The British Navy in Battle

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itain out of their calculations-left us out, that is to say, not as ulterior victims, but as probable and immediate combatants. We were omitted because Germany assumed that we should either be too rich, too frightened, or too unready to fight. So that, of

for praise, and the historical interest in identifying the actual agent is slender. It has always been a part of the British defensive theory that the main Fleet shall be ever ready for instant war orders. Of the fact of its being the plan, w

delay in our using the Channel exactly as if no enemy were afloat. Within an hour of the declaration of war being known, no German ship abroad cleared for a German port, nor did any ship i

of our battle cruisers were in the Mediterranean, one was in the Pacific, one was in dockyard hands. Only one German ship of the first importance was absent from Kiel. In modern battleships commissioned and at sea, the German High Seas Fleet consisted of at least two K?nigs, five Kaisers, four Helgolands, and four Westfalens. All except the Westfalens were armed with 12.2 guns-weapons that fire a heavier shell than the British 12-inch. The Westfalens were armed with 11-inch guns.

sers in the first forty minutes of the action. Had such an action been fought, with like results, in August, 1914, our surviving margin would have been very slender indeed. But the enemy dared not take the risk. He paid high for his caution. Yet his inferiority should not have paralyzed him. At Jutland he faced infinitely greater odds. His numbers were not such

vention might be decisive. It would seemingly have to be so for very obvious reasons. With France and Russia assured of the economic and financial support of the greatest economic and financial Power in Europe, Germany's immediate opponents would have staying power: time, that is to say, would be against their would-be conquerors. The intervention of Great Britain, then, would make an ultimate German victory impossible. In a long war staying power would make the population of the British Empire a source from which armies could be d

sson to be drawn from it. To risk everything on a quick victory over France or Russia was insanity. If the conquest of Europe could not be undertaken with Great Br

must have been doomed to failure. But I am not so sure that a successful attack would have been beyond the resources of those who planned the great European war, had they from the first, grasped the elementary truth that it was necessary to their larger scheme. For to

s of the German Fleet, then, would have been twenty and not nineteen ships. To these might have been added the three completed Dreadnoughts of the Austrian Fleet, the Viribus Unitis, Tegetthof, and Prinz Eugen-all of which were in commission in the summer of 1914. They would have contributed a broadside fire of 36 12-inch guns-a very formidable

royers, it must be plain to all that, had Germany intended to begin a world war with a blow at Great Britain, she might well have hoped to have reduced our strength to such a margin

reat congregation of the Fleet was to be a measure of the Admiralty's capacity to man all our naval forces of any fighting worth. The fact that this gathering was to take place on a certain and appointed date was public property in the month of March. A week or a fortnight before the squadrons steamed one by one to their moorings, a plan of the anchored lines was published in every London paper. The order of the Fleet, the114 identity of every ship in its place in every line, might have been, and probably were, in German hands a week before any single ship was in her billet. From Emden to the Isle of Wight is a bare 350 miles-a day and a half's journey for a submarine-and in July 1914, Germany possessed between twenty a

the Western ports, and all of them instructed-as in fact, eight months afterwards, every submarine was instructed-to sink every British liner and merchantman at sight, without waiting to search or troubling to save passengers or crew-raids organized on this scale and on these principles c

balance as to make us unwilling, if we were not already powerless, to make further efforts even to defend ourselves. At least, so it must have appeared to Germany. For it was the essence of the German case that the nation was too distracted by political differences, too fond of money-making, too debilitated by luxury and comfort, too conscious of its weak hold on the self-governing colonies, too uncertain of its tenure on its oversea Imperial posses

he dockyards, working day and night shifts, could restore the balance of naval power. Suppose, then, we escaped defeat; suppose these assassin blows had ended in the capture or sinking of a hundred merchantmen in the final overthrow of Germany's sea power-could these things have been any loss to Germany, if it had been the price of swift and complete victory in Europe? In the unsuccessful attack on Verdun alone she threw away not 150,000 men but three times that number. There is not a German merchantman afloat th

ccess. If war was intended to be inevitable from the moment the Serbian ultimatum was sent, the capacity of Great Britain to intervene should have been dealt with resolutely and ruthlessly and removed as a risk before any other risk was taken. It

or any decent regard for the judgment of mankind that made her overlook the first essential of success. We must attribute it to quite a different cause. I am quoting from memory, but it seems to me that Sir Frederick Pollock has put the truth in this matter into exact terms. "The Germans will go down to history as peopl

me present good-a grim enough exchange for a man to make who believed he had a soul to give. But it is seldom in these tales that the bargain goes through so simply. Sometimes it is the sinner who scores by repentance and the intervention of Heaven and a helpful saint. But often it is the118 Devil that cheats t

of success given by her evil genius and always destined to be unredeemed? Is it altogether chance that there should have been this startling blin