January 20, igi6. 
LAND AND WATER 
NAVAL DIPLOMACY. 
By ARTHUR POLLEN. 
^^HE contents of the von Papen papers 
have very obvious lessons for America. 
Their seizure has no less obvious lessons 
for us. We can leave it to our cousins 
across the water to draw their own inferences 
from events which are no longer novel, but of 
which we have now supplied them with further 
and quite convincing proof. It is not for us to 
tell them what to do in such a situation. But we 
shall be fools if we do not see and learn our own 
lesson from this event. 
For a second time in the siege of Germany 
we have completely outwitted the enemy — and 
outwitted him not in war, but in diplomacy. He 
asked for a safe conduct for an emissary already 
unwelcome in America and he got it. But he 
did not ask for a safe conduct for the emissary's 
letters and passbooks, and he is furious that he has 
not been given what he omitted to beg. Readers 
of the White Paper published a few weeks ago will 
remember that prominent amongst the measures 
that enabled us to get neutral shipping companies 
to observe our Umits on neutral imports, was mak- 
ing the use of our world-wide coaling stations by 
such companies dependent upon their compliance 
with our wishes. Now, neither this measure nor 
the seizure of poor von Papen's cheque-book, were 
combative acts of the ordinary kind. ' They were 
mere examples of intelligence in perceiving our 
advantages and of resolution in using them to the 
lifmost in negotiation. They are examples of a 
kind of skill we should more often expect amongst 
barristers, solicitors and diplomatists than amongst 
soldiers and sailors. V/hat is significant is this : 
The credit of both of these acts is due to naval 
officers.' Their minds were stimulated by war- 
sense to perceive the importance of things the 
civilian diplomatist might have overlooked. 
Incidentally they show hov/ many sided is 
naval training, how varied the attainments and 
proficiencies which the seaman, in the ordinary 
course of his very exacting profession, acquires. 
What is more to the point at the moment is 
this. I fear I have for many weeks now wearied 
my readers by reiterating that the siege of Germany 
is the principal naval operation of the moment. 
A sea siege obviously cannot be carried on with- 
out touching, if not on the rights, at any rate on 
the convenience of neutrals. And dealing with 
neutrals in matters of this kind^ is, in -times of 
peace, a purely diplomatic affair. - Where we have 
gone altogether wrong ove/ out siege is that because 
it incidentally involved dealing diplomatically 
with neutrals, and consequently correspondence 
and negotiation, which as a matter of form, must 
go through the Foreign Office, we have treated 
the whole siege as'if it were a diplomatic , and not 
a war measure. ■ This is the initial mistake of 
' the whole thing, and I recall it to the reader's 
attention now, primarily to remind him that, 
looking at the thing purely diplomatically, our 
two greatest diplomatic siege successes have been 
originated and engineered by naval officers. 
Does this not rather encourage one to suppose 
that the thing would gain in vigour and efiiciency — 
' and consequently accelerate tlie effect so impatient- 
ly awaited— if \vc - pushed the principle a httle 
further and reversed the roles which the Admiralty 
and Foreign Office are now playing ? The siege 
is admittedly an operation of war, and necessarily 
involves diplomacy. But the diplomacy is a 
secondary matter. Why should not the siege, be 
in Admiralty hands and the diplomats be subor- 
dinate to the seamen ? A much respected corres- 
pondent reproaches me that in this matter I ani 
agitating to inflict a humiliation upon Sir Edward 
Grey! Sir Edward, he points out to me, is the 
one statesman in Europe whose clearness of view 
from the beginning, and integrity of conduct 
throughout, have ensured the moral judgment of 
the world being on the Allied side. We must, 
he reminds me, look on present events as con- 
tinuous with what has gone before, and as con- 
tinuous with what will follow after. It will be 
no gain to us in the end to finish the war more 
swiftly if it means any weakening of that reputation 
for high principle and honour which we have 
successfully maintained so far. To inflict a 
pubhc snub upon our Foreign Secretary, undoubt- 
edly the most eminent and most honoured of the 
Allied Ministers, would go far towards suggesting 
that Great Britain was contemplating a moral 
plane below that which to-day she occupies. 
A FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT. 
Now, with great respect, the whole of this 
argument seems to me to be nonsense. Let , us 
assume in the first place that my correspondent is 
rigiit, and that to take the siege out of the hands of 
the Foreign Office will, as a matter of fact, inflict 
a serious snub upon the one public man who has 
not lost in reputation in the last eighteen months. 
If by so doing we could secure an end to the war 
— of course, without the adoption of barbarous 
and inhumane methods — then certainly it would be 
our duty not only to ourselves but to our Allies 
to make this sacrifice. The last man in the world 
to object to this sacrifice would be Sir Edward Grey 
himself. 
But of course no humiliation of any kind 
to the Foreign Secretary, and no derogation of 
principle would be involved in the proposal at all. 
The thing would not be without precedent — and 
that a recent one. Lord Kitchener and the War 
Council have had the entire provision of munitions 
and army supplies taken out of their hands. Why 
was this done ? Eighteen months ago there was 
machinery at the War Office for dealing with these 
matters — a machinery which was adequate in the 
numbers of its personnel for the supply of the 
army of its then dimensions, and adequately 
trained to deal with the industrial conditions that 
then prevailed. So long as' for every army con- 
tract there were ten competing manufacturers, 
the procedure of 'running army supplies was simple 
enough. But when the demands of the army out- 
ran the manufacturing capacity of the country, 
the problem of supply changed altogether. It wa? 
no longer a matter of taking the cheapest tender, 
but demanded state production on a scale of 
unprecedented magnitude. A vast experiment 
in state socialism had to be made, and to 
make this experiment an entirely new depart- 
ment had to be created. To the credit of all 
