March 23, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER. 
had to be abandoned because the volunteers were not 
forthcoming. 
Tile moral of such a situation is surely ubvious. 
The captain, knowing that the chances of bringing him- 
self, his boat, and his crew safely home are slender, is not 
hkely to feel himself very strongly bound by any orders 
whatever. To him every surface ship must be a natural 
enemy. In the early days of the campaign, the British 
jiress rang with tales of the prowess of merchant captains 
who had run down submarines. He would know that scores 
of his brother officers were at the sea's bottom with their 
boats, and he might easily suppose that the bulk of them 
had fallen to the ram, His own bigger vessel could not, 
it is probable, be submerged or manceuvred as rapidly as 
the smaller boats Haunted by fears, encompassed by 
dangers, his prospects, in any event, of survival being 
of the glocjmiest, what more natural than orders or no 
orders he should sink everything afloat in whose immediate 
neighbourhood he fmds himself ? He might plead self- 
defence for acts seemingly as senseless as the destruction 
of these two neutral vessels. And at the back of his 
mind he would have this recollection to encourage him, 
that submarine war is after all, an anonymous secret 
kinc of business, and even if a troublesome diplomatic 
situation did arise, it would always be open to his em- 
ployer to suggest that the thing had been done by a 
British mine or by a British submarine. In any case, 
then^ should be no proof that he had done it. In finr, 
the sinking of the Tnbantia and the Palcmb.mg, insensate 
and atrocious as they are, seem to me to be almost 
necessary incidents in the kind of sea war that Germany 
has embarked upon, and prove nothing either way as to 
the intended limits within which (iermany might wish 
to keep it. 
New Factors 
On the whole then the fall of Tirpitz shows that the 
von Tirpitz policy is played out. What has brought this 
about ? What new factors have come into being since 
the new policy was announced ? Two, either of which 
might have been decisive against persistence. The two 
happening together had to be decisive. They are the 
failure of German intrigue at Washington, and the failure 
of (ierman arms at Verdun. Until the Senate and the 
House of Representatives had j)assed their respective 
votes of confidence in the President, no one could say that 
Mr. Wilson was free to act as the honour of his coimtry 
might dictate. It is obvious even to the Germans that 
he is free now. Ihe von Tirpitz policy then cannot be 
carried out effectively without a breach with the United 
States. And once diplomatic relations are broken off, 
American belligerency might be the matter of a short 
time only. 
Now, as we have seen during the last seven or eight 
months, Germany has again ancl again been willing to 
risk hostility with the United States. Why can she not 
face that risk again ? She cannot face it because her 
arms have failed at Verdun, and the failure shortens 
time during which slie can keep under arms at all. It was 
the essence of the von Tirpitz policy that it should be 
carried on for an extended period. In point of fact, it 
would have to be carried on for at least a year before the 
results it aimed at could be achieved. It was no use em- 
barking on this policy then, if for other reasons the war 
was bound to end before the results hoped from it could 
mature. It will make this argument clearer to set out 
what the von Tirpitz idea seems to have been. 
Von Tirpitz was wildly wrong in the kind of Navy 
that he built, and, with the other Cierman statesmen, was 
hopelessly at sea in his forecast of England's action in tlie 
kind of war that (iermany intended to provoke. But it 
is not at all certain, after ihe first month or two of hostili- 
ties had shown that the war would be a long one, that he 
was not the fust European in authority to foresee the role 
that the use of the sea would play. The initial success 
of the Gcrmin submarines against the British Fleet was 
moderate enough when measured by the number of vic- 
tims. But it probably opened the Grand Admiral's eyes 
to the immensely more promising iield that our merchant 
shipping aiforded. And in a long war the merchant 
shij)ping of the world, whether belligerent or neutral, 
would obviously be the only factor whereby the Allies 
could cormterbalance the vastly superior organisation of 
Germany. \\'hen von Tirpitz, therefore, started in on 
his submarine building campaign, he did so with an 
object only announced in December. He must have 
seen from the lirst that it could only be a matter of time 
before Great Britain and her Allies awoke to the fact that 
in forbearing from the blockade of Germany, they were 
neglecting the strongest weapon they possessed. He 
must have expected the blockade to have come sooner 
than it did, and to prove itself more effective than for 
many months it was. In point of fact, it was his own 
mine and submarine campaign that precipitated us into 
proclaiming as a reprisal a measure which should, in 
fact, have been our initial stroke of policy. And even von 
Tirpitz could hardly have counted upon the blockade's 
long inefficiency, fiut blockade or no blockade, he kept 
his eye upon the main truth of the situation, which was 
and is, that Great Britain's capacity to conduct military 
ojjerations over sea, and the Allies' capacity to carry on 
military operations in their own countries were, and still 
are, entirely dependent upon sea supplies of food and raw 
material, and munitions of war coming to us and them by 
water. 
Importance of Sea Supplies 
With the submarines at the disposal of von Tirpitz 
at the beginning of things, little more could be expected 
than the isolation or partial isolation of Great Britain. 
But, in fact, the range of action of submarines, even of 
those whose capacity should have been well known, proved 
to be far greater than anyone anticipated, so that the first 
boats built under the new programme had no difficulty 
in making their way, not only round the North of Scotland 
to operate in the Atlantic, but even to pass the Straits of 
Gibraltar and to get to work in the Mediterranean. 
In taking a sanguine view then of the submarine's 
capacity to do the work he expected of it, von Tirpitz made 
a far juster estimate of the situation than anyone else. 
It was not any defect in the boats or their commandei|s 
that prevented their success from being as great as he 
expected. Von Tirpitz made two capital mistakes. Ho 
underestimated the courage both of allied and neutral 
seamen. And he grossly underestimated the capacity 
of the British Admiralty to organise a counter-campaign. 
But notwithstanding these mistakes, it is folly not to 
recognise that his conception of the importance of sea 
supply to the Allies was perfectly correct, and that in 
organising an attack upon it, he was striking straight at 
the very lieart of our power to carry on the. war. It is 
equally folly not to recognise that in spite of everything 
he achieved a very great success indeed. Before the 
submarine campaign 290 British, Allied and neutral ships 
had been lost to the world's shipping, either detained in 
enemy ports at the beginning of war, or captured, or 
sunk. Since the creation of the war zone 702 more have 
been sunk, captured or damaged by mines and submarines 
and 15 were captured by the Mneivc. From Allied and 
neutral shipping then, there has been a reduction of at 
least 1,000 vessels since the war began. Not more 
thim a third has been replaced by enemy ships. 
Of enemy vessels 805 are in belligerent or neutral 
ports, or sunk, and destroyed, and of course many more are 
tied up in home ports. We can probably assume that 
the enemy vessels are no loss to the world's shipping, 
because enemy trade, and therefore enemy demands on 
the world's shipping are at an end also. But the thous- 
and vessels which we, our Allies, and neutrals have lost 
do not represent even a third of the vessels withdrawn 
from the transportation of goods. For the military 
requirements of France, Great Britain and Italy, in the 
Channel and the Mediterranean, ha\'e withdrawn the 
best part of another 3,000 vessels. 
Von 'iirpitz lealised that if the attack on mer- 
chant shipping 'were pushed to tlii' highest iK)int of 
ruthlessness, that the time would come when tncat Jiritain 
would have to choose between a limitation of her military 
activities over sea, or going without either the financial 
advantages of an import and export trade, or adequate 
supplies for her home population, or, indeed, both. We 
have always all of us spoken of the submarine campaign as 
a failure, and a failure of comse it is, because the 700 ships 
or so that have been sunk or put out of action by Jt, 
have not, in fact, sufficed either to stop our oversea cam- 
])aigns, or to prevent the Allies drawing on North and 
South America and the British Colonies for the supplies, . 
munitions and raw materials needed for feeding their 
II 
