The British Navy in Battle

st,

fronts are of necessity the indices of right or wrong strategy. These transformations have been far more numerous on land than at sea, and locally have in many instances been seemingly final. Thus to take a few of many examples, Serbia, Montenegro, and Russia are almost completely eliminated as factors; our effort in the Dardanelles had to be acknowledged as a complete failure. But at no stage was any victory or defeat of so overwhelming and wholesale a nature as to promise an immediate decision. The retreat from Mons, Gallipoli, Neuve C

t it seemed incredible that this condition could ever alter materially. Yet between the months of February and May, 1917, the change was so abrupt and so terrific that for a period it seemed as if the enemy had established a form of superiority

single ship declining action with the enemy. There were scores of cases in which a smaller and weaker British force had attacked a larger and stronger German. Ships had been mined, torpedoed, sunk in battle, and the men on board had gone13 to their death smiling, calm, and unperturbed. If heroism, goodwill, a blind passion for duty could have won the war, if devotion and zeal in training, patient submission to discipline, a fiery spirit of enterprise could have won-then we never should have had a single disappointment at sea. The tradit

st and heaviest guns, commanded by officers of unrivalled skill and resolution, and manned by officers and crews perfectly trained, and acting in battle with just the same swift, calm exactitude that they had shown in drill-and yet the enemy was not sunk and victory was not won. Though, seemingly, we possessed overwhelming numbers, the enemy see

IRST

tantaneous. Within a week transports were carrying British troops into France and trade was continuing its normal course, exactly as if there were no German Navy in existence. The German sea service actually went out of existence. Before a month was over a small squadron of battle-cruisers raided the Bight between Heligoland and the German harbours, sank there small cruisers and half-a-dozen destroyers, challenged the High Seas Fleet to battle, and came away witho

mden and Karlsruhe were making on our trade in the Indian Ocean and between the Atlantic and the Caribbean. The enemy's submarines had sunk some of our cruisers-three in succession on a single day and in the same area. Then rumours gained ground that the Grand Fleet, driven from its anchorages by submarines, was fugitive, hiding now in one remote loch, now in another, and losing one of its greatest units in its flight. For a moment it

hat he has not only been tried, but convicted. This blind loyalty is, perhaps, amiable as a weakness, and almost peculiar to this nation. But we have another which is neither amiable nor peculiar. We hate having our complacency disturbed by being proved to be wrong and, rather than acknowledge our fault, are16 easily persuaded that the cause of our misfortune is so

ew weeks the

. Into something

ost sanguine-and the most ignorant-had hardly dared to hope for in the early days. The spectacle, in August, of the transports plying between France and England, as securely as the motor-buses between Fleet Street and the Fulham Road, had been a tremendous proof of confidence in sea-power. The unaccepted challenge at Heligoland had told a tale. The British fleet had indeed seemed unchallengeable. But the justification of our confidence was, after all, ba

ding ships-turned into transports-had used the narrow waters of the Channel as if the submarines were no threat at all. Yet, on pre-war reasoning, it was precisely in narrow waters crowded with traffic that under-water war should have been of greatest effect. These transports and these narrow waters were the ideal victims and the ideal field, and coast and harbour defence and the prevention of invasion, by common consent, the obvious and indeed the supreme functions the submarine would be called upon to discharge. From a military point of view the landing of British troops in France was but the first stage towards an invasion of Germany and, from a naval point of view, it looked as if to defend the French18 ports from being entered by British ships was just as clearly the first objective o

ing craft on the scale that was called for, and so to organize the trade that the attack must be narrowed to protected focal points. And as absolute secrecy was maintained, both as to our act

of the British Fleet that, while glad to overwhelm an inferior force abroad, dared not show itself in the North Sea. And, as if to prove the charge, Whitby and the Hartlepools were forthwith bombarded by a force we were unable to bring to action while returning from this exploit. The enemy naval writers surpassed themselves after this. And it looked so certain that the German Higher Command might itself become hypnotized by such talk that, before the New Year, it seemed prudent to note these phenomena and warn the public that we might be challenged to action after all, of the kind of action the enemy would dare us to, and what the problems were that such an action would present. And in particular it seemed advisable to state explicitly that

ve, without one being sunk or so damaged as to lose speed. The enemy's tactics included attacks by submarine and destroyer which had imposed the man?uvres as anticipated-and th

ECOND

f naval gunnery would have shown the theory to be fallacious. It originated in the fertile brain of the lay Chief of the Admiralty, and though it would seem as if his naval advisers felt the theory to be wrong, none of them, in the absence of a competent and independent gunnery staff, could

stake that could be made with the navy and that was for the Government to ask it to do anything. Mr. Churchill, as King Stork, had taken the initiative. Lord Fisher, the naval superman, ha

h Navy because, fifty years before, he had been born a subject of a Power with which till now we had never been at war. Things went wrong in October, 1914, for precisely the same reasons that they went wrong in February, March, and April, 1915. The German battle-cruisers escaped at Heligoland for exactly the same reasons that the attempt to take the Dardanelles forts by naval artillery was futile. We had prepared for war and gone i

ent itself in October and revived again in the following March, when it was stopped by the threat of American intervention. The enemy, thwarted in the only form of sea activity that promised him gr

nd sinking the enemy at any cost. The other would have it that so long as the British Fleet was unconquered it was invincible, and that the distinction between "invincible" and "victorious" could be neglected. After all, as Mr. Churchill told us, while our fleet

HIRD

ubmarine into German harbours was the best, if not the only, antidote, never the least doubt that it was only the German Fleet23 that prevented this operation from being carried out it seemed strange that an ex-First Lord of the Admiralty should be telling the world f

n who had been First Lord at the most critical period of our history had

came over the scene. The highest level that the submarine campaign had reached in the past was regained, and then surpassed month by month. Gradually it came to be seen that the thing might become critical-and this though the campaign was not ruthless. Yet it was carried out on a larger scale and with bolder methods which the possession of a larger fleet of submarines made possible. The element of surprise in the thing was not that the Germans had renewed the attempt-for

elation that we had gone to war on the doctrine that the Fleet need not, and ought not, to fight the enemy, and were apparently unconcerned at discovering that it could n

Grand Fleet. There was nothing approaching to a complete change of personnel, but the infusion of new blood was considerable. But this notwithstanding, the menace from the submarine grew, when ruthlessness was adopted as a method, until the rate of loss by April had do

ort was made to make the public and the Government realize that failure of the Admiralty to protect the sea-borne commerce of a seagirt people was due less to the Government's reliance on advisers ill-equipped for their task, than that the task itself was beyond human performance, so long as the Higher Command of the Navy was wrongly constituted for its t

OURTH

the war, it was realized that changes in personnel at Whitehall were not sufficient, that changes of system were necessary. Before the en

he conditions of surface war. It was at last realized that two kinds of naval war could go on together, one almost independent of the other. A Power might command the surface of the sea against the surface force of an enemy, and do so more absolutely than had ever happened before, and yet see that command brought, for its main purposes, almost to nothing by a new naval force, from which, though naval ships could defend themse

f principle so bitterly opposed? Partly, no doubt, because of the natural conservatism of men who have grown old and attained to high rank in a service to which they have27 given their lives in all devotion and sincerity. The singularity of the sailor's training and experience tends to make the naval profession both isolated and exclusive. And that its daily life is based upon the strictest discipline, that gives absolute power to the captain of a ship because it is necessary to hold him absolutely responsible, inevitably grafts upon this exclusiveness a respect for seniority which gives to its action in every field the indisputable finality bred of the quarter-deck habit. Thus, there was no place in Admiralty organization for the independent and expert work of junior men, because no a

came to us at the first crisis, the Government, instead of seeking the help of the youngest and most accomplished of our admirals and captains, chose as chief advisers the oldest28 and least in touch with our modern conditions. It was, perhaps, the same fear of public opin

NE

ef naval advisers, repudiated convoy as though it were a pestilent heresy. In June, 1917, the very men who, as absolutist advisers, had taken this attitude, were compelled to sanction the hated thing itself. It yielded exactly the results claimed for it, but no more. It was in its nature so simple and so obvious that it did not take long to get it into working order. It was the best form of defence. But defence is the weakest form of war. The stronger form, the offensive, needed planning and long preparations. In the nature of things these could not take effect either in

ravages on the coast as well. Both things pointed to salient weaknesses in the naval position. At the time of the third naval crisis at the end of 1916, it had been pointed out that the repeated evidences of our inability to hold the enemy in the Narrow Seas ought not to be allowed to pass uncensured or unremedied. But the fatal habit of refusing to recognize that an old favourite had failed prevented any reform for a year. It was not until Sir Roger Keyes was appointed to the Dover Command and a new atmosphere was created that remarkable departures in new policy were inaugurated. This policy

as was ever attempted. Success depended upon so many factors, of which the right weather was the least certain, that it was no wonder that the expedition started again and again without attempting the blow it set out to strike. Its final complete success at Zeebrügge was a veritable triumph of perfect planning and organization and command. It came at a critical moment in the campaign. A month before the enemy, by his great attack at St. Quentin, had achieved by far the greatest land victory of the war. He had followed this up by further attacks, and seemed to add to endless resources in

tion sharply to the situation in the Middle Sea. There was a manifest peril that the Russian Fleet might fall into German hands and make a junction with the Austrian Fleet at Pola. Further, the losses of the Allies by submarines in this sea had for long been unduly heavy. A visit of the First Lord to the Mediterra

d been learned, nor was there the least doubt that the Grand Fleet, under the command of Sir David Beatty, had become an instrument of war infinitely more flexible and32 efficient than it had ever been. His plans and battle orders took every contingency into council so far as human foresight made possible. At Jutland, at the Dogger Bank, and in the Heligoland Bight, Admiral Beatty had shown

of such success as will give him a compromise peace, if he is faced by disintegration at home and, driven to a desperate stroke, sends out his Fleet to fight, we shall then see, but perhaps not till then, what the changes of last year have brought about in our fighting forces. Meantime, t

val event of the last four years. It is the most satisfactory event, because its results have been so nearly what was foretol