Ijccemuer i^j, 19^5- 
LAND AN i) W A T E K 
IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 
By ARTHUR POLLEN. 
TO maintain an intelligent hold on the 
course of the war at sea is not really 
so simple a business as it appears to 
be. Two requisites are essential for 
its accomplishment. . We need accurate and early 
information of what has occurred and is occurring 
and we ha\-e to interpret each group of events 
according to right , principles. Each of these 
requisites presents difficulties peculiar to itself 
Of the greater number of things that happen at 
sea we hear nothing whatever. Nine-tenths of 
the advantage which sea force possesses over 
land force would be lost altogether were this 
otherwise. It is not only the power of sea force 
to strike silently and secretly that must be ob- 
served by organised silence. When land force is 
being moved by sea the obligation of secrecy is 
greater still — and for two reasons. It is of vital 
moment that the enemy in each field should 
be kept in doubt and uncertainty as to the strength 
of the forces before him. And secondly, modern 
conditions are such that unless the movements of 
transports are concealed, an army is ten times as 
vulnerable at sea as it is on land. Which is as 
much as to say that by very much the greatest 
achievement of the submarine has been its power 
to strike at the sea communications of invading 
armies. 
When it became clear that the Central Empires 
intended to open up communication with Con- 
stantinople by hacking a road through Serbia, and 
must certainly succeed in so doing, it also became 
clear that the only counter-strokes open to the Allies 
would be through further extensions of amphibious 
warfare. Great Britain and France could only 
intervene through Salonika ; Italy only through 
Durazzo ; Russia — except in the unlikely event 
of Roumania taking up arms on the Allies' side — 
only through seizing a bridge-head on the Bulgarian 
coast. On the top of this, communications with 
the Dardanelles forces would have to be maintained, 
and a provision made against any new Turkish- 
German effort against Egypt. The Mediterranean 
then, as has often happened in our history before, 
was destined to become a great centre of naval 
activity, and hence the focus of our enemies' 
submarine attentions. It was consequently antici- 
pated in these columns many weeks ago that the 
German under water boats would transfer their 
attentions to this new field. It was also antici- 
pated that the double task of frustrating their 
activities when they were at large, and hunting 
down their depots and destroying the boats — so 
as to prevent their being at large — would prove 
lengthy, difficult and uncertain. It was a situa-. 
tion, then, in which the public mind was to be 
prepared not only for numerous losses but for a 
sustained toll of loss, but still not for loss on a 
scale that either threatened the success or even 
gravely impaired the strength of the various 
amphibious undertakings. For, though such losses 
might be grave and might continue, the main 
danger, the isolation or the established insecurity 
of the disembarkation points, did not threaten. 
Our expierience of the Channel communications 
was on this point illuminating. The situation, 
as anticipated, was that in the actual neiehbour- 
hood of Salonika, of Alexandria and of the en- 
trances to the Canal, and at any point chosen 
by the Italian Navy for landing in Albania, the 
warships and transports would be comparatively 
immune from attack. In other words, the success 
of the submarine would most likely be limited to 
more or less chance encounters with supply ships 
and transports in the open sea. 
At the time when this forecast was made, it 
was also anticipated that in many instances the 
news of such encounters would be concealed, not 
probably rom any distrust of the stability ol 
public opinion in the Allied countries, but because 
it is just as important to keep the failure of a 
transport to reach its destination from the enemv 
as.to conceal the fact that it has started. But I had 
not anticipated that entirely false and misleading 
news on this subject could have been telegraphed 
from the Mediterranean and given a semi-official 
importance by being allowed to pass the censor 
and appear in the British Press. I simply cannot 
look upon the recent telegram from Malta in an}'' 
other light but as a somewhat clumsy effort at 
mystification. Why was it sent ? 
So far as the result of the several submarine 
campaigns have been published, there were 
between the ist December and the i8th, ten 
British and four neutral ships sunk in home waters. 
How many by submarines, how many by mines 
laid by submarines, we do not know. In tlie 
Mediterranean five British, two Greek, four Italian 
and one American ships have been attacked. A 
small Italian cruiser has been sunk off Valona by 
an Austrian submarine ; the Re Umberto, an 
Italian transport, and the destroyer Intrepido have 
been sunk b}' mines. In the Baltic the Bremen 
and a torpedo boat have recently fallen to the 
Russian or British prowess, and in the Sea of 
Marmora four more enemy transports sent to the 
bottom. But it would be rash to assume that the 
twelve ships attacked in the Mediterranean re- 
present the entire story either of attempts or of 
successes. What is material is that although one 
small cruiser was sunk off Valona, the Italian 
Expeditionary Force — in spite of submarines — ■ 
has made good its footing on Albanian soil. What 
is perhaps more interesting, because embarking is 
a rnore difficult affair than landing, a great force 
has been shifted by sea from Gallipoli without a 
single under water attack. But then the enemy 
did not know the operation was proceeding. 
THE STRATEGY OF RAIDS. 
The raid of the Novara on San Giovanni was, 
then, a flash in the pan. It was one of those 
' Runaway Rigs " of which there are many 
precedents in naval history, and two very im- 
portant precedents in this war. The attacks 
on Yarmouth and Scarborough were made by 
units of, it is true, less speed, but on the other 
hand, far greater povver. ' They were carried out 
with no proper military object, whereas the mission 
of the Novara was in every sense of the word 
legitimate. At the beginning of hostiHties between 
Austria and Italy, there were a good many cross 
ravaging expeditions of this kind. The object of 
such raids may be legitimate or illegitimate, if 
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