September 14, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
11 
the German fleet could be destroyed. Captain Sims is, 
of course, on impregnable ground when he says that, for 
purposes of the generaj command of the sea, a fleet that 
is contained is as innocuous as a fleet that is defeated. 
But this is not the whole truth of the matter. A little 
examination will show us that there were other objects 
to be sought beyond the general command of the sea. 
There was iirst the moral of the enemy to be con- 
sidered which, if the general expert diagnosis of the 
military position that was likely to be characteristic of 
the third year of the war was correct, was bound to be a 
factor of such vast importance as to make it quite indis- 
tinguishable from any other military object. Next the 
military situation, demanding as it did the maintenance 
of our armies abroad and the supply of ourselves and 
our Allies with food, raw material, and manufactures 
from oversea, supplied a strong argument for victory. 
And. hnally, there were direct economic advantages to 
be obtained by the sinking of the German fleet, that were 
anything but negligible themselves and were certainly 
of enormous import in a war that must strain all Allied 
resources to the utmost. 
The relative naval strength in the spring of this year was 
not such as to afford the Germans the slightest hope for 
decisive victory if a fleet action were fought with Sir John 
Jellicoe, nor was there any military advantage to be 
gained by a temporary control of a passage through the 
North Sea, such as might conceivably have been won 
had a portion of the British fleet been defeated. There 
was then no military reason for the Germans seeking an 
action. But as we have just seen it is not always purely 
military reasons that count. Two forces were con- 
tinuously driving the German seamen to fight. We are 
not flattering our enemy in supposing that the Admirals 
and officers who commanded the second largest fleet in 
the world must have had a burning desire to justify 
their existence. We may be quite sure that the Higher 
Command not only saw a good use, but an absolute 
necessity, for any form of naval activity that could be 
interpreted as a victory. For, that the Allies were about 
to strike and strike hard, must in May last have been 
exceedingly clear. 
It can hardly have been less clear that the Central 
Powers would be in no condition to hit back effectively, 
fiermany and Austria must have known that, in the 
military sense, it would be the beginning of the end. 
The only hope was to postpone the end until the resolution 
of the Allies would weaken, and postponement in turn 
would depend upon the moral of the German people. 
Perhaps our best grounds for expecting a collapse of 
Germany to come before the strictly military defeat is 
achieved is, that the German Government " has never 
trusted its subjects with the truth. F"rom the first they 
have" been fed with the promise and the assurance of 
victory. But when tales of decisive triumph are not 
followed by their normal consequences, when the defeated 
enemy, far from incHning towards the discussion of 
honourable peace, shows an unlimited capacity to 
fight on, and what is worse, to starve their con- 
querors, it is little wonder if discontent arises. Was it 
not clearly a situation in which a new sort of victory 
altogether was wanted ? Had not the German Higher 
Command the strongest of all motives for asking the 
navy to supply it ? 
The navy was willing to oblige for two reasons. We 
can well believe in the first place that their wish to fight 
was ardent, but we know also that they were quite 
confident that they possessed the secret of fighting on 
principles of limited liability. Their experience pro- 
bably was, that it was the British battle cruisers that 
were normally nearest to the German bases. Thev knew 
for a certainty that, if their fleet came out and Sir David 
Beatty was on the spot, he would not be slow in giving 
them a fight. They could not, of course, trap him, 
because the Germans never possessed more than five 
ships fast enough to keep up with him, and as Sir David 
Beatty had ten, and with the fifth Battle Squadron 
might have had fifteen, there could have been no question 
whatever of forcing action on him against his will. But 
if he engaged them it was a different matter, for the 
moment their fast squadron had joined up with the 
whole of the German fleet, Beatty would have to fly for 
his life, and then what a story the Germans would have 
of having driven the British fleet across the German 
Ocean ! As to the Grand Fleet, Zeppelins, of course, 
would warn them if it was clear, and if it was misty 
the smoke screens and torpedo attacks would do for the 
German fleet, as a whole, what they had done for von 
Hipper's squadron in the Dogger Bank aiYair. , 
Thus the poHcy of the Higher Command, the natural 
desire for action of the German seamen, and their con- 
fidence that their defensive and eyasive tactics, by 
guaranteeing them against defeat would ensure their 
having a story of victory, combined to make the naval 
sortie of the 30th May anything but a harebrained 
proceeding. Now is it not clear that you have only got 
to state that the German fleet and the German Higher 
Command had an object of enormous importance to them 
in coming out, to prove that our fleet must at almost all 
costs prevent their achieving it ? If their object was 
only to rai.se German moral, would it not have been 
worth a great sacrifice to achieve its correlative de- 
pression ? Is there any train of reasoning by which 
you can distinguish this from any other clear "demnnd 
of the 'general military situation ? Obviously, if the 
length of the war depends on the courage and confidence, 
and hence the capacity, to endure privation of the German 
people, is it not a very vital matter indeed to make quite 
clear to them by every means in our power, that their 
courage is wasted, their prospects hopeless, and their 
voluntarily endured hardship doomed to be without 
reward ? On this ground alone then it seems to me that 
Captain Sims, in saying .that the military position did 
not call for a decisive victory, while possibly correct if 
judged by text book standards, was lamentably out if 
we judge him by the realities of war. Arthur Pollen 
Nature Under Guri Fire 
By H. Thoburn Clarke 
A T the beginning of the war it was supposed that 
/% the long battle fronts, extending across the 
/ % greater part of the continent of Europe, would 
■^ -m-seriously interfere with the migration of birds 
and drive them, affrighted, to seek paths less fraught 
with the sudden wild alarms of battle. That the battle 
fronts would be deserted by everything living, except 
those grim followers of war," the hoodie, raven, vulture, 
wolf and jackal ; but facts have proved these suppositions 
entirely wrong. Instead of the birds forsaking their 
ancient migration routes, they still travel along their 
aerial highways, undeterred by the thunder of gvms, 
the marching of troops, and battles taking place many 
h\mdreds of feet below them. Instinct is too' strong for 
the wild creatures of the plain and forest, and some of 
the most timid are to be found inhabiting the countrv 
where they were bred, although now it is that dread 
space, No Man's Land. 
In fact, the behaviour of the wild creatures under 
gun-fire has been extraordinarily calm and collected. 
During one of our most furious artillery duels, a nightingale 
sang gaily from the shelter of a dwarfed hawthorn, his 
song sounding strange and eerie between the violent 
cannonading from our guns. Yet, in spite of the deafen- 
ing uprokr, he never paused in his singing rmtil the red 
dawn came up, lurid and sullen, over the Eastern horizon, 
and the rain descended in torrents. Later on, we found 
that his mate had a nest in the hawthorn, and was 
sitting upon her eggs, apparently unmoved by the 
thunders of the guns. She certainly paid no heed to 
our movements as we passed to and fro close to her nest, 
busy with our day's work. 
At another gun position a blackcap trilled its dainty 
song night after night, although the guns were often 
fired during that time. We would lie under the guns 
waiting for the signal to " strafe " theGerman? and listen 
while the bird sang gaily from his perch in one of the 
saplings that masked our gun, Lying with close eyes in 
the dense darkness, it was almost impossible to imagine 
that one was not lying on the edge of a certain hanging 
