was in Columbus’ time, without any loss of trickiness in bumping small
craft against towering sides. The way that this destroyer slid up to
the flagship without any fuss and the way her bluejackets held off from
the paint as she rose on the crests and slipped back into the trough,
did not tell the whole story. A part of it was how, at the right
interval, they assisted the landlubber to step from gunwale to gangway,
making him feel perfectly safe when he would have been perfectly
helpless but for them.
I had often watched our own bluejackets at the same thing. They did
not grin--not when you were looking at them. Nor did the British.
Bluejackets are noted for their official politeness. I should like
to have heard their remarks--they have a gift for remarks--about
those invaders of their uniformed world in Scotch caps and other kinds
of caps and the different kind of clothes which tailors make for
civilians. Without any intention of eavesdropping, I did overhear one
asking another whence came these strange birds.
One knew the flagship by the admirals’ barges astern, as you know the
location of an army headquarters by its automobiles. It seemed in the
centre of the fleet at anchor, if that is a nautical expression. Where
its place would be in action is one of those secrets as important
to the enemy as the location of a general’s shell-proof shelter in
Flanders. Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe may be on some other ship in
battle. If there is any one foolish question which one should not ask
it is this.
As one mounted the gangway of this mighty super-Dreadnought one was
bound to think of another flagship in Portsmouth harbour, Nelson’s
_Victory_--at least, an American was. Probably an Englishman would
not indulge in such a commonplace. One would like to know how many
Englishmen had ever seen the old _Victory_. But, then, how many
Americans have been to Mount Vernon and Gettysburg?
It was a hundred years, one repeats, since the British had fought a
first-class naval war. Nelson did his part so well that he did not
leave any fighting to be done by his successors. Maintaining herself
as mistress of the seas by the threat of superior strength--except in
the late fifties, when the French innovation of iron ships gave France
a temporary lead on paper--ship after ship, through all the grades
of progress in naval construction, has gone to the scrap heap without
firing a shot in anger.
The _Victory_ was one landmark, or seamark, if you please, and this
flagship was another. Between the two were generations of officers and
men working through the change from stagecoach to motors and aeroplanes
and seaplanes, who had kept up to a standard of efficiency in view of
a test that never came. A year of war and still the test had not come,
for the old reason that England had superior strength. Her outnumbering
guns which had kept the peace of the seas still kept it.
All second nature to the Englishman this, as the defence of the immense
distances of the steppes to the Russian or the Rocky Mountain wall
and the Mississippi’s flow to the man in Kansas. But the American
kept thinking about it; and he wanted the Kansans to think about it,
too. A sentimentalist envisaged the tall column in Trafalgar Square,
with the one-armed figure turned toward the wireless skein on top of
the Admiralty Building when he went on board the flagship of Sir John
Jellicoe.
One first heard of Jellicoe fifteen years ago on the China coast, when
he was Chief of Staff to Sir Edward Seymour, then Commander-in-Chief of
the Asiatic Squadron. Indeed, one was always hearing about Jellicoe.
He was the kind of man whom people talk about after they have met
him, which means personality. It was in China seas, you may remember,
that when a few British seamen were hard pressed in a fight that was
not ours that the phrase, “Blood is thicker than water,” sprang from
the lips of an American commander, who waited not on international
etiquette but went to the assistance of the British.
Nor will any one who was present in the summer of ’98 forget how Sir
Edward Chichester stood loyally by Admiral George Dewey, when the
German squadron was empire-fishing in the waters of Manila Bay, until
our Atlantic Fleet had won the battle of Santiago and Admiral Dewey
had received reinforcements and, east and west, we were able to look
after the Germans. The British bluejackets said that the rations of
frozen mutton from Australia which we sent alongside were excellent;
but the Germans were in no position to judge, as none was sent to them,
doubtless through an oversight in the detail of hospitality by one of
Admiral Dewey’s staff. No. Let us be officially correct. We happened to
run out of spare mutton after serving the British.
In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to relieve the
legations against some hundreds of thousands of Boxers, Captain Bowman
McCalla and his Americans worked with Admiral Seymour and his Britons
in the most trying and picturesque thing of its kind in modern history.
McCalla, too, was always talking of Jellicoe, who was wounded on the
expedition; and Sir John’s face lighted at mention of McCalla’s name.
He recalled how McCalla had painted on the superstructure of the little
_Newark_ that saying of Farragut’s, “The best protection against an
enemy’s fire is a well-directed fire of your own”; which has been said
in other ways and cannot be said too often.
“We called McCalla Mr. Lead,” said Sir John; “he had been wounded so
many times and yet was able to hobble along and keep on fighting. I
corresponded regularly with him until his death.”
Beatty, too, was on that expedition; and he, too, was another
personality one kept hearing about. It seemed odd that two men, who
had played a part in work which was a soldier’s far from home, should
have become so conspicuous in the Great War. If on that day when,
with ammunition exhausted, all members of the expedition had given up
hope of ever returning alive, they had not accidentally come upon the
Shi-kou arsenal, one would not be commanding the Great Fleet and the
other its battle-cruiser squadron.
Before the war, I am told, when Admiralty lords and others who had the
decision to make were discussing who should command in case of war,
opinion ran something like this:
“Jellicoe! He has the brains!”
“Jellicoe! He has the health to endure the strain, with years enough
and not too many!”
“Jellicoe! He has the confidence of the service!”
The choice literally made itself. When any one is undertaking the
gravest responsibility which has been an Englishman’s for a hundred
years, that kind of a recommendation helps. He had the guns; he had
supreme command; he must deliver victory--such was England’s message
to him.
When I mentioned in a despatch that all that differentiated him from
the officers around him was the broader band of gold lace on his arm,
an English naval critic wanted to know if I expected to find him in
cloth of gold. No; nor in full dress with all his medals on, as I saw
him appear on the screen at a theatre in London.
Any general of high command must be surrounded by more pomp than an
admiral in time of action. A headquarters cannot have the simplicity
of the quarter-deck. The force which the general commands is not in
sight; the admiral’s is. You saw the commander and you saw what it was
that he commanded. Within the sweep of vision from the quarter-deck was
the terrific power which the man with the broad gold band on his arm
directed. At a signal from him it would move or it would stand still.
That command of Joshua’s if given by Sir John one thought might have
been obeyed.
One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred twelve-inch guns
and larger, which could carry a hundred tons and more of metal in a
single broadside for a distance of eighteen thousand yards! But do not
forget the little guns, bristling under the big guns like needles from
a cushion, which would keep off the torpedo assassins; or the light
cruisers, or the colliers, or the destroyers, or the 2,300 trawlers and
mine-layers, and what not, all under his direction. He had submarines,
too, double the number of the German. But with all the German
men-of-war in harbour, they had no targets. Where were they? One did
not ask questions that could not be answered. Waiting, as the whole
British fleet was waiting, for the Germans to show their heads, while
cruisers were abroad scouting the North Sea.
At the outset of the war the German fleet might have had one chance in
ten of getting a turn of fortune of its favour by an unexpected stroke
of strategy. This was the danger which Admiral Jellicoe had to guard
against. For in one sense, the Germans had the tactical offensive by
sea as well as by land; theirs the outward thrust from the centre. They
could choose when to come out of their harbour; when to strike. The
British had to keep watch all the time and be ready whenever the enemy
should come.
Thus, the British Grand Fleet was at sea in the early part of the war,
cruising here and there, begging for battle. Then it was that they
learned how to avoid the submarines and the mine-fields. Submarines
had played a greater part than expected, because Germany had chosen a
guerrilla naval warfare: to harass, to wound, to wear down. Doubtless
she hoped to reduce the number of British fighting units by attrition.
Weak England might be in plants for making arms for an army, but not
in ship-building. Here was her true genius. She was a maritime power;
Germany a land-power. Her part as an ally of France and Russia being to
command the sea, all demands of the Admiralty for material must take
precedence over demands of the War Office. At the end of the first year
she had increased her fighting power by sea to a still higher ratio of
preponderance over the Germans; in another year she would increase it
further.
Admiral von Tirpitz wanted nothing so much as to draw the British
fleet under the guns of Heligoland or into a mine-field and submarine
trap. But Sir John Jellicoe refused the bait. When he had completed his
precautions and his organisation to meet all new conditions, his fleet
need not go into the open. His Dreadnoughts could rest at anchor at a
base while his scouts kept in touch with all that was passing and his
auxiliaries and destroyers fought the submarines. Without a British
Dreadnought having fired a shot at a German Dreadnought, nowhere on the
face of the seas might a single vessel show the German flag except by
thrusting it above the water for a few minutes.
If von Tirpitz sent his fleet out he, too, might find himself in a
trap of mines and submarines. He was losing submarines and England was
building more. His naval force rather than Sir John’s was suffering
from attrition. The blockade was complete from Iceland to the North
Sea. While the world knew of the work of the armies, the care that
this task required, the hardships endured, the enormous expenditure of
energy, were all hidden behind that veil of secrecy which obviously
must be more closely drawn over naval than over army operations.
From this flagship the campaign was directed. One would think that many
offices and many clerks would be required. But the offices and the
clerks were at the Admiralty. Here was the execution. In a room perhaps
four feet by six was the wireless focus which received all the reports
and sent all the orders, with trim bluejackets at the keys. “Go!” and
“Come!” the messages were saying; they wasted no words. Officers of
the staff did their work in narrow space, yet seemed to have plenty of
room. Red tape is inflammable. There is no more place for it on board
a flagship prepared for action than for unnecessary woodwork.
At every turn the compression and the concentration of power were
like the guns and the decks cleared for action in their significant
directness of purpose. The system was planetary in its impressive
simplicity, the more striking as nothing that man has ever made is more
complicated or includes more kinds of machinery than a battleship. One
battleship was one unit, one chessman on the naval board.
Not all famous leaders are likeable, as every world traveller knows.
They all have the magnetism of force, which is quite another thing from
the magnetism of charm. What the public demands is that they shall win
victories, whether personally likeable or not. But if they are likeable
and simple and human in the bargain and a sailor besides--well, we
know what that means.
Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe is not a great man. It is not for a civilian
even to presume to judge. We have the word of those who ought to know,
however, that he is. I hope that he is, because I like to think that
great commanders need not necessarily appear formidable. Nelson refused
to be cast for the heavy part, and so did Farragut. It may be a sailor
characteristic. I predict that after this war is over, whatever honours
or titles they may bestow on him, the English are going to like Sir
John Jellicoe not alone for his service to the nation, but for himself.
Admiral Jellicoe is one with Captain Jellicoe, whose cheeriness even
when wounded kept up the spirits of the others on the Relief Expedition
of Boxer days. “He could do it, too!” one thought, having in mind
Sir David Beatty’s leap to the deck of a destroyer. Spare, of medium
height, ruddy, and fifty-seven. So much for the health qualification
which the Admiralty lords dwelt upon as important. After he had been
at sea for a year he seemed a human machine, much of the type of that
destroyer as a steel machine--a thirty-knot human machine, capable of
three hundred or five hundred revolutions, engines running smoothly,
with no waste energy, slipping over the waves and cutting through them;
a quick man, quick of movement, quick of comprehension and observation,
of speech and of thought, with a delightful self-possession--for there
are many kinds--which is instantly responsive with decision.
A telescope under his arm, too, as he received his guests. One
liked that. He keeps watch over the fleet himself when he is on the
quarter-deck. One had a feeling that nothing could happen in all his
range of vision, stretching down the “avenues of Dreadnoughts” to the
light-cruiser squadron, and escape his attention. It hardly seems
possible that he was ever bored. Everything around him interests him.
Energy he has, electric energy in this electric age, this man chosen to
command the greatest war product of modern energy.
Fastened to the superstructure near the ladder to his quarters was a
new broom which South Africa had sent him. He was highly pleased with
that present; only the broom was von Tromp’s emblem, while Blake’s had
been the whip. Possibly the South African Dutchmen, now fighting on
England’s side, knew that he already had the whip and they wanted him
to have the Dutch broom, too.
He had been using both, and many other devices in his campaign against
von Tirpitz’ “_unter see_ boots,” which was illustrated by one of the
maps hung in his cabin. Quite different this from maps in a general’s
headquarters, with the front trenches and support and reserve trenches
and gun-positions marked in vari-coloured pencillings. Instantly a
submarine was sighted anywhere, Sir John had word of it, and another
dot went down on the spot where it had been seen. In places the sea
looked like a pepper-box cover. Dots were plentiful outside the harbour
where we were; but well outside, like flies around sugar which they
could not reach.
Seeing Sir John among his admirals and guests one had a glimpse of the
life of a sort of mysterious, busy brotherhood. I was still searching
for an admiral with white hair. If there were none among these seniors,
then all must be on shore. Spirit, I think, that is the word; the
spirit of youth, of corps, of service, of the sea, of a ready, buoyant
definiteness--yes, spirit was the word to characterise them. Sir
John moved from one to another in his quick way, asking a question,
listening, giving a direction, his face smiling and expressive with a
sort of infectious confidence.
“He is the man!” said an admiral. I mean, several admirals and
captains said so. They seemed to like to say it. Whenever he
approached one noted an eagerness, a tightening of nerves. Natural
leadership expresses itself in many ways; Sir John gave it a sailor’s
attractiveness. But I learned that there was steel under his happy
smile; and they liked him for that, too. Watch out when he is not
smiling, and sometimes when he is smiling, they say.
For failure is never excused in that fleet, as more than one commander
knows. It is a luxury of consideration which the British nation cannot
afford by sea in time of war. The scene which one witnessed in the
cabin of the Dreadnought flagship could not have been unlike that of
Nelson and his young captains on the _Victory_, in the animation of
youth governed with only one thought under the one rule that you must
make good.
Splendid as the sight of the power which Sir John directed from his
quarter-deck while the ships lay still in their plotted moorings, it
paled beside that when the anchor chains began to rumble and, column
by column, they took on life slowly and majestically gaining speed one
after another turned toward the harbour’s entrance.
XXXI
SIMPLY HARD WORK
England’s navy, the culmination of her brains and application--A
perpetual war-footing--Pride of craft--The personnel behind
the guns--Physique, health, conduct--Fate’s favourites in the
trenches!--Gun practice--A miniature German Navy--The acme of
efficiency--The British nation lives or dies with its navy--The
prototype of our own Atlantic fleet.
Besides the simple word spirit, there is the simple word work. Take the
two together, mixing with them the proper quantity of intelligence, and
you have something finer than Dreadnoughts; for it builds Dreadnoughts,
or tunnels mountains, or wins victories.
In no organisation would it be so easy as in the navy to become slack.
If the public sees a naval review it knows that its ships can steam and
keep their formations; if it goes on board it knows that the ships are
clean--at least, the limited part of them which it sees. And it knows
that there are turrets and guns.
But how does it know that the armour of the turrets is good, or that
the guns will fire accurately? Indeed, all that it sees is the shell.
The rest must be taken on trust. A navy may look all right and be quite
bad. The nation gives a certain amount of money to build ships which
are taken in charge by officers and men who, shut off from public
observation, may do about as they please.
The result rests with their industry and responsibility. If they are
true to the character of the nation by and large that is all the
nation may expect; if they are better, then the nation has reason to be
grateful, Englishmen take more interest in their navy than Americans in
theirs. They give it the best that is in them and they expect the best
from it in return. Every youngster who hopes to be an officer knows
that the navy is no place for idling; every man who enlists knows that
he is in for no junket on a pleasure yacht. The British navy, I judged,
had a relatively large percentage of the brains and application of
Britain.
“It is not so different from what it was for ten years before the war,”
said one of the officers. “We did all the work we could stand then;
and whether cruising or lying in harbour, life is almost normal for us
to-day.”
The British fleet was always on a war footing. It must be. Lack of
naval preparation is more dangerous than lack of land preparation. It
is fatal. I know of officers who had had only a week’s leave in a year
in time of peace; their pay is less than our officers’. Patriotism kept
them up to the mark.
And another thing: Once a sailor, always a sailor, is an old saying;
but it has a new application in modern navies. They become fascinated
with the very drudgery of ship’s existence. They like their world,
which is their house and their shop. It has the attraction of a world
of priestcraft, with them alone understanding the ritual. Their drill
at the guns becomes the preparation for the great sport of target
practice, which beats any big game shooting when guns compete with
guns, with battle practice greater sport than target practice. Bringing
a ship into harbour well, holding her to her place in the formation,
roaming over the seas in a destroyer--all means eternal effort at the
mastery of material with the results positively demonstrated.
On one of the Dreadnoughts I saw a gun’s crew drilling with a dummy
six-inch, weight one hundred pounds.
“Isn’t that boy pretty young to handle that big shell?” an admiral
asked a junior officer.
“He doesn’t think so,” the officer replied. “We haven’t any one who
could handle it better. It would break his heart if we changed his
position.”
Not one of fifty German prisoners whom I had seen filing by over in
France was as sturdy as this youngster. In the ranks of an infantry
company of any army he would have been above the average of physique;
but among the rest of the gun’s crew he did appear slight. Need more be
said about the physical standard of the crews of the fighting ships of
the Grand Fleet?
One had an eye to more than guns and machinery and to more than the
character of the officers. He wanted to become better acquainted with
the personnel of the men behind the guns. They formed patches of blue
on the decks, as one looked around the fleet, against the background
of the dull, painted bulwarks of steel--the human element whose skill
gave the ships life--deep-chested, vigorous men in their prime, who
had the air of men grounded in their work by long experience. One noted
when an order was given out that it was obeyed quickly by one who knew
what he had to do because he had done it thousands of times.
There are all kinds of bluejackets, as there are all kinds of other
men. Before the war some took more than was good for them when on
shore; some took nothing stronger than tea; some enjoyed the sailor’s
privilege of growling; some had to be kept up to the mark sharply; an
occasional one might get rebellious against the merciless repetition of
drills.
The war imparted eagerness to all, the officers said. Infractions
of discipline ceased. Days pass without any one of the crew of a
Dreadnought having to be called up in default, I am told. And their
health? At first thought, one would say that life in the steel caves
of a Dreadnought would mean pasty complexions and flabby muscles. For
a year the crews had been the prisoners of that readiness which must
not lose a minute in putting to sea if von Tirpitz should ever try the
desperate gamble of battle.
After a turn in the trenches the soldiers can at least stretch their
legs in billets. A certain number of a ship’s company now and then get
a tramp on shore; not real leave, but a personally conducted outing
not far from the boats which will hurry them back to their stations
on signal. However, all that one needs to keep well is fresh air and
exercise. The blowers carry fresh air to every part of the ship; the
breezes which sweep the deck from the North Sea are fresh enough in
summer and a little too fresh in winter. There is exercise in the
regular drills, supplemented by setting-up exercises. The food is good
and no man drinks or eats what he ought not to, as he may on shore. So
there is the fact and the reason for the fact: the health of the men,
as well as their conduct, had never been so good.
“Perhaps we are not quite so clean as we were before the war,” said an
officer. “We wash decks only twice a week instead of every day. This
means that quarters are not so moist and the men have more freedom of
movement. We want them to have as much freedom as possible.”