LAND AND WATER 
December 12, 1914. 
had been for six weeks, in German hands. It gave 
tliem the Ime and the road by which they supphed 
La Bassee itself, and it presumably gave them an 
artillery position as well. Against infantry attack 
here, they had not only their trenches, but the 
walls and trees of the country house at Vermelles, 
which stands right against the railway and between 
the railway and the brook; when, therefore, after 
we do not know what loss, this point was carried, it 
involved the capture of part of the second line of 
German defences, of the gun position, and pre- 
sumably of both the main lines of supply to La 
Bassee from the south. It does not necessarily 
mean the evacuation of La Bassee by the enemy, 
but it means that La Bassee is thenceforward 
imperilled. 
THE WAR BY WATER. 
By FRED T. JANE. 
A 
HOTE.-Thli Article ha. been .ubmitted to the Pre.e Bureau, which doei not object to the publication ai cen.ored, and takei no 
reiponsibility for the eorrectneu of the itatemcntt. 
We may, Uieiefore, take it for certain that if the German* 
calculate on the llussiaus being inoperative owing to frost, 
they have made a very bad mistake. Beyond all the other 
belligerents, the Russians are equipped for a "winter war, and' 
they can certainly carry on. 
LL over the country there is a serious and growing 
mistrust of the Navy. It is utterly and entirely 
wrong : but is very little use saying much about 
it The attitude of the British public is historic- 
- ally characteristic. In the old days Hawke was 
burned in effigy as a rotter more or less coinci- 
dentally with one of the greatest eicploit* of the British Fleet 
wlien led by him, it destroyed the enemy m Quiberon Bay 
More recently a Japanese mob burned the house of Admiral 
Kainimura for incompetence exactly at the same moment that 
he was annihilating Russia's last chance of euccess. 
Conceahnent of information from the public has much to 
answer for. But it has usually been coincident with the 
public salvation. 
Turning to other matters, there has to the moment of 
writing been a complete lull in Nortli Sea operations during 
the past week. Some of this may be attributed to the recent 
heivy gales which must have rendered all suBmarinea and 
torpedo ©raft out of action so far as effective possibilities were 
concerned. . 
In these circumstances there was a bare possibility ol an 
exit of the German High Sea Fleet— but it was very much a 
possibility only. 
there is a very great deal of psychology in the old text 
about "Those who take to the sword shall perish by the 
sword"— if for "sword" we substitute "mines." 'Khe 
Germans have laid mines indiscriminately, and in bad weather 
mines are likely to break loose. Furthermore, the enemy prob- 
ably calculate that we have done the same thing for their 
benefit, and an elaborate mine-sweeping programme will have 
to prc-ccde any considerable motion on their part. 
Mine-sweeping is not easily to be accomplished in gales, 
and to this extent the Germans have probably been hoist by 
their own petard. At the present moment the North Sea must 
be potentially dangerous to a degree, and more than one 
German submarine is unlikely to get home on account of 
German mines. 
When the ultimate history of the war comes to be written 
I think that we shall find that the German attempt to use 
submarines and mines in the same area was a tactical error 
of large dimensions. In essence both are the same. The only 
main difference is that while the submarine represents an 
intelligent mine capable of differentiation, the mine itself is 
an insensate object devoid of any such intelligence. Once a 
gale breaks mines loose, that difference becomes all the differ- 
ence — unless the mines be carefully adjusted to become in- 
operative should they get adrift. And there is considerable 
evidence to the effect that mines of German design are some- 
what uncertain in this direction. On the other hand, there 
is no uncertainty whatever as to the direction in which a 
westerly gale will drive mines if they do break loose. 
THE BALTIC. 
Some considerable misapprehension exists as to the 
climatic effects on the situation here. In days) of old it was 
the practice of the Russian Fleet to go into winter quarters 
at Kronstadt, where it was ever heavily frozen in. I have 
Been it so at Kronstadt Dockyard. Here and there holes were 
out in the ice. I never had the curiosity to measure it, but 
it was enormously thick. // the Russian Fleet goes to 
Kronstadt it will stay there. But why shbuld it go? 
At vast expense Russia created Port Alexander III. at 
Libau, in order to secure an ice-free h.arbour. Also at con- 
siderable expenditure she built a considerable squadron of 
ice-breakers designed along the lines of the famous Ermak. 
Furtherm^fe, all hsx latest warghipa are fitted with ice-breaker 
IMWB4 
THE INDIES. 
The capture of iasra in the Persian Gulf is one of those 
little-recorded incidents which are actually of the utmost im- 
portance. I have, 1 know, brought several readers close to 
the breaking strain by insistence on my theory that "it is 
the little things that matter " and that " a seeming victory 
is probably a defeat in consequence." Without any undue 
boasting 1 think that the sequel has inevitably proved mo 
right, but I can fully sympathise with those who argue there- 
from that I am sure to back the wrong horse next time I So 
only in quite a modest way will I suggest that the capture 
of Basra may make us thank God that Turkey entered into 
the war. 
Basra is the port whence Persian oil is shipped. It u-as 
Turkish : it is now British. The chief shareholder in the 
Persian oil field is the British Admiralty. So long as Turkey 
was neutral the Germans were able to exercise a retarding 
influence on the shipment of oil from Basra. Now all that is 
changed. Basra is British, and Turkey, by making war 
against us, has solved once and for ever the problem of our 
oil supply, which once was acute. The Germans have made 
few mistakes, but in driving Turkey into joining them they 
made the maddest possible error. 
I am sorry to reiterate — but here again there is a definite 
illustration, of that Britisih Navy which is popularly supposed 
to be deing nothing. At one stroke — a stroke which hardly 
earned a paragraph in our newspapers — it ensured an un- 
limited oil supply for the Fleet. 
Only a Navy commanding the seas could have achieved 
such a result. This result was achieved entirely without 
dramatic effect : it was come by without any opposition worth 
the name. It was an obscure little business altogether. And 
yet — it was probably the Trafalgar of the war. 
It is the curse of modern conditions that the public is 
never permitted to see things in perspective — that it never 
can be permitted to do so, because it persists in thinking in 
Dreadnoughts and because it is incapable of envisaging any 
action in which Dreadnoughts do not appear in front of the- 
footlights. It is, generally speaking, totally incapable of 
realising that British Dreadnoughts somewhere in the North 
Sea (apparently doing nothing) can possibly have any effect 
in the Persian Gulf, thousands of miles away. But Basra and 
its capture all was accomplished in the North Sea and in 
the Mediterranean. British ships were invariably in the way 
~-as by now the Turks have probahly realised. It suits the- 
Germans and it sufficed to deceive the foolish Turks that tii» 
British Fleet was in hiding, etc., etc., etc. But the British 
Fleet without effort managed to bring it about that Basra and 
all that it means fell under British control without any 
struggle worth the name. 
To corner the oil supply of the British Fleet — of which 
sorno hundred units live on oil, and oil alone- — would have 
been well worth the sacrifice of ten German Dreadnoughts. 
None stirred ; and so the capture of Basra is put down as a 
" minor operation." And a large section of the British public 
etill goes on asking, "Why doesn't the Navy do something? " 
Were this war not so terribly serious this question would 
be absolutely comic I The only analogy I ©an think of is tha€ 
the residents of a certain district should c<>mbine to complain 
10* 
