lO 
LAND & WATER 
October 19, igi6 
be strewti \dth mines a»i<l be in^sted with submarines. 
The connnanders of the latter would be instructed to be 
as gentle as thev coidd possibly be with neutrals, but 
every ship would be sunk and the crews and passengers 
would have to take thfir chance. But the operation of 
mines could, of course, not be qualified, and if after this 
warning neutrals chose to enter the war zone, they would 
do so at their peril. 
We all remember the course of the under-water war 
lietwcen March iqi5 and last year's anniversary. By 
October the British coimter-campaign had so reduced the 
German submarines in numbers that the blockade, at no 
time sufticiently destructive to imperil the .\llied sea sup- 
plies, had seeniingly ce:ised altogether. Greek. Spanish, 
Danish, Swedish, Dutch. Norwegian and American ships 
had been sunk. Their nationals, indudini: women, 
children and babies, had many of thean been killed and 
drowned. Manv more of them had been exposed defenceless 
against cold and hunger to the mercy of the sea in open 
boats. There was nothing surprising in the fact that 
Germany should try to make her threats good. It was 
amazing that the neutrals, so numerous and collectively so 
powerful, should have endured such conduct. The Ignited 
States had from the first taken a high line of public pro- 
test. It is supposed that other neutrals had entered 
similar pleas on their own behalf. But the protests were 
disregarded and with impunity. Indeed, if tiie tone of 
published diplomatic documents were a test, it might 
really have seemed in October 1915, as if the methods of 
orderly and peaceful embargo enforced by Great Britain 
and her Allies, had exasperated neutral sentiment and 
ahenated neutral sympathy almost as effectively as the 
murderous piracy of von Tirpitz. It was, at any rate, 
obvious that, had our blockading methods been from the 
first more ruthless and more stringent — and therefore 
more effective — than they were, we could not have 
done ourselves more harm with the neutral Powers. For 
Germany, by condiict whose brutality was entirely with- 
out historic parallel, seemingly did herself no harm at all. 
Still, in spite of our gentle and mealy-mouthed way of 
going about the serious business of war, English naval 
prestige did, a year ago, stand far higher than in 1914, largely 
because of the successful energy with which the Tirpitz 
campaign had been encountered and seemingly defeated. 
The Third Anniversary 
How do things stand to-day ? Our strategy in the North 
Sea has throughout been defensive. We left it to the 
enemy to make advances towards a battle. Both fleets 
were entrenched ; each could, and did, make sorties. But 
the North Sea was held by neither. It was a no man's 
land either might enter — to the peril of the weaker, if 
their sorties were to coincide. There was then no military 
blockade of the enemy's ports : no effort to stop his small 
and undenvater- vessels from getting to sea at all. It was 
held that the factors, high speed and invisible torpedo- 
carrying craft, made both impossible. It must not be 
ignored, however, that it was new in our experience of 
war that our whole battleship strength should be con- 
centrated in a single fleet. It is a thing that greatly 
magnifies the consequences of a risk rashly or improperly 
run. The Commander-in-Chief in the North Sea is in a 
position \'ery different from that of Nelson at Trafalgar. 
There are perhaps arguments of caution valid to-day 
that were never valid before. Anyway, that there was, 
and is, no military blockade, is a simple fact. Hence 
the enemy's attack on our shipping had to be resisted 
far from his bases. 
His success in the Baltic, our home waters and the 
Mediterranean against British, Allied and neutral mer- 
chant vessels was great. Over 3,000,000 gross tonnage of 
our own shipping was gone before the third anniversary 
of Trafalgar was round. Allies and neutrals had lost at 
least half as much again. But, save for this loss, the 
general naval position has not changed — except for the 
factor of Jutland. The German colonies fall to us one 
by one. Her trade is still non-existent. Her attacks 
on ours continue, without effectively embarrassing 
us. But a new factor has to be considered. 
The fleets of Great Britain and Germany have met and 
fought. It was a battle that was in one sense absolutely 
ancl finally decisive. It has established once and for ail 
that the German fleet docs not intend to aim at com- 
manding the sea by defeating and destroying the British 
fleet. The battle of Jutland was fought over a vast area 
of the North Sea, many hundreds of miles nearer to 
German than to British ports. Still the German fleet 
had come out 200 miles from its own harbours, and if 
the event showed that Scheer and von Hipper were not 
prepared to fight to a finish, it also showed an absolute 
faith in German capacity to prevent the British fleet 
jjushing an engagement to a full and final issue. As 
things fell out it was an accident of the weather that 
enabled the German Admiral to realise his plan. Viewed 
simply as a naval operation, he is entitled to the credit of 
a tactical success, in that he staved off the destruction 
of his fleet. But evasion, however skilful, cannot be 
twisted to me^n \ictory, and nothing but victory could 
have served the German purpose. Nor was even that 
evasion achieved, save at a cost that leaves Germany 
to-day the weaker by four units of the greatest power. 
Her relative inferiority is, therefore, now greater than 
ever. From every point of view then, the battle of 
Jutland, however creditable to German leading, German 
technique and German seamanship, remains without 
question a grave German defeat. 
It was as unquestionably a British victory. Not 
final and conclusive, only because the weather conditions 
changed while the battle was in progress, and changed 
at the very moment when the time for decision had 
arrived. There is no novelty in the fortunes of an action 
being so determined. The storm at Trafalgar robbed us, 
not of a victory, but of our prizes. But had it come 
earlier it might have robbed us of \'ictory as well. It is 
Hawke himself who insists that it \\as only the weather 
that explained the escape of so many of Conflans' siiips. 
With such precedents, we need have no hesitation in 
being frank over this business, and ascribing the successful 
escape of the High Seas Fleet from Sir John Jellicoc, 
after contact had been made, to its true cause. In the 
days of sailing ships victory was not an affair of marks- 
manship, but of discipline, drill, and courage on the part 
of the fighting crews and of resolution and seamanship 
on the part of admirals and captains. The secret lay 
in getting near enough to the enemy for every shot to 
tell and to concentrate the fire of a large squadron on to 
one less numerous. The fleet that was most at sea, that 
was the more arduous in the i)ractice of big guns, that 
was led by oihcers imbued with the spirit and trained in 
the doctrines evolved by three generations of sea fighters, 
was almost bound to win just because its corporate mind 
had been bent on fighting for so long. It was with such 
a fleet an instinctive action to press on the enemy as 
closely as it could, drive him from his guns and board and 
seize his ships. But, however rich the fighting spirit, the 
seamanship, the genius, actions could only be fought if the 
weather permitted. 
The same fighting spirit has to be expressed in very 
different action to-day. Such is the power and range of 
guns, so formidable a weapon is the torpeodo, that the 
processes that naturally end in boarding are not to be 
thought of. And for long range gunnery clear vision of 
the enemy is essential ; as of old the tyranny of the 
weather shadows the fighting seamen. It is vital that 
fleets should be rightly led, to keep the enemy under 
superior fire and defeat any intention he may evince to 
fly. And fleets cannot be led rightly if the enemy is un- 
seen. The high mobility of the modern fighting unit has 
created infinite complications for the tactician, but his 
object and purpose being ever to keep the enemy under 
the fire of his guns, no manceuvring skill in the world 
can enable him to achie\-e that object if, by the descent 
of fog, the enemy becomes invisible. Indeed, something 
far .short of invisibility can nowadays make effective long 
range fire impossible, for accurate shooting depends on 
range-finders, on telescopic sights, and on the correction 
and keeping of the range by fire control — all operations 
that can be performed only bv optical instruments. 
The distances are so great that the unmagnified human 
eyesight is quite incapable of doing what is required. 
And once your fighting is made dependent upon optical 
instruments, unless their design is of a very special merit, ' 
there may be instrumental invisibility long before the 
naked eye is cut off from the perception of the target., 
The Commander-in-Chief, in his despatch, had occasion 
to draw our attention to the fact of the extreme difficulty 
that range-finding presented. If the Germans were better 
