24 
J. A N D cS: \V A T E R 
May 25, T916 
the ]-"alkland Islands would certainly have befallen the 
chief seaport towns of the Commonwealth. The pos- 
session by Australia then of the navy that she had was 
a decisive factor in limiting von Spec's movements and 
making him choose a path across the Pacific. 
Discipline and the Dominions 
Tt is now quite certain that the Dominions can produce 
navies of the very highest class and merit. This may 
sound like a commonplace, but it has not always been 
so. When it was first decided that AustraHa should 
raise and train a personnel of her own, many of those 
who knew most about Australia and most about the 
navy were anything but confident that the experiment 
would succeed. The sturdy sons of Australia and Canada 
are born and bred in surroiuidings that produce men of 
the finest physique, of a high and lofty courage and of an 
admirable lighting spirit. These are obviously as good 
material as there is in the world for an army. But it 
was questioned whether men and youths bred in 
this freedom and spirit of independence could accommo- 
date themselves to the highly rigid discipline that the naval 
life requires. In British ships there is a high proportion of 
men on board who ha\e been brought up in naval schools 
from childhood, or have come into the navy as boys of 
16 to 18 and have been put at once to the discipline of a 
barrack training. They ha\e found themselves grouped 
from the first with long service Petty Officers and men 
to whom a reverence for naval discipline is so to speak 
the foundation of their being. A large number of them 
are country bred ; they have felt the feudal traditions 
of our society, they have a natural respect for those 
above them in the social scale. All these things have 
greatly simplified the task of the British naval officer 
on board ship. So ingrained in point of fact is the 
respect for naval law, that it is almost a.xiomatic to say- 
that, if serious difficulties arise, it can be due only to 
bad will and a rebellious spirit. But the .whole problem 
obviously changes its character in a country where 
there is no feudal tradition, no respect for class, 
where an independent spirit and a sense of equality 
pervades the whole community. "Where young men 
know no other surroundings and no other spirit than this 
there seems good reason for fearing that they would find 
instinctive obedience and the formalities of discipline 
almost incompatible with habits which have become a 
principle. Those who feared these difficulties were not 
completely reassured by remembering what admirable 
soldiers our Canadian and Australian fellow subjects 
had shown themselves to be. They thought the problem 
of bringing them under the influence of naval discipline 
would be infinitely more difficult, and they feared both 
the capacity of the men to .submit and the capacity of 
British officers to bring them to submission. 
Again, it was clearly perceived that the foundation of 
a new navy was a much greater imdertaking than the 
mere expansion of an old one. In this process of making 
seamen out of entirely new material- — material bred in 
conditions that .seemed inimical to their ever being good 
seamen — both officers and men would be put to an 
exceedingly searching test. War has taught us that both 
have emerged from this with flying colours. 
So far as Canada goes naval developments had gone 
little bej^ond the training of personnel, nor had this 
been carried on on a very large scale. But as has already 
been remarked apropos of the heroes that fell at Coroncl, 
the training had been perfectly successful. In Australia 
the thing had been carried far further and had indeed to 
some extent been put to the test before war broke out. 
It was natural that the Canadian experiment should 
succeed under the strain of imminent fighting. It was a 
thing, of course, to pull men together and make each one 
do his best. But in Australia one capital ship «ind several 
other smaller units had been fully commissioned and 
engaged on regular naval work in ordinary |)eace con- 
ditions. If there were any difficulties, and surely 
thert; must have been some, nothing was ever heard 
of them. Any doubts there may have been as to 
how the thing would work were all dissipated when 
the campaign began. 
In the engagement between Sydney and Emden it was 
a matter of justifiable pride to the officers of the Ati.stralian 
ship, that a crew with a high proportion of comparatively 
inexperienced boys went through that action wdth a self- 
possession and coolness that the most experienced 
veterans might have envied. In that action, as the 
official report pointed out, the opening salvoes of the 
Emden took a heavy toll of the ship's company. It 
seems certain that Emden scored first blood. She got the 
range at a distance that was hardly to be expected with 
guns of the calibre that she carried, and her salvoes were 
fired with astonishing rapidity and with still more 
astonishing accuracy. Whether Sydney was making 
as good a pattern with her guns was not a thing that 
could have been known to the generality of the crew. 
The point is that when the only obvious'matter was that 
Emden had got Sydney imder fire, there was never a 
moment's uncertainty as to how Sydney took it. 
Naval Endurance 
The Australian navy's baptism of fire then established 
the character of the new force beyond all question. It 
has had a more testing time since. Australia has for long 
made one of the battle cruiser force in the North, when; 
the spells of dreary waiting for the enemy have been 
broken only by disappointments when there was a hope 
of getting him. The Colonial sailors have, of course, 
only had to endure the same tedium as our own men, 
but it is a complete answer to those who questioned the 
capacity of men bred in the freedom and independence of 
Colonial life to acquire the patient persistence of those 
inured to discipline, that this particular crew has done 
so successfully. But while this is so, it must not be 
forgotten that the problem will be a standing one and 
will not solve itself. It will only be solved if officers are 
chosen for the training of Colonials, who are conspicuous 
for tact, patience and good humour. The whole thing 
will doubtless become easier as the mother and daughter 
navies become better and better acquainted. And the 
best assurance of continued success, would undoubtedly 
be that whatever reserves, either of a purely voluntary 
or of a paid character are established, they should be 
encouraged to take their training as far as possible in 
Briti.sh ships and in home waters. It should be a sine 
qua non in the case of all Colonial officers, not only for 
their own sake, but for the sake of educating the ward 
rooms to which they are attached. The guiding principle 
should and no doubt will be, that the danger of mis- 
imderstandings will diminish in proportion to the intimacy 
of the friendship and mutual knowledge that is estab- 
lished between the officers and men of the home and 
Colonial forces. 
There is one other aspect of the question of the future 
of the Dominion navies which, though it is of a delicate 
kind, cannot be ignored. The proposal that Canada should 
furnish three capital units of the first importance to the 
Imperial fleet broke down owing, it is supposed, to 
political misunderstandings in Canada itself. Now it is 
quite certain that no Dominion navy can follow a healthy 
and normal development, so as in the end to reflect the 
true character of its constituent personnel, and the true 
genius of the people who maintain it, if it is allowed to 
become the shuttlecock between rival political parties. 
It will be a still greater danger if the officers'and men in 
any of these navies ever have reason to suspect that the 
actual administration of their force is coloured by political 
or party designs, just as it would be-the min of any right 
spirit in a navy if employment or promotion is ever 
believed to be procurable by party service or interest. 
In the long history of the English Navy, we have seen 
all these things happen again and again, to the bitter 
loss of that most gallant service. In our own navy, to 
political influence, court and social influence have in the 
past been added too. Things are very different to-day, 
but clearly there can be no healthy spirit unless every 
officer knows that promotion and employment will depend 
upon professional merit and professional merit alone ; 
and there will be no healthy public spirit about the navy 
unless every voter, whatever his party, realises that the 
interest of the service i? a purely national affair, which no 
temporary passage of political interest or passion must 
be allowed to affect. It is probable, however, that after 
so great a war as this, in whidh the direct naval services 
of the Dominion have been so remarkable, there will 
be \r?ry little danger of the naval future. 
Aktiu'r Pou.kn 
