10 
LAND & WATER 
May i8, 1916 
the simple and significant fact that she is no longer in a 
position to assert the doctrine on which she has acted for 
forty years. That German necessity justifies anything 
that Germany may do. is a creed that has no universal 
application to-day. She knows now that British Sea 
Supremacy is a terrible reahty, that no make-belief boast 
can disguise from her people. She knows that no 
atrocities can relieve the people from the consecjuences 
of its exercise. She also knows that the neutral world 
wU not tolerate its atrocities. 
It is the first step in the schoohng of the Teutonic 
mind to the truth which it is the purpose of the 
Allies to make real and convincing. And the truth is 
simple. The public life of Europe is to be governed 
henceforth, not by the German will but by the common 
sense of what is right and just. What right and justice 
interpreted into action mean. Germany will learn when 
her armies have surrendered unconditionally. 
North Sea Strategy 
Meanwhile the directly military employment of perhaps 
the most potent instrument in ensuring this final surrender, 
to wit, the British fleet, has during the last week been made 
the subject of discussion. Mr. Balfour has written a 
strange letter to the Mayors of the East Coast towns, 
which foreshadows important developments ; an inspired 
German apology for the recent raid on Yarmouth and 
Lowestoft has been published, and both have aroused 
comment. Mr. Balfour's letter was inspired by a desire 
to reassure the battered victims of the German bombard- 
ment. He realised that the usual commonplace that these 
visits had little military value no longer met the case, 
and proceeded to threaten the Germans with new and more 
effective methods of meeting them were these murderous 
experiments repeated. The new measures were to take 
two forms. The towns themselves would be locally 
defended by monitors and submarines, and, without 
disturbing naval preponderance elsewhere, new units 
would be brought further south, so that the interception 
of raiders would be made more easy. But for one con- 
sideration the publication of such a statement as this 
would be inexplicable. If the effective destruction of 
German raiders really had been prepared, the last thing 
the Admiralty would be expected to do would be to 
acquaint the enemy with the disconcerting character of 
its future reception. Count Reventlow indeed explains 
the publication by the fact that no such preparations 
have indeed been made. But the thing can be much 
mt)re simply explained than that. 
When Mr. Churchill, in the high tide of his optimism, 
addressed the House of Commons at the beginning of 
last year — he had the Falkland Islands and the Dogger 
Bank battles, the obliteration of the German Ocean 
cruising force, the extinction of the enemy merchant 
marine, the security of English communications to his 
sole credit — he explained the accumulated phenomena of 
our sea triumph by the splendid perfection of his pre- 
war preparedness. The submarine campaign, the failure 
of the Dardanelles, the revelation of the defenceless state 
of the north-eastern harbours, these things have somewhat 
modified the picture that the e.\-First Lord drew. 
And, not least of our disillusions, we have all come to 
realise that in our neglect of the airship we have allowed 
the enemy to develop, for his sole benefit, a method of 
naval scouting that is entirely denied to us. That the 
British Admiralty and the British fleet perfectly realise 
this disadvantage is tlie meaning of Mr. Balfour's letter. 
He would not have told the enemy of our new North Sea 
arrangements had he not known that he could not be 
kept in ignorance of them for longer than a week or two, 
once they were made. The letter is in fact an admission 
that our sea power has to a great extent lost what was at 
one time its supreme prerogative, Ihe capacity of 
strategical surprise. 
Naval Development 
But this does not materially alter the dynamics of the 
Nortli Sea position, although it greatly affects tactics. 
The (ierman official apologist will have it, however, that 
another factor has altered these dynamics. Admiral 
Jellicoe, he says, may be secure enough with his vast 
fleet in his " great bay in the Orkneys," and, between 
that and the Norwegian coast, hold a perfectly effective 
blockade hne, but all British calculations of North Sea 
strategy have been upset by the establishment of new 
enemy naval bases at Zeebrugge, Ostend and Antwerp. 
He speaks glibly as if the co-xjperation of the forces based 
on the Bight with those in the stolen Belgian ports had 
altered the position fundamentally. This, of course, is 
the veriest rubbish. So far no captured Belgian port has 
been made the base for anything more important than 
submarines that can cross the North Sea under water, 
and the few destroyers that have made a dash through 
in the darkness. Such balderdash as this, and 
that the German battle cruisers did not take to flight, 
but simply returned to their bases without waiting 
for the advent of "superior forces," imposes on nobody. 
It remains of course, perfectly manifest that our con- 
trol of the North Sea is as absolute as the character 
of modern weapons and the present understanding of their 
use makes possible. The principles behind our North 
Sea strategy are simple. One hundred years ago, had 
our main naval enemy been based on Cuxhaven and Kiel, 
we should have held him there by as close a blockade as 
the number of ships at our disposal, the weather con- 
ditions and the seamanship of our captains made possible. 
The development of the steam-driven ship modified the 
theory of close blockade and, even without the torpedo, 
would have made, with the speed now attainable, any con- 
tinuation of the old practice impossible. The under-water 
torpedo has simply emphasised and added to difliculties 
that would have been insuperable. But they have un- 
doubtedly extended the range at which the blockading force 
must hold itself in readiness. To reproduce then in modern 
conditions the effect brought about by close blockade 
in our previous wars, it is necessary to have a naval base 
at a suitable distance from the enemy's base. It must 
be one that is proof against under-water or surface 
torpedo vessel attack, and it must be so constituted that 
the force that normally maintains itself there is capable 
of prompt and rapid sortie, and of pouncing upon any 
enemy fleet that attempts to break out of the harbour in 
which it is intended to confine it.. 
Possible Fleet Bases 
" The great bay in the Orkneys " may, for all I know 
to the contrary, supply at the present moment the Grand 
Fleet's main base for this purpose. But there are a 
great many other ports, inlets and estuaries on the 
East coast of Scotland and England, which are hardly 
likely to be entirely neglected. Not all, nor many, 
of these would be suitable for fleet units of the greatest 
size and speed, but some undoubtedly are suitable, 
and all those that are could be made to satisfy 
the conditions of complete protection against secret 
attack. Assuming the main battle fleet to be at an 
extremely northerly point, any more southerly base 
which is kept either by battle cruisers, light cruisers 
or submarines, may be regarded as an advance base, if 
for no other reason than that it is so many miles 
nearer to the German base. The Orkneys are 200 miles 
further from Lowestoft than Lowestoft is from Heligoland. 
An Orkney concentration, while making the escape of the 
Germans to the northward impossible, would leave them 
comparatively free to harry the East coast of England. 
If, approaching during the night, they could arrive off 
that coast before the northern forces had news of their 
leaving their harbours, they would have many hours 
start in the race home. But this freedom had to be left 
the enemy — because no risk could be taken in the main 
theatre. It is assumed on the one side and ad- 
mitted on the other, that Germany could gain nothing 
and would risk everything by attempting to pass down 
the Channel. The concentration, then, in the North of a 
force adequate to deal with the whole German fleet 
• — again I have to say in the light of the way in which the 
use of modern weapons is understood — remains our 
fundamental strategical principle, 
Mr. Balfour's letter has been criticised both in the 
Times and the Sunday Times, as if its proposals argued 
an abandonment of these principles, and the Times 
critic regrets the use of monitors for coast defence as the 
" most disturbing " feature of the case, He sees in it a 
relapse into the old heresy that was killed by the blue 
water school. But it seems to me that he has not applied 
the principles of this controversy correctly. The argument 
