8 
LAND & WATER 
Xo\einber 9, 1916 
more distant view, if they could take the whoK' of the 
wood of St. Pierre Vaast. lor this wood folds over the lop 
of the ridge like a carpet. 
Now the Wojd of St. Pierre \'aast is threatenid on the 
south by the French positions and also from the west. 
The threat from the north, which, if it can be develt)ped, 
would render the wood untenable, depends upon the 
occupation of the village of Saillissel. That village forms, 
as I have explained before, 'the standing jjart of the letter 
T, the cross part being the adjoining village of Sailly. 
This standing part of the T projects out eastward from 
the main road running parallel with the northern edge of 
the wood, and il or when the Frent-h completely occupy 
the ruins of Saillissel, the wood becomes untenable. 
Now the French seized Saillissel on Saturday and 
Sunday last, and the effect was inniiediately felt in the 
loss ol the tirst (ieiuian trenches in the wood, but before 
this advance could j)rocccd much further the Germans 
upon Monday last developed a very stroiig counter- 
attack upon a position so critical to their whole line and 
succeeded in re-taking a part of the ruins of Saillissel. 
With regard to both this critical point and to that of 
the Butte de W'arlencourt, the position stands thus im- 
decided at the moment of writing. H. Bui.LOC 
The Chief Command 
By Arthur Pollen 
FOR the third time in the course of the war the 
paramount naval question of the moment is the 
character of the administration at Whitehall. 
The first crisis occurred quite early in the war. 
Save for the raid into the Bight of Heligoland late in 
August, the public had few evidences of British naval 
activity, and far too many stories of German naval 
success. The thing began with perhaps the most de- 
plorable failure of all when the Gocbcn and the Breslau 
were allowed to get past the whole French Fleet, a 
squadron of British battle cruisers more than three times 
as powerful as the fugitives, and a squadron of four 
armoured cruisers as well. Then there was the lamentable 
episode of the Naval Brigade at Antwerp. The situation 
culminr.ted when, after the German submarine successes 
in the North Sea, it was found that the enemy was laying 
mines when and as he liked and with impunity. A feu- 
knew that we had begun the war without there being a 
single harbour protected on the North East coast. Every- 
one knew that something must be radically wrong. 
Shortly after Lord Fisher"s return to office thiiigs took a 
turn for the better. Sir Do\'eton Sturdee's victory at 
the Falkland Islands, the capture of the Eviden and the 
disappearance of the Kai-lsruhc put a new complexion 
on the war. But as the October crisis had brought no 
change of system, but only a change of persons, there was 
no security against fuither blunders of a capital kind. 
There was no ground for supposing that any better 
doctrine or principle would lie behind naval adminis- 
tration, and the adventure of the Dardanelles came as a 
rude reminder that we could have no guarantee against 
the continuance of disasters at sea until the conduct of 
naval war was taken out of lay, and put into professional, 
hands. The strength of the present regime has consisted 
chiefly in the fact that it has not been lav. The seam.en 
on the Board or the War Staff have not, that is to say. 
been overridden and driven to mad adventures by their 
civilian chief. This, of course, is a purely negative merit. 
The positive achievement was keeping in far closer touch 
with the fleets, so that the Commander-in-Chief was at 
least able to exercise some influence on the general conduct 
of the war. 
The weakness of the present regime has lain in the fact 
that Its constituent members are entirely without war 
experience— a grave disadvantage when it 'is remembered 
that none of the administrations immediately preceding 
the war had succeeded either in getting the fighting fleet 
ready for its business, or in preparing an organisation for 
its general direction from home, trained to act on the right 
principles of strategic offence, or prepared with adecpiale 
defensive plans against the more obvious forms of offence 
that the enemy might adopt. The art of running a naval 
war had therefore to be acquired in the course of the war 
itself. It was an obvious weakness that Whitehall 
should remain without the assistance of any officei-'who 
had seen fighting. That this was the weakness of {he 
l)osition was pointed out very frankly in these columns 
more than a year ago. Waiting on the fourth of last 
December on the occasion of Mr. Asquith's sajahg 'that 
the Board of Admiralty weie jointly and severally respon- 
sible for naval polic\-, I pointed out that this represented 
a change in theory since most of the then Sea Lords had 
been appointed to their office, not less remarkble than 
the change which had occurred in the character of the 
sea war, and jjioceedcd : 
None of them have had direct experience of the war, 
either in its first stage or in the second. Nor is this all. 
The personnel of the War Staff has, it is true, been 
altered since the war began, but I believe I am right in 
saying that only one of its chief members was taken from 
the Fleet. But the War Staff is only concerned with 
plans of operations, with mobilisation and with intelli- 
gence. It has no department dealing with the technique 
of the use of weapons, although all tactics — and hence all 
strategj' — must ultimately be founded upon weapons 
and the ways of using them. This war has been fruitful 
in surprises, and rich in revelations of the unexpected 
power of weapons, and not less in the proofs of the 
deficiencies of many of our methods. The use of guns 
when ships are at speed and manauvring, the possi- 
bilities of indirect fire, whether from the stationary or 
steaming ships, the possibilities of the submarines, and 
the scope and power of its antidotes, the art of using 
mines and of frustrating their use — on all of these things 
the Admiralty should be advised by those who can speak 
with authority, because in the light of the complem.ent 
and most recent knowledge. 
"■ It would, of course, be the merest folly to send every 
officer now at Whitehall to sea, and to start with an 
entirely new team taken from the sea. But the gradual 
substitution of men whose war experience is personal and 
direct, for those whose knowledge is only second hand, 
could be begun at once to the great advantage of all. 
And in this connection let it be remembered that the 
direction of all the fleets is a far more difficult and 
certainly a far more important affair, than the command 
of any single fleet. 
" The constitution of proper staffs for gunnery, tor- 
pedoes, mines and submarines, so that it should be im- 
possible for us to witness once more the employment of 
fleets without reference to the limitations of their weapons, 
this is a matter of the utmost urgency. These should be 
constituted at once, and, as no such staffs exist, there 
is not in this case any question of swopping horses in mid- 
stream. In the last seven months the Navy has dis- 
covered a mind of its own and knows what it wants to do. 
Mr. Asquith has restored it to its constitutional Govern- 
ment. Can Mr. Balfour get his Council into closer touch 
with the Fleets ? He \rill not have an easy task. Every 
oflicer will be eager to get to sea. But the men at sea 
will fight like tigers to stay there. There is nothing 
more hated in the Navy than an office stool." 
On another occasion I set out Mr. Balfour's dilemma 
to be this. The number of best men in the Fleet is 
necessarily limited. The e.vpcriencc they arc getting 
in war is invaluable to them if the most is 'to be made 
of their forces in battle. How far is it wise to remove 
them from these squadrons, to replace them by less 
experienced men, thus apparently weakening the fleets 
for the sake of strengthening the Admiralty ? Make 
a list of the best men at sea, and it is easy enough to 
jiersuade yourself that they are indispensable where 
they are. Still, the major counsel of wisdom must after 
all be the guide, and that I submit is as in the passage I 
