March 9, 1916, 
LAND AND W A T E R 
xMR. BALFOUR'S SPEECH. 
By Arthur Pollen. 
I II AVE just returned from the House of Commons 
where I had gone to hear Mr. Balfour's Naval 
Estimate speech — and a most powerful, significant 
speech it was. But it was not the event of the 
afternoon. I do not know whether reflection will alter 
the first impression that Mr. Churchill's speech must have 
made upon the bulk of his hearers. To me it seemed 
a very mischievous utterance. Of the effect of the 
speech there can be no .possible doubt. It will be 
quoted the world over as showing that since he 
and Lord Fisher left Whitehall, Great Britain's 
shipbuilding policy has been unequal to her needs. 
Take all Mr. Churchill's accusations and insinua- 
tions as justified, and we must be in such naval 
danger that his warning comes too late. If there are 
any neutrals, such as Roumania or (jreece or America, 
whose final decision as to the part they are to take in 
the war hangs in the balance, if loss of confidence in Great 
Britain's sea power can influence any of these decisions, 
then ^Ir. Churchill has done all that was humanly possible 
to turn such wavering neutrals from the Allied side. 
There is but one circumstance that can explain — 
for nothing can excuse —this malignant rhodomontade Mr. 
Churchill has been some days in England. If he went to 
Mr. Balfour, told him frankly his apprehensions and 
came away without any assurance that Mr. Balfour's 
naval colleagues were satisfied as to the shipbuilding 
position, then that he should have said what he did is 
intelligible enough. But it would not be intelligible in 
the case of anyone capable of remembering that the words 
" ex-First Lord of the Admiralty " still carry weight in 
foreign countries. If he spoke without asking such 
an assurance, what is one to say ? 
For Mr. Balfour had made it perfectly clear in his 
speech that the whole shipbuilding and ship arming 
resources of the country had been de\-otcd without inter- 
mission for the past year to supplying the needs of the 
Navy. He admitted — without suspicion api)arently that 
the admission could be misconstrued — that neither he 
nor his naval colleagues were satisfied with the result, 
and this although the result put the command of the sea 
and the capacity of the British Pleet to maintain and 
exercise it actually beyond reasonable question. It 
was obvious indeed from the whole tenor of Mr. Balfour's 
account of his duties and the way in which he and his 
colleagues regarded them that,- whatever the shipbuilding 
outj)ut of the country might be, the Admiralty would ask 
for more. It is an attitude that follows inevitably from 
the very striking premise of his argument — namely, that 
the British Fleet is so no longer ; it has become an 
international thing, the basis, the supporting and the 
combining force of the Alliance to which the preservation 
of European civilisation is committed. Obviously to 
men with so high a sense of their mission, the fleet could 
never reach a strength to excuse them from further 
effort. But the fact that they are striving for the im- 
jjossible is not equivalent to pleading that their efforts 
liavc been inadecpiate. They must strive for it, because 
although the capacity of Crermany to build — and what is 
far more important — to arm ships, is not likely to be 
greater than is estimated, to rely upon any estimate 
must be unsafe. To do our utmost tlien can be the only 
path of safety. All this Mr. Balfour made clear enough, 
but he (jualified it somewhat unfortunately by adding 
that our production might be still greater if certain 
modifications of labour arrangements were in force. 
Labour, in other words, was a coridition limiting the 
amount of shipping that we could receive. But then it 
always has been a limiting condition, and the total weekly 
and monthly product is not less than it was when Mr. 
Churchill and Lord iMsher were struggling which should 
rule at the Admiralty. And to say that this limiting 
condition had not been removed was tantamount to 
saying that so far the Board of Admiralty had seen 110 
necessity for its removal. 
The regrettable jjart of Mr. Churchill's altitude was 
that he failed to realise that when Mr. Balluur spoke, 
he spoke with an authority behind him that no claptrap 
declamations, no parade of a theatrical reconciliation 
with Lord Fisher, can shake. For Mr. Balfour confirmed 
in terms of no ambiguity at all a thing which I had 
mentioned last week as notorious in the Fleet. He said 
in so many words that the relations between himself, 
his naval colleagues and the commanders-in-chief, and 
indeed all the admirals at sea, were such, that the most 
intimate unity of plan and purpose animated and indeed 
inspired the Navy from top to bottom. When the new 
Board was constituted last summer with Mr. Balfour 
and Sir Henry Jackson at its head, those who knew the 
Navy from within, who knew also the kind of men who 
were now to govern it, saw that for the first time for many 
years the one thing vital to naval success was assured. 
The Navy would be governed by its own best brains, and 
in consonance with the cHctates of its highest professional 
knowledge. It knew* that for the immediate future at 
any rate, it need not fear the arbitrary impulse of amateur 
caprice. Mr. Balfour's speech established once and for 
all that this expectation of the Navy has been realised. 
Mr. Churchill does not know that the change has taken 
place, because he has never understood that it was neces- 
sary. It is the change that makes his speech so stupefying 
a performance. 
For three months now a determined effort has been 
maintained to undermine and destroy this admirable 
state of affairs. We have had dangled before our eyes 
such preposterous things as a squadron of German ships 
armed with 17-inch guns. Last week we had the even 
more childish assertion that (}ermany's shipbuilding 
facilities were so colossal that she might have 25 Dread- 
noughts and battle cruisers under construction at this 
minute. It is a statement that is not worth serious 
criticism because if the writer meant shipbuilding 
facilities and steel production facilities only, (jermany 
might be building not 25 but 32, if she were content to 
build them without furnishing guns, turrets and mount- 
ings. These are but two instances of many of the effor-ts 
made to shake public confidence in the Board of 
Admiralty. To those who knew- the real state of 
affairs it has been an ignoble and' distressing business 
from the beginning. And in this business Mr. Churchill 
has now taken a hand. Will he succeed in doing any 
substantial harm ? I cannot think he will. 
Mr. Balfour's speech was restrained to the point of 
dullness. He gave us the basic, but astounding facts of 
fleet's doings, but he told them without the least pretence 
of rhetoric. He paid a noble tribute to the officers and 
men of the Royal Navy and of the merchant marine. It 
was a tribute that was ten times the more effective for 
his confessed inability to say what he wanted to say. It 
seemed somehow the only way a great gentleman should 
speak of a great aristocracy. It stood in sharp contrast 
with his predecessor's three war speeches in the House of 
Commons, in which he managed to praise himself and 
Lord Fisher and various departments of the Admiralty, 
but had never a word of eulogy for the officers of the 
fleet. It was another contrast too that Mr. Balfour never 
spoke of himself at all. It was so clear throughout that 
he spoke for the Navy with which he identifies himself 
so modestly, and unifies as only a strong man can 
The Return of the "Moevve." 
The German Admiralty has announced the safe 
return of the Mocivc to a home port, and there seems to 
be no reason for supposing this account to be unfounded. 
It w'as generally recognised, when the capture of the 
Appam brought in the news of the Mocwc's breaking 
blockade, that the German Navy had scored and, for once, 
legitimately. Her safe return is a heavier score still. 
We should be lacking in sportsmanship if we did not admit 
that the ingenious Burgrave who commands her had 
carried through an adventure of which any seaman might 
be proud. And in going home the way he came, this wily 
rover has finished up with a very artistic surprise. 
