It is the brightest and most encouraging feature of the War that British
supremacy at sea is unchallenged and probably unchallengeable by
Germany.
It is true that the main German Fleet has not yet dared to give battle
in the open sea, and that the endeavours of scattered units afloat have
met with speedy disaster. It is no less true that should the "High
Canal Admiral" venture forth from the secluded shelters in which the
Imperial German Navy has for so many months concealed itself, its
prospects of dealing a successful blow at the maritime might of Britain
are exceedingly slender.
None the less, it is incredible that, sooner or later, the German Navy
will fail to attempt what German writers are fond of describing as a
"Hussar Stroke." We can contemplate that issue--and we know our sailors
do so--with every confidence. In every single particular--in ships, in
men, in moral, and in traditions--the British Navy is superior to that
of Germany. Even without the powerful help we should receive from our
French and Italian Allies, British control over the ocean highways is
supreme.
A Radical journal, which for years past has been conspicuous for its
laudation of everything German, has lately tried to make our flesh creep
with tales of the mounting in German warships of a monster gun--said to
be of 17-inch calibre--which was so utterly to outrange anything we
possess as to render our control of the North Sea doubtful and shadowy.
It is strange to find a journal which, before the War, was one of the
chief asserters of the peaceful intentions of Germany thus passing into
the ranks of the "scaremongers." When the late Lord Roberts ventured,
before the War, to point out the dangers which lay before us, he was
denounced as an "alarmist." Yet on the very doubtful supposition that a
single shell which fell into Dunkirk was a 17-inch missile the _Daily
News_ has built up a "scare" article worthy only of a race of
panic-mongers, and full of false premisses and false deductions from the
first line to the last. Such are the changed views brought about by
changed circumstances!
But even supposing that the Germans actually possess a 17-inch naval
gun, is the _Daily News_ content to assume that the Admiralty and the
Government are not fully aware of the fact and that they have taken no
steps whatever to meet the new danger? It is a literal fact that we
have always been an inch or two ahead of Germany in the calibre of our
biggest guns--the history of the Dreadnought fully proves that--and it
is incredible that we should suddenly be caught napping in a matter on
which we have led the world. I leave out of consideration the purely
technical question as to whether such guns could by any possibility be
fitted to ships designed and partly constructed to take smaller weapons;
experts say that such a change would be impossible without what would
amount to practical reconstruction.
Putting these considerations on one side, is the record of our naval
service such as to justify us in assuming that they know less than they
have always known of the plans and intentions of the enemy?
Mr Balfour's reply on the subject was plain and categorical; the naval
authorities know nothing of any such weapon, and do not believe that it
exists. In all probability we shall be quite safe in accepting their
estimate of the situation, and whatever the facts may be the Navy may be
trusted to deal with new penis as they arise. After all, a Navy is not
merely so many ships and so many men armed with so many guns of such and
such a size. That is a fact which, however imperfectly it is
appreciated in Germany, is well known here. Tradition and moral count
even more afloat than ashore; we possess both. A Navy whose chief
achievements have been the drowning of helpless non-combatants in the
infamous submarine campaign may hardly be said to possess either.
For many months now the German flag has vanished from the ocean highways
of the world. For many months British commerce has peacefully pursued
its pathways to the uttermost ends of the earth.
There have been times when the depredations of German raiders, such as
the "Emden," caused some inconvenience and considerable loss. There
have been times when the submarine campaign has apparently had a great
measure of success. But though many ships, with their cargoes and with
many innocent lives, have been sunk, nothing which the German pirates
could do was sufficient seriously to threaten our overseas trade. Very
soon the marauders were rounded up and destroyed, and in a space of time
which, before the War, would have been deemed incredible the seas were
practically free for the passage of the ships of the Allies.
In the early days of the War many good judges believed that the German
commerce raiders would have been as effective against our overseas trade
as were the French privateers in the days of the Napoleonic wars.
Certain it is that it was the universal expectation that our losses in
mercantile tonnage would have been far more grievous than has proved to
be the case.
We see now that this expectation was unduly alarmist. But it was
entertained not merely by amateur students of war, but by many of the
sailors who have given a lifetime of thought to the problems of warfare
at sea. Every lesson that could be drawn from history suggested that
the life of the German raiders would have been far longer than actually
proved to be the case. Those lessons, however, were learned in the days
when the war fleets were composed of great sailing vessels which could
keep the sea far longer without fresh supplies than is possible to-day.
Cut off from any possible sources of regular supplies of food, coal, and
ammunition, the few German ships which remained at liberty when war
broke out were quickly hunted down by superior forces and destroyed
until, a very few months after the outbreak of war, Germany's strength
afloat was closely confined to the Baltic and a very small portion of
the North Sea.
Nothing like the achievements of the British Navy has ever been
witnessed in the history of war. Not even the most enthusiastic
believer in sea power could have dreamed of such brilliant and striking
successes; not even the most enthusiastic admirer of the British Navy
could, in his most sanguine moments, have expected such results as have
been attained.
When we come to think of the expanse of ocean to be covered, the
services which the British Navy has rendered to civilisation will be
seen to be stupendous. Not merely have all the German ships which were
at liberty outside the North Sea and the Baltic been hunted down and
destroyed, but the Grand Fleet, the darling of the Kaiser's heart, the
object upon which millions have been poured out like water with the
express purpose of crushing Britain, has been penned up in the narrowest
of quarters, and from every strategical point of view has been reduced
to practical impotence. True, it succeeded, under cover of fog and
darkness, in sending a squadron of fast ships to bombard undefended
Scarborough, where its gallant efforts resulted in the killing and
wounding of some hundreds of women, children, and other non-combatants
who, had we been fighting a civilised foe, would have been perfectly
safe from harm. But a repetition of the attempt at this dastardly crime
led to such condign punishment that the effort has never been repeated,
and from that day to this German excursions at sea, so far, at least, as
British waters are concerned, have been confined to the occasional
appearance of stray torpedo craft and the campaign of submarine piracy
and murder which has left upon the name of the German Navy a stigma
which it will take centuries to eradicate.
With the one solitary exception of the unequal fight off Coronel, where
the "Good Hope" and "Monmouth" were destroyed by the greatly superior
squadron of Von Spee, the Germans have uniformly had the worse of any
sea fighting which they ventured to undertake. Even the Baltic, in
which they fondly imagined they had undisputed supremacy, has been
rendered more than "unhealthy" by the activities of British submarines--
so unhealthy, in fact, that the German attack upon the Gulf of Riga,
which was to have led to the crushing of the Russian right wing and the
advance upon Petrograd, ended in a dismal failure and the precipitate
flight of the attackers. That they will be any more successful in the
future is practically unthinkable. Stronger, both relatively and
actually, than before the War, the British Navy calmly awaits "the day,"
hoping it may soon come, when the Germans will stake their existence
upon a last desperate effort to challenge that mastery of the sea the
hope of which must be slipping for ever from their grasp.
It is only necessary to say a few words about the atrocious policy of
submarine "frightfulness" which culminated in the sinking of the
"Lusitania" and the deliberate sacrifice of the lives of some 1,200
innocent people who had nothing whatever to do with the War. That
policy, the deluded German people were solemnly assured, was to bring
Britain to her knees by cutting off supplies of food and raw material,
and starving her into submission. It is worth noting in this connection
that the Germans to-day are calling upon heaven and earth to punish the
brutal English for attempting to "starve the German people" by a
perfectly legitimate blockade carried out in strict accordance with the
rules of international law. We heard nothing of the iniquities of the
"starvation" policy as long as the Germans hoped to be able to apply it
to us in the same way that they applied it to Paris during the war of
1870-71; it was only when they realised that the submarine policy had
failed that they began the desperate series of appeals, directed
especially to the United States, that they were being unfairly treated
owing to Britain refusing to allow them the "freedom of the seas"--in
other words, refusing to sit idly by while Germany obtained from the
United States and elsewhere the food and munitions of which she stood,
and stands, in such desperate need.
As a matter of fact, the German submarine campaign has not even
succeeded in reducing appreciably the strength of the British mercantile
marine.
Despite our losses, our mercantile marine is to-day, thanks to new
building and purchases, but little weaker than when war broke out,
while, so far as we can judge, the submarine campaign has failed to
contribute in the slightest degree to the rise in food values which has
imposed so great a burden upon large classes of people in our country.
It has been in fact, a complete and absolute failure. It has cost us,
it is true, many valuable vessels and many valuable lives, but as a
means to ending the War it has achieved practically nothing. The policy
of terrifying by murder has prospered no more afloat than it did ashore,
while outside the ranks of the combatants it has done nothing but earn
for Germany the contempt of the whole civilised world, to bring Germany
within an ace of war with the United States, and to brand the German
Navy and the entire German nation with an indelible stain of blood and
crime.
The submarine policy was a policy which could have been justified only
by complete success. It may suit the German Press, led by the nose by
the Government, to tell the German people that hated England was being
rapidly subdued by the efforts of the "heroic" murderers commanding the
German U-boats. We know differently.
We have the authority of Mr Balfour for saying that the German losses
in submarines have been "formidable," and it has been stated--and not
contradicted--in the House of Commons that no fewer than fifty of these
assassins of the sea have met the fate which their infamy richly
deserved. Unofficial estimates have put the number even higher. We
shall not know the exact facts until after the War, but we know at least
that the German people have at length awakened to an uneasy realisation
of the fact that they have murdered in vain, and that they have covered
themselves with undying infamy to no real purpose.
I do not suppose that knowledge sits very hardly upon their consciences;
but even in Germany there must be people who are beginning to wonder
what judgment the civilised world will pass upon them in the future, and
how they are ever to hold up their heads again among civilised nations.
And not even a German can remain perpetually indifferent to the judgment
of the civilised world.
By every means which ingenuity could devise and daring seamanship could
carry into execution Germany's submarines have been chased, harried, and
sunk, until, as we are informed upon reliable authority, the chiefs of
the German Navy are finding it increasingly difficult to find and train
submarine crews. And small wonder! No one questions the bravery of the
German sailor, whatever we may think of his humanity. But, also, he is
human, and not the superhuman being which the Germans imagine themselves
to be. And when he sees, week after week and month after month,
submarine after submarine venturing forth into the waters of the North
Sea only to be mysteriously swallowed up in the void, one can understand
that he shrinks appalled from a prospect sufficient to shake the nerves
of men who, whatever their other qualities may be, have not been bred
for hundreds of years to the traditions and the dangers of the sea.
Small wonder that they quail from the unknown fate which for ever
threatens them! Many sally forth never to return; others, more
fortunate, on reaching home have a tale to tell which, losing nothing in
the telling, is not of a nature to encourage their fellows.
It is said that a single voyage in a German submarine is enough so
seriously to try the nerves of officers and men that they need a
prolonged rest before they are ready to resume their duties. Imagine
the conditions under which they live! Hunted day and night by the
relentless British destroyers, faced ever by strange and unfamiliar
perils and by traps of which they know nothing, it is hardly a matter of
surprise if their nerves give way.
The War has given us the most wonderful example the world has ever seen
of what sea power means. Thanks to their undisputed command of the
ocean, the Allies have been able to carry on operations in widely
separated theatres practically free from any of the difficulties which
would certainly have proved insurmountable in the presence of strong
hostile forces afloat. We and our Allies have been able to transport
men and munitions wherever we wished without serious hindrance, and even
in the presence of hostile submarines we have only lost two or three
transports in eighteen months of war. That, it must be admitted, is a
very wonderful record.
Even the tragic blunder of the Dardanelles gave us a striking instance
of what sea power can effect. We were able, thanks to the Navy, not
merely to land huge forces in the face of the enemy, but we were able
also to re-embark them without loss under circumstances which, by all
the laws of war, should have meant an appalling list of casualties.
There can be no doubt whatever that had the re-embarking troops on the
Gallipoli Pensinsula tried to reach their ships without having firm
command of the sea, not more than a very small percentage of them would
have survived.
In considering the bearings of naval power to the great struggle as a
whole, we must always keep in mind what the Germans expected and hoped
when they declared war. We know, of course, that they did not expect
Britain to enter the War. But at the same time they must have realised
that there was a possibility of our doing so, and they had formulated a
plan of campaign to meet such a contingency. We know pretty well what
that campaign was. The German theory has been put into practice since;
unfortunately for the Germans, it has not worked out quite in accordance
with the text-books. They declared for the "war of attrition"; their
idea was that, by submarine attacks, the British Fleet could be so
whittled down that at length the German main Fleet would be able to meet
it with reasonable prospects of success. Their Fleet, while the process
of attrition was going on, was to remain sheltered in the unreachable
fastnesses of the Kiel Canal. The latter, however, is the only part of
the German programme which has gone according to the book.
The "High Canal Fleet" remains in the "last ditch," and apparently, at
the time of writing, seems likely to remain there. But the process of
attrition has not made the progress the Germans hoped for. It is true
we have lost a number of ships through submarine attacks. But it will
not be overlooked by the Germans any more than by ourselves that the
greater part of our losses was sustained in the early days of the
submarine campaign. As soon as the Navy "got busy" with the submarine
pest our losses practically ceased, and it is now a long time since we
have lost a fighting unit through torpedo attack. As is usual with the
Navy, our men set themselves to grapple with unfamiliar conditions, and
their success has been very striking. Not only have they been able to
protect themselves against submarine attack, but they have made the home
seas, at any rate, too hot to hold the pirates, dozens of which have
been destroyed or captured. And when the submarine war was transferred
to the Mediterranean it was not very long before the Navy again had the
menace well in hand. In the meantime our building programme was pushed
forward at such a rate that a very large number of ships of the most
powerful class have been added to the fighting units of the Fleet, with
the result that not merely relatively to the Fleet of Germany, but
actually in point of ships, men, and guns, our Fleet to-day is stronger
than it was when war broke out. That, again, is an achievement wholly
without parallel. And it is one of the chief factors in considering the
future of the campaign. The Germans have never been able to rival us in
speed of construction even in times of peace; it is in the last degree
unlikely that they have been able to do so under the conditions that
have prevailed during the past eighteen months. I have not the least
doubt that we are fully justified in assuming that our final victory at
sea is assured--if, indeed, it is not practically won already. The
conditions are plain for everyone, both at home and abroad, to see for
himself, and we have plenty of evidence to suggest that they are fully
appreciated in Germany; the idle quays of Hamburg, the idle fleets of
German merchant ships rotting in the shelter of neutral ports, the
peaceful progress of the ships of the Allies over the seas of the world,
and the growing stringency of conditions in Germany brought about by the
British blockade are quite sufficient evidence for those Germans--and
their number is growing--who are no longer blinded by the national
megalomania.
Our Navy is a silent service; it would perhaps be better for us if at
times it were a little more vocal. For there is no disguising the fact
that there is a body of impatient grumblers at home who, because we do
not read of a great sea victory every morning with our breakfasts, are
apt to ask what the Navy is doing. We can be quite sure that that
question is not asked in Germany. There, at any rate, the answer is
plain.
We can discount, I am sure, the tales we hear of Germany starving, and
that the horrors of Paris in 1870 are being repeated. That story is no
doubt diligently spread abroad by the Germans themselves in the hope of
appealing to the sentiment, or rather the sentimentality, of certain
classes in the neutral nations. At the same time, we cannot shut our
eyes to the growing mass of evidence which goes to show that the
stringency of the British blockade is producing a great and increasing
effect throughout Germany. To begin with, her export trade, despite the
leaks in the blockade, has practically vanished, and it must be
remembered that modern Germany is the creation of trade with overseas
countries. She grew rich on commerce; she might have grown richer if
she had been content with the opportunities which were as fully open to
her as to the rest of the world. It is due to the steady strangling
process carried out by the British Navy that her long accumulation of
wealth has been decisively checked, and that she is dissipating that
accumulation in what is inevitably bound to be a sure, if slow, bleeding
to death. And, whatever may be the course of the War, Germany's
overseas trade can be resumed only by the permission or through the
destruction of the British Navy. That is a factor of supreme and
tremendous importance.
In the British blockade--in other words, in the British Fleet--we have
the factor which in the long run must make possible the final overthrow
of Germany. I am not suggesting that we can win this war by sea power
alone; the final crash must come through the defeat of Germany's land
forces, since she is a land and not a sea Power. But it is the
operation of sea power which must make the final blow possible. Sea
power, and sea power alone, will make possible the final blockade of
Germany by land as well as by sea. The ring of the blockade already is
nearly complete; and when the British and French, advancing from the
base at Salonica, link up, as they must sooner or later, with the
Russian forces coming south across the Balkans, Germany will be held in
a ring of iron from which she will have no means of escape.
She realises fully that she has not the remotest chance of breaking
through the lines of the Allies in the West; she has failed utterly to
break the Russian line in the East. It is vital for her to break the
ring by which she is nearly surrounded, and in this fact we have the
explanation of her dash across the Balkans. So far that dash has been
attended with a great measure of success owing to the failure of the
Allies to win the active support of Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria. She
has succeeded in crushing Serbia and Montenegro, and in linking up with
her Turkish Allies through the medium of the Constantinople railway.
But Salonica, firmly held by the Allies, must ever be a thorn in the
side of her progress to the East, and until she succeeds in reducing it
her flank is open to a blow which would shatter her prospects in the
East as decisively as they have already been shattered in the West. We
cannot imagine that the Allies have gone to Salonica solely for reasons
of their health, and it needs no great acquaintance with military
history to realise that the possession by the Allies of the Salonica
lines may be as fatal to Germany as the holding of the lines of Torres
Vedras by Wellington was fatal to the plans of Napoleon.
The analogy is not exact--analogies seldom are--but "the Spanish ulcer"
is sufficiently reproduced for practical purposes. German commanders in
the East can never feel safe so long as Salonica remains in our
possession. And I have no doubt that when the time is ripe we shall see
the Allies advancing through the Balkans to join hands with the Russians
and, it may be, with the Rumanians. Then Germany will be definitely
isolated, and the process of exhaustion, already considerably advanced,
will proceed with ever-growing momentum, until it reaches the point when
a combined attack on land by the whole of the Allies simultaneously will
prove irresistible. I am not one of those who believe that Germany can
be defeated by economic pressure alone. But it cannot be denied that
economic pressure offers the greatest means of so weakening her power of
resistance that her final military defeat will be rendered immeasurably
easier.
And we must always remember--there is too strong a tendency in certain
quarters to forget it--that it is the principal duty of the British
Navy, so long as the German Fleet prefers idleness to fighting, to bring
about the reduction of the German power of resistance by a remorseless
strangulation of her trade. Our policy in this respect is perfectly
definite. It is that, paying due regard to the undoubted rights of
neutral nations, we will allow nothing to reach Germany which will
assist to prolong her powers of resistance.
There has been a strong disposition in some quarters to represent the
British Navy as fighting with one hand tied behind its back owing to the
supposed apathy or worse of the Foreign Office. Sir Edward Grey, in
perhaps the greatest speech of his long career, has sufficiently
disposed of that charge. It is not denied that from a variety of
causes, some of them at least beyond our control, Germany has obtained
supplies which we would very gladly have denied to her. But,
unfortunately for us and fortunately for her, neutral nations have their
rights, which we are bound to respect unless we wish to make fresh
enemies. It is beyond doubt that supplies are leaking into Germany
through Holland and Scandinavia which we should be glad to keep out. It
is absolutely impossible to prove enemy destination in all these cases,
and it must be remembered that unless we can prove this we have no right
to interfere with the commerce of neutral nations, who are quite
entitled, if they can do so, to supply Germany with precisely the class
of goods which the United States is supplying to us.
We are too apt to overlook the fact that there is nothing criminal in
supplying guns and ammunition to Germany. Neutral nations are free to
do so--if they can. We are entitled to stop them--also if we can. But
we are not entitled to interfere with the legitimate commerce of a
neutral nation; in other words, we must prove that contraband is
intended for the use of the enemy before we can lay hands upon it.
It is this feature of international law which makes it so difficult for
us to declare an absolute blockade of Germany. And it is just this
aspect of the case which is the justification of the trade agreements of
the kind which has been concluded with Denmark. Under that agreement,
and under similar ones, we allow certain goods to be imported in normal
volume to neutral countries under the assurance that they will not be
re-exported to Germany. The agreement with Denmark has been violently
attacked, and attacked, as everyone admits who has seen it, without the
slightest justification. It is admitted that it does not give us all we
would like to have; but, on the other hand, it is also admitted by those
who have seen it that it gives us a good deal more than we could hope to
obtain by other means short of what would be practically a declaration
of war.
And even the hotheads among us would shrink from telling either Holland
or the Scandinavian countries that unless they surrender their rights
and do as we wish, we should at once declare war upon them or
practically force them to declare war upon us. We need have no shadow
of doubt what Germany would do if she wielded the power we do. She
would show, as she has shown, scant consideration for the rights of
neutrals. But, thank heaven! we are not Germany, and we fight with
clean hands.
We have to solve the problem of making our blockade as effectual as
possible while paying scrupulous regard to the rights of others. That
problem is in process of solution; the importation of commodities into
Germany is decreasing day by day; and if we are not at the end of our
difficulties in this respect, we are at least drawing into sight of the
achievement of our purpose. And the more fully that purpose can be
attained, the nearer draws the end of the great struggle and the
emancipation of the civilised world from the dominion of brute force.