LAND AND WATEE 
October 30, 1915. 
of some sea promontory i" 0"^ />wn Islandb-- 
commands the channel by which the Gulf ot Kiga 
is entered from the sea. Why should the Russians 
wish to deprive the Germans of this position tor 
6o short a time ? 
To find an answer we must look at the general 
position round Riga. Whether Riga can be as 
successfully defended in the future as it has been 
in the past, probably only General Russky and his 
staff know ; but it is obvious that they must act as 
if the forces against them might be very greatly 
increased and guard as fully as possible against 
the contingency of Riga having to be evacuated. 
To prevent Riga becoming the Russian end ot 
a German line of sea communications our Allies 
have to rely upon three measures of defence. 
There is first and foremost the Russian fleet in 
beint'" The four Dreadnoughts, the two pre- 
Dreadnoughts— all admirably armed, equipped, 
and believed to be almost uniquely eft'ective— 
the cruiser and destroyer squadrons, constitute 
a force that no German fleet less powerful than 
eight or ten of the strongest units could engage 
with any prospect of success. And for various 
reasons the Germans may think it prudent to 
avoid trying conclusions with so formidable a 
force. But on the other hand they may take the 
risk, and the Russians rightly refuse to rest upon 
this defence alone. There is, secondly, the guerilla 
attack by submarine and destroyer on the line 
between Riga and tlie German ports or the 
Russian ports in the Germans' hands. How effec- 
tive this guerilla warfare may be is shown by the 
kng series of submarine successes that have been 
won during the month culminating with the de- 
struction of the Prinz Adalbert off the port of 
Libau on October 23rd. It is indeed quite clear 
that so long as the British and Russian sub- 
marines can pursue this attack with their present 
liberty and enterprise, it will be quite impossible 
for the Germans to look forward with any con- 
fidence to sending men and supplies by the long 
sea route to Riga. But here again the Germans, 
realising the vast importance of an effective blow 
at the Russian capital, might concentrate the 
larger portion of their destroyer force to the 
clearing of this area of submarines, and possibly 
achieve, though it is hardly likely that they 
should, the same immunity for this three hundred 
mile journey in the Baltic that we have won for 
our fifty-mile transport journey across the 
Channel. The bare possibility that they should 
so succeed makes a third line of defence impera- 
tive, and the third line is the effective blockading 
of the Dirben Channel into the Gulf of Riga by 
mines. 
The placing of a mine field is a perfectly 
simple naval operation if the vessels engaged in 
it can do their work undisturbed, but to place 
mines under fire is as difficult and risky a job as 
sweeping for mines in similar conditions. And 
the making of mine fields is not only a simple but 
a very rapid process. It seems to me probable 
therefore that the landing at Dome Ness, and the 
holding of that promontory for a short period, is 
to be explained solely by the Russian determina- 
tion to make good the entrance to the Gulf of 
Riga and by their realisation that this could only 
be done effectively if the mine layers were undis- 
turbed during their operations. This would ex- 
plain the sudden assault on the German position, 
the effective holding of it for a short period, and 
the subsequent withdrawal, not under German 
attack but voluntarily, as if the purpose for 
Si the landing was made had already been 
^^ * The event is interesting, however, for another 
reason, unconnected with its evidence that our 
Allies are providing against the contingency of 
the Germans massing a sufficient force to win the 
most southerly of the Russian trading ports. The 
expedition that landed at Dome Ness was m all 
probability equipped and dispatched from I er- 
nau, and, as my readers will doubtless remember 
the apparent, or at any rate the professed, object 
of the last German adventure m the Gult ot Riga 
was to blockade this port, no doubt with a view 
to preventing expeditions of exactly the kmd 
which the Russians have now carried out. 
Another proof, if further proof were needed, of 
how complete a failure that incursion was. And 
it shows something else as well. It show^s that 
there are not at the present moment enemy ships 
either in the Gulf or its immediate neighbour- 
hood, for no transports could have been sent to 
land at Dome Ness if their undertaking could 
have been interfered with from the sea. There is a 
cryptic note to the official Russian statement an- 
nouncing the sinking of the Prinz Adalbert. The 
note, by the way, pays a generous tribute to the 
skilful raancEuvring of the British commander 
who sank the enemy. It goes on to state that, 
while the Prinz Adalbert had been with the 
squadron, she was believed to be on " a special 
mission " when the encounter took place. Was 
the special mission an investigation into the naval 
situation in the Gulf? Whatever its purpose, 
the mission must now be filled by another. 
SUBMARINES AND INVASION. 
My readers will not have failed to note that 
while the British submarines in the Baltic have 
sunk or stranded nearly a score of German ships 
bringing iron ore, food, and timber from Sweden 
to the i'atherland, and have done so within the 
last two weeks, thus completing the technical 
blockade of Germany and depriving our enemy of 
supplies of quite incalculable war value, they have 
also sunk no less than seven vessels described as 
transports. As nothing has been said of any loss 
of German soldiers when these transports were 
sunk, we must, it seems to me, assume that the 
word transport has not in this connection been 
used to describe a ship carrying a regiment of 
soldiers, but more probably as one carrying guns 
and ammunition and other military supplies. It 
would seem, therefore, as if these transports had 
been caught somewhere between Konigsberg and 
Libau, or between Libau and Windau. To some 
extent, then, the German invasion of Courland, if 
not an amphibious operation, has relied upon the 
sea, and this reliance is to some extent misplaced. 
And the question arises whether submarines in 
favourable circumstances impose an altogether 
effective bar to enemy landings upon the coast 
that they protect. Those who have followed the 
operations at the Dardanelles in tlie official 
dispatches, in the telegrams and letters which 
have reached us from that front, have noticed 
how completely the entire character of these 
operations changed when the German submarines 
reached the ^gean end of the Mediterranean. 
The sinking first of Triumph and Majestic, then 
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