I. NORTH SEA STRATEGIES

The battle off Jutland Bank, which took place on May 31, 1916, was the first and, at the time of writing, has been the only meeting between the main naval forces of Great Britain and Germany. It was from the first inevitable that we should have to wait long for a sea fight. It was inevitable, because the probability of a smaller force being not only decisively defeated, but altogether destroyed in a sea fight, is far greater than in a land battle, and the consciousness of this naturally makes it chary of the risk. Sea war in this respect preserves the characteristic of ancient land fighting, for—as is luminously explained in Commandant Colin’s incomparable “Transformations of War”—it was a common characteristic of the older campaigns that the main armies would remain almost in touch with each other month after month before the battle took place. He sums up his generalization thus:

“From the highest antiquity,” he says, “till the time of Frederick II, operations present the same character; not only Fabius or Turenne, but also C?sar, Condé, and Frederick, lead their armies in the same way. Far from the enemy they force the pace, but as soon as they draw near they move hither and thither in every direction, take days, weeks, months in deciding to accept or to force battle. Whether the armies are made up of hoplites or268 legionaries, or pikemen or musketeers, they move as one whole and deploy very slowly. They cannot hurl themselves upon the enemy as soon as they perceive him, because while they are making ready for battle he disappears in another direction.

“In order to change this state of affairs we must somehow or another be able to put into the fight big divisions, each deploying on its own account, leaving gaps and irregularities along the front.

“This, as we have seen, is what happened in the eighteenth century.

“Up to the time of Frederick II, armies remained indivisible during operations; they are like mathematical points on the huge theatres of operations in Central Europe. It is not possible to grasp, to squeeze, or even to push back on some obstacle, an enemy who refuses battle, and retires laterally as well as backwards. There is no end to the pursuit. It is the war of C?sar, as it was that of Condé, Turenne, Montecuculi, Villars, Eugène, Maurice de Saxe, and Frederick. It is the sort of war that all more or less regular armies have made from the remotest antiquity down to the middle of the eighteenth century.

“Battle only takes place by mutual consent, when both adversaries, as at Rocroi, are equally sure of victory, and throw themselves at one another in open country as if for a duel; or when one of them, as at Laufeld, cannot retreat without abandoning the struggle; or when one is surprised, as at Rossbach.

“And certainly to-day, as heretofore, a general may refuse battle; but he cannot prolong his retreat for long—it is the only means that he has for escaping the grip of the enemy—if the depth of the theatre of operations is269 limited. On the other hand, an enemy formerly could retire laterally, and disappear for months by perpetually running to and fro, always taking cover behind every obstacle in order to avoid attack.”

But at sea a fleet has to-day precisely the same power of avoiding action that an army had in former days. It cannot disappear for months by “running to and fro,” but it can disappear for years by burying itself in inaccessible harbours. It can, in other words, take itself out of the theatre of war altogether while yet retaining liberty at any moment to re-enter it. How, in view of these potentialities, did the rival fleets dispose their forces?

On April 25, 1916, some German cruisers made an attack on Lowestoft, similar in character but far less considerable in result to those made in the autumn of 1914, on the same small town, on Scarborough, Whitby, and the Hartlepools. As in 1914, there was considerable perturbation on the East Coast, and the Admiralty, urged to take steps for the protection of the seaboard towns, made a somewhat startling announcement. While this was going forward in England, the German Admiralty put out an inspired commentary on the raid, which dwelt with great exultation over the picture of “the Island Empire, once so proud, now quivering with rage at its own impotence.” These two documents, the First Lord’s and the German apology, led to a good deal of discussion, which I dealt with at the time in terms that I quote textually, as showing the general conception of naval strategy underlying the dispositions of the British Fleet.

“The directly military employment of the British Fleet has during the last week been made the subject of discussion. Mr. Balfour has written a strange letter to the Mayors of the East Coast towns, which foreshadows270 important developments; an inspired German apology for the recent raid on Yarmouth and Lowestoft has been published, and both have aroused comment. Mr. Balfour’s letter was inspired by a desire to reassure the battered victims of the German bombardment. He realized that the usual commonplace that these visits had little military value no longer met the case, and proceeded to threaten the Germans with new and more effective methods of meeting them, should these murderous experiments be repeated. The new measures were to take two forms. The towns themselves would be locally defended by monitors and submarines, and, without disturbing naval preponderance elsewhere, new units would be brought farther south, so that the interception of raiders would be made more easy. But for one consideration the publication of such a statement as this would be inexplicable. If the effective destruction of German raiders really had been prepared, the last thing the Admiralty would be expected to do would be to acquaint the enemy with the disconcerting character of its future reception. Count Reventlow indeed explains the publication by the fact that no such preparations have indeed been made. But the thing is susceptible of a more probable explanation.

“When Mr. Churchill, in the high tide of his optimism, addressed the House of Commons at the beginning of last year—he had the Falkland Islands and the Dogger Bank battles, the obliteration of the German ocean cruising force, the extinction of the enemy merchant marine, the security of English communications to his credit—he explained the accumulated phenomena of our sea triumph by the splendid perfection of his pre-war preparedness. The submarine campaign, the failure of the Dardanelles,271 the revelation of the defenceless state of the northeastern harbours, these things have somewhat modified the picture that the ex-First Lord drew. And, not least of our disillusions, we have all come to realize that in our neglect of the airship we have allowed the enemy to develop, for his sole benefit, a method of naval scouting that is entirely denied to us. That the British Admiralty and the British Fleet perfectly realize this disadvantage is the meaning of Mr. Balfour’s letter. He would not have told the enemy of our new North Sea arrangements had he not known that he could not be kept in ignorance of them for longer than a week or two, once they were made. The letter is, in fact, an admission that our sea power has to a great extent lost what was at one time its supreme prerogative, the capacity of strategical surprise.

“But this does not materially alter the dynamics of the North Sea position, although it greatly affects tactics. The German official apologist will have it, however, that another factor has altered these dynamics. Admiral Jellicoe, he says, may be secure enough with his vast fleet in his ‘great bay in the Orkneys,’ and, between that and the Norwegian coast, hold a perfectly effective blockade line, but all British calculations of North Sea strategy have been upset by the establishment of new enemy naval bases at Zeebrügge, Ostend, and Antwerp. He speaks glibly, as if the co-operation of the forces based on the Bight with those in the stolen Belgian ports had altered the position fundamentally. This, of course, is the veriest rubbish. So far no captured Belgian port has been made the base for anything more important than submarines that can cross the North Sea under water, and for the few destroyers that have made a dash through in the darkness. Such balderdash as this, and that the German battle-272cruisers did not take to flight, but simply ‘returned to their bases’ without waiting for the advent of ‘superior forces,’ imposes on nobody. It remains, of course, perfectly manifest that our surface control of the North Sea is as absolute as the character of modern weapons and the present understanding of their use make possible.

“The principles behind our North Sea Strategy are simple. One hundred years ago, had our main naval enemy been based on Cuxhaven and Kiel, we should have held him there by as close a blockade as the number of ships at our disposal, the weather conditions, and the seamanship of our captains made possible. The development of the steam-driven ship modified the theory of close blockade and, even without the torpedo, would have made, with the speed now attainable, an exact continuation of the old practice impossible. The under-water torpedo has simply emphasized and added to difficulties that would, without it, have been insuperable. But it has undoubtedly extended the range at which the blockading force must hold itself in readiness. To reproduce, then, in modern conditions the effect brought about by close blockade in our previous wars, it is necessary to have a naval base at a suitable distance from the enemy’s base. It must be one that is proof against under-water or surface torpedo vessel attack, and it must be so constituted that the force that normally maintains itself there is capable of prompt and rapid sortie, and of pouncing upon any enemy fleet that attempts to break out of the harbour in which it is intended to confine it.

“The great bay in the Orkneys’ may, for all I know to the contrary, supply at the present moment the Grand Fleet’s main base for such blockade as we enforce. But there are a great many other ports, inlets, and estuaries273 on the East Coast of Scotland and England which are hardly likely to be entirely neglected. Not all, nor many, of these would be suitable for fleet units of the greatest size and speed, but some undoubtedly are suitable, and all those that are could be made to satisfy the conditions of complete protection against secret attack. Assuming the main battle fleet to be at an extremely northerly point, any more southerly base which is kept either by battle cruisers, light cruisers, or submarines may be regarded as an advance base, if for no other reason than that it is so many miles nearer to the German base. The Orkneys are 200 miles farther from Lowestoft than Lowestoft is from Heligoland. An Orkney concentration while making the escape of the Germans to the northward impossible, would leave them comparatively free to harry the East Coast of England. If, approaching during the night, they could arrive off that coast before the northern forces had news of their leaving their harbours, they would have many hours’ start in the race home. It is not, then, a close blockade that was maintained. This freedom had to be left the enemy—because no risk could be taken in the main theatre. It is assumed on the one side and admitted on the other, that Germany could gain nothing and would risk everything by attempting to pass down the Channel. The Channel is closed to the German Fleet precisely as the Sound is closed to the British. It is not that it is physically impossible for either fleet to get through, but that to force a passage would involve an operation employing almost every kind of craft. Minefields would have to be cleared, and battleships would have to be in attendance to protect the mine-sweepers. The battleships in turn would have to be protected from submarine attack, and as the operation of securing274 either channel would take some time, there would be a virtual certainty of the force employed being attacked in the greatest possible strength. In narrow waters the fleet trying to force a passage would be compelled to engage in the most disadvantageous possible circumstances. The Channel is closed, then, for the Germans, as the Sound is closed to the British, not by the under-water defences, but by the fact that to clear these would involve an action in which the attacking party would be at too great a disadvantage. The concentration, then, in the north of a force adequate to deal with the whole German Fleet—again I have to say in the light of the way in which the use of modern weapons is understood—remains our fundamental strategical principle.”

I then went on to reply to the critics who had said that the use of monitors for coast defence was the most disturbing feature of a very unwise series of departures from true policy, and then passed on to what seemed to me the more serious criticism, as follows:

“The attack on this part of Mr. Balfour’s policy is vastly more damaging. For it asserts that the policy of defensive offence, Great Britain’s traditional sea strategy, has now been reversed. The East Coast towns may expect comparative immunity, but only because the strategic use of our forces has been altered. It is a modification imposed upon the Admiralty by the action of the enemy. Its weakness lies in the ‘substitution of squadrons in fixed positions for periodical sweeps in force through the length and breadth of the North Sea.’ Were this indeed the meaning of Mr. Balfour’s letter and the intention of his policy, nothing more deplorable could be imag............