone
nap” on the ever faster ship and the ever bigger gun. Calculations might
be partially upset by weather and visibility—as they were in the
Jutland Battle—but even under the worst conditions speed and gun power
came triumphantly by their own. Our fast and powerful battle cruisers,
and our four fast and more powerful Queen Elizabeths—the name ship was
not present—could not on that day of low visibility choose their most
effective ranges, but the speed and power of the battle cruisers enabled
them to outflank the enemy while the speed and hitting power of the
_Barham_, _Valiant_, _Warspite_ and _Malaya_ held up the whole of the
German High Seas Fleet until Jellicoe with his overwhelming squadrons
could come to their support. Even under the worst conditions of light,
speed and gun power had fully justified themselves.
Let us for a moment consider what are the advantages and disadvantages
of the bigger and bigger gun; the advantages of speed will be obvious to
all. To take first the disadvantages. Big guns mean weight, and weight
is inconsistent with speed. The bigger the gun, the heavier it is, the
heavier its mountings, its turrets, and its ammunition. Therefore in
order that weight may be kept down and high speed attained, the ships
which carry big guns must carry fewer guns than those which are more
lightly armed. The Orions, K.G. Fives, and Iron Dukes each bear ten
13.5-inch guns within their turrets, but the battle cruisers of which
the _Lion_ is the flagship, built for speed, can carry no more than
eight. The Queen Elizabeth battleships, designed to carry 15-inch guns
and to have a speed of twenty-five knots, mount eight guns only against
the ten of the earlier and more lightly armed super-Dreadnoughts. Speed
and weight being inconsistent, increase in speed and increase in size of
guns can only be reconciled by reducing the number of guns carried. The
fewer the guns carried, the fewer the salvos that can be fired at an
enemy during a fixed time even if the rate of fire of the big guns can
be kept so high as that of the smaller ones. When opposing ships are
moving fast upon divergent courses, ranges are continually varying and
the difficulty of making effective hits is very great indeed. The
elaboration of checks and controls, which are among the most cherished
of naval gunnery secrets, are designed to increase the proportion of
hits to misses which must always be small even when the light is most
favourable. If the heavy gun were no more accurate than the light one,
then the small number of guns carried and the reduced number of salvos,
would probably annul the benefit derived from the greater smashing power
of the heavier shell when it did hit an enemy. The ever-expanding gun
has, therefore, disadvantages, notable disadvantages, but as we shall
see they are far more than outweighed by its great and conspicuous
merits.
The first overwhelming advantage of the big gun is the gain in accuracy.
It is far more accurate than the lighter one. As the fighting range
increases so does the elevation of a gun, needed to reach an object
within the visible limits of the horizon, sensibly increase. But the
bigger the gun and the heavier its shell, the flatter becomes its
trajectory. And a flat trajectory—low elevation—means not only more
accurate shooting, but a larger danger zone for an enemy ship. At 24,000
yards (twelve sea miles) a 12-inch shell is falling very steeply and can
rarely be pumped upon an enemy’s deck, but a 15-inch shell is still
travelling upon a fairly flat path which makes it effective against the
sides and upper works of a ship as well as against its deck. The 15-inch
shell thus has the bigger mark. It also suffers less from deflection
and, what is more important, maintains its speed for a much longer time
than a lighter shell. Increased weight means increased momentum. When
the 15-inch shell gets home upon its bigger mark at a long range it has
still speed and weight (momentum) with which to penetrate protective
armour. When it does hit and penetrate there is no comparison in
destructiveness between the effect of a 15-inch shell and one of twelve
inches. The larger shell is nearly two and a half times as heavy as the
smaller one (1,960 lbs. against 850), and the power of the bursting
charge of the big shell is more than six times that of the smaller one.
Far-distant ships, big ships, can be destroyed by 15-inch shells when,
even if occasionally hit by one of twelve inches, they would be little
more than peppered. The big gun therefore gives to our Navy a larger
mark, greater accuracy arising from the lower trajectory, and far
greater destructive hitting power in comparison with the lighter guns
carried by most of the German battleships.
But the advantages of the big gun do not end here. Gunnery, in spite of
all its elaboration of checks and controls, is largely a matter of trial
and error. All that the checks and controls are designed to do is to
reduce the proportion of errors; they cannot by themselves ensure
accurate shooting. Accuracy is obtained through correcting the errors by
actual observation of the results of shots. This is called “spotting.”
When shells are seen to fall too short, or too far, or too much to one
side or the other, the error in direction or elevation is at once
corrected. But everything depends upon exact meticulous spotting, an
almost incredibly difficult matter at the long ranges of modern sea
fighting. Imagine oneself looking for the splash of a shell, bursting on
contact with the sea ten or more miles away, and estimating just how far
that splash is short or over or to one side of the object aimed at. It
will be obvious to anyone that the position of a big splash can be
gauged more surely than that of a small one, and that the huge splash of
the big shell, which sends up a column of water hundreds of feet high,
can be seen and placed by spotting officers who would be quite baffled
if they were observing shots from 12-inch weapons. In this respect also,
that of spotting results, the big gun with its big shell, greatly
assists the elimination of inevitable errors and increases the
proportion of effective hits to misses. If then we get from bigger guns
a higher proportion of hits, and a much greater effectiveness from those
hits, then the bigger gun has paid a handsome dividend on its cost and
has more than compensated us for the reduction in its numbers. Where the
useful limit will be reached one cannot say, nothing but experience in
war can decide, but the visible horizon being limited to about fifteen
sea miles, there must come a stage in gun expansion when increase in
size, accuracy, and destructiveness will cease to compensate for
smallness of numbers. And the limit will be more quickly reached when
during an action the light does not allow the big gun to use its
accuracy at longer ranges to the fullest advantage.
* * * * *
Although one’s attention is apt to be absorbed by the great ships of the
first battle line, the ultimate Fount of naval Power, a Navy which built
only vast battleships and cruisers would be quite unable to control the
seas. A navy’s daily work does not consist of battles. For the main
purposes of watching the seas, hunting submarines, blockading an enemy,
and guarding the communications of ourselves and our Allies, and also
for protecting our big ships against submarines and other mosquito
attacks, we needed vast numbers of light cruisers, patrol boats,
destroyers, armed merchant cruisers, steam drifters and so on, and these
had to be built or adapted with as great an energy as that devoted to
turning out the monsters of the first battle line. The construction of
light cruisers and destroyers—the cavalry of the seas—kept pace during
1915 and 1916 with that of the big fighting ships, while the turning out
of the light fast craft essential for hunting down enemy submarines, far
surpassed in speed and other building operations. At the beginning of
the war we had 270 light mosquito vessels; at the end of 1917 we had
3,500!
Nothing like the tremendous activity in warship building during 1915 has
ever been seen in our country. Mercantile building was to a large extent
suspended, labour was both scarce and dear, builders could not complete
commercial contracts at the prices named in them, the great yards became
“controlled establishments” with priority claims both for labour and
material. Consequently every yard which could add to the Navy’s
strength, whether in super-battleships or cruisers, destroyers or in the
humble mine sweeper, were put on to war work. The Clyde, typical of the
shipbuilding rivers, was a forest of scaffolding poles from Fairfield to
Greenock within which huge rusty hulls—to the unaccustomed eye very
unlike new vessels—grew from day to day in the open almost with the
speed of mushrooms. A trip down the teeming river became one of the
sights of the city on the Clyde and, though precautions were taken to
exclude aliens, the Germans must have known with some approach to
accuracy the numbers and nature of the craft which were under
construction. What was going on in the Clyde during that year of supreme
activity, when naval brains were unhampered by Parliament or the
Treasury, was also going on in the Tyne, at Barrow and Birkenhead, in
the Royal Dockyards—everywhere day and night the Navy was growing at a
speed fully three times as great as in any year in our history.
* * * * *
Twenty-two months after war broke out, in May of 1916, Jellicoe’s battle
line had been strengthened during the previous twelve months by the
addition of no less than seven great vessels. Three more Queen
Elizabeths were finished and so were three Royal Sovereigns, and in
addition a fine battleship, which had been building in England for
Brazil, was taken over and completed. She was named the _Canada_, had
twenty-three knots of speed, and was designed to carry ten 14-inch guns.
There were thus available in the North Sea, allowing for occasional
absences, from thirty-eight to forty-two great ships of the battle line,
of which no fewer than eight carried 15-inch guns of the very latest
design. This huge piling up of strength was essential not only to
provide against possible losses but to ensure that, in spite of all
accidents, an immense preponderance of naval power would always be
available should Germany venture to put her fortunes to the hazard of
battle. And accidents did occur. The coast lights had all been
extinguished and ships at sea cruising at night were almost buried in
darkness. As time went on it became more and more certain that a Battle
of the Giants could have but one result.
I have now carried the story of naval expansion down to the time of the
Jutland Battle—May 31st, 1916—and will show by how much our paper
strength had increased between August 4th, 1914, and that date, and how
much of that strength was available when the call for battle rang out.
It happened that none of our battle cruisers was away upon overseas
enterprises, so that we were in good circumstances to meet the call.
There had been added to the Fleets one battle cruiser, the _Tiger_, with
13.5-inch guns, five Queen Elizabeth battleships with 15-inch guns,
three Royal Sovereign battleships with 15-inch guns (_Royal Sovereign_,
_Royal Oak_ and _Revenge_), the _Erin_ battleship with 13.5-inch guns,
the _Canada_ battleship with 14-inch guns, and the _Agincourt_
battleship with fourteen 12-inch guns. At the beginning of the war our
total strength in battleships and battle cruisers of the Dreadnought and
later more powerful types was thirty-one, so that on May 31st we had in
and near the North Sea a full paper total of forty-two ships of the
battle line.
But the Royal Navy which is always at work upon the open seas can never
have at any one moment its whole force available for battle. The
squadrons composing the Fleets were, however, exceedingly powerful, far
more than sufficient for the complete destruction of the Germans had
they dared to fight out the action. As the battle was fought the main
burden fell upon thirteen only of our ships—Beatty’s four Cat battle
cruisers assisted by the _New Zealand_ and _Indefatigable_, Hood’s three
battle cruisers of the Invincible class, and Evan-Thomas’s four Queen
Elizabeth battleships. Jellicoe’s available main Fleet of twenty-five
battleships, including two Royal Sovereigns with 15-inch guns, the
_Canada_ with 14-inch guns, and twelve Orions, K.G. Fives and Iron Dukes
with 13.5-inch guns, which was robbed of its fought-out battle by the
enemy’s skilful withdrawal, was almost sufficient by itself to have
eaten up the German High Seas Fleet.
During the battle we lost the _Queen Mary_ with 13.5-inch guns, and the
_Invincible_ and _Indefatigable_ with 12-inch guns, all of which were
battle cruisers. So that after the action our total battle cruiser
strength had declined from ten to seven, while our battleship strength
was unimpaired.
* * * * *
It is not easy to be quite sure of what the Germans had managed to do
during those twenty-two months of war. I have given them credit for
completing every ship which it was possible for them to complete. They
were too fully occupied with building submarines to attack our merchant
ships, too fully occupied with guns and shells for land fighting, and
too much hampered in regard to many essential materials by our blockade,
to be able to effect more than the best possible. Rumour from time to
time credited them with the construction of “surprise” ships carrying
17-inch guns, but nothing unexpected was revealed when the clash of
Fleets came on May 31st, 1916. Huge new battleships and huge new guns
take us at the very least fifteen months to complete at full war
pressure—most of them nearer two years—and the German rate of
construction, even when unhampered by a blockade and the calling to the
army of all available men, has always been much slower than ours. The
British Admiralty does not work in the dark and doubtless knew fully
what the Germans were doing.
If we credit the Germans with their best possible they might have added,
by May, 1916, four battleships and two battle cruisers to their High
Seas Fleet as it existed early in 1915. One of the battleships was the
_Salamis_, which was building at Stettin for Greece when the war broke
out. She was designed for speed of twenty-three knots, and to carry ten
14-inch guns. The other three battleships were copies of our Queen
Elizabeths, though slower by about four knots. They were to have been
equipped with eight 15-inch guns, though Germany had not before the war
managed to make any naval guns larger than 12-inch. The battle cruisers
(_Hindenburg_ and _Lützow_) were vessels of twenty-seven knots with
eight 12-inch guns, not to be compared with our Cats and no better than
our comparatively old class of Invincibles.
The story of the _Salamis_ and its 14-inch guns forms a very precious
piece of war history. The guns for this Greek battleship had been
ordered in America, a country which has specialised in guns of that
calibre. But when Germany took over the ship the guns had not been
delivered at Stettin, and never were delivered. They had quite another
destination and employment. Our Admiralty interposed, in its grimly
humorous way, bought the guns in America, brought them over to this
country, and used the weapons intended for the _Salamis_ to bombard the
Germans at Zeebrugge and the Turks in Gallipoli. One may speculate as to
which potentate was the more irritated by this piece of poetic
justice—the Kaiser in Berlin or his brother-in-law “Tino” in Athens.
At their utmost, therefore, the Germans could not have added more than
five vessels to their first line (they had lost one battle cruiser),
thus raising it at the utmost to twenty-five battleships and cruisers,
as compared with our maximum of forty-two much more powerful and faster
ships. Four of their battleships were the obsolete Nassaus with twelve
11-inch guns and two of their battle cruisers (_Moltke_ and _Seydlitz_)
were also armed with 11-inch guns. If a successful fight with our Grand
Fleet was hopeless in August, 1914, it was still more hopeless in May,
1916. We had not doubled our lead in actual numbers but had much more
than doubled it in speed and power of the vessels available for a battle
in the North Sea. In gun power we had nearly twice Germany’s strength at
the beginning; we had not far from three times her effective strength by
the end of May of 1916. It is indeed probable that Germany was not so
strong in big ships and guns as I have here reckoned. She did not
produce so many in the Jutland Battle. I can account for five battle
cruisers and sixteen battleships (excluding pre-Dreadnoughts) making
twenty-one in all. I have allowed her, however, the best possible, but
long before the year 1916 it must have been brought bitterly home to the
German Sea Command that by no device of labour, thought, and machinery
could they produce great ships to range in battle with ours. We had
progressed from strength to strength at so dazzling a speed that we
could not possibly be overtaken. Had not the hare gone to sleep, the
tortoise could never have come up with it—and the British hare had no
intention of sleeping to oblige the German tortoise. There is every
indication that Germany soon gave up the contest in battleships and put
her faith in super-submarines, and in Zeppelins, the one to scout and
raid, and the other to sink merchant vessels and so between them either
to starve or terrify England into seeking an end of the war.