Kovember 9, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
Iiavc quoted, " that the direction of all the fleets is a far 
more difficult and certainly a far more important affair 
than the connnand of any single fleet." 
Nearly a year has passed since these words were written, 
and it is perhaps the best possible evidence of the success 
of Mr. Balfour's administration that it is only now that 
these matters come once more into controversy. A great 
many things have happened in that year, and it is idle 
to pretend that there has been no loss of efficiency through 
the neglect to make good the most startling of all the 
omissions of Mr. Churchill's pre-war administration — ■ 
namely, the failure to place the arts of using and of 
parrying the weapons with which naval war is waged, 
under the care of efficient staff administration. Victory 
must ultimately depend upon getting the most out of 
mines, torpedoes, and guns and in thwarting the enemy's 
effort to use them against us. Mr. Churchill. })ut the 
matter into a nutshell in liis famous memorandum of 
January 1912, when he told the world that almost all 
eiTors of strategy and tactics could be redeemed by " imit 
elhciency," and that, without it, the best combinations 
were but the preliminaries of defeat. Having said a wise 
thing, he proceeded to do the foolish one by establishing 
a staff to elaborate " the preliminaries of defeat " uithout 
moving a step towards securing the " unit efficiency," 
upon which the value of all strategy and tactics must 
depend. It is almost unbelievable that, with every naval 
w capon an untried novelty there existed at the outbreak 
of war no organisation for the study of any one of 
I hem. This ciel'ect could surely with advantage have 
been niacie good long ago. 
The Channel Raid 
The passage I have quoted above from an article written 
last December is proof enough that the necessity for 
an occasional rearrangement of tasks amongst the 
leading men in the navy can be admitted without causing 
either surprise or excitement. It may perhaps be useful 
to add that neither Parliament nor the Press are at all 
likely to contribute any suggestions of value as to the 
character of the changes that should be made. The Civil 
Chief of the Admiralty is the only man who has access 
to all the e\'idences by which the capacities of the different 
officers can be judged. It is for the (lovernment, advised 
by him and his colleagues, to settle on. naval policy, and 
after examining his evidences as to the merits of the several 
admirals and captains, to choose the instruments for its 
execution. That in many directions there will have to be 
changes, or at least extensions of policy, is clear, and it 
is much to be regretted that, at the rnoment when the 
]x>rsonnel has to be readjusted to meet them, a con- 
troversy over certain aspects of Admiralty policy should 
have arisen. The attack on Mr. Balfour for the character 
of his communications about the Channel raid are, when 
examined, even more trivial than the raid itself, and it 
is a pity they should have been made, because they 
hardly create an atmosphere favourable to the right 
solution of the very complex and delicate problems now 
before him. 
During the past year the situation, as we saw last week, 
has been complicated by the necessity the enerhy is 
under to use his naval forces to the utmost. He has not 
sought and will never seek a decisive fleet action, but he 
has developed the submarine to the utmost, and is 
backing his submarine activities to the utmost of his 
daring in raids. In his recent sorties he has been un- 
fortunate. Thrice he has had ships — two or more 
dreadnoughts, and one cruiser— torpedoed, a discourag- 
ing experience and eloquent ■ of our submarine skill and 
daring. For all these attacks were delivered very near 
the German bases. But we can never produce the fullest 
possible defence against either occasional surface raids 
or systematic submarine attack upon our trade, until our 
whole cruiser and destroyer force is available, and they 
cannot be so available until the enemy's fleet is finally 
disposed of — an excellent reason why Admiral Scheer, 
if he is still in command, or Prince Heiiry, if he has super- 
seded him, should seek to evade that issue as long as 
possible. But failing the completest means of defence, 
we have to use the second best, and as the enemy seems to 
be devoting the bulk of his ship-building capacity, not to 
preparing for a decisive battle, which he caunot hope U) 
win, but for the n.cw nucyrc lic course in which his prospects 
The Proprietors of Land & Water heg to 
announce that they intend to publish early in 
the New Year a paper to he entitled : 
AIR 
This journal will deal ivith Aeronautics, military 
and civilian, and with all subjects connected 
therewith. Further -tarliculars will be announced 
in due course. 
are far brighter, it is inevitable that the defensive, to 
which in this matter we are condemned, must be at a 
permanent disadvantage. And in the result the reputa- 
tion of the .Admiralty suffers. 
It has suffered more than it need have done in the 
present crisis, owing to the incredible folly of Mr. 
Churchill, in announcing that a decisive victorj'^ at sea is 
absolutely unnecessary, because wc already enjoyed 
every advantage that such a victory could bestow, the 
unfortunate thing is that a statement like this cannot 
be dismissed by saying that it is not intrinsically more 
absurd than certain otfier of Mr. Churchill's sayings, nor 
more in conflict with every right naval principle than so 
many of his actions when he was First Lord. Nor is the 
case really mended when it is pointed out that it was not 
on this principle that the fleet acted at Jutland, and that 
no doctrine more abhorrent to the men at sea could 
easily be imagined. For the fact remains that from the 
autmnn of iqii until the spring of iqi5, Mr. Churchill 
was not only the First, but the only Lord of the Admiralty 
and, inconceivable as it appears to us now, there does seem 
to be every reason for supposing that he always thought 
that, if our fleet was sufficiently superior in numbers to 
the enemy's, it need never be called upon to fight at all. 
That any man in his senses thought we could and should 
conduct a naval war on the theory of the navy being 
neutral — too strong and therefore too proud to fight — 
sounds now, of course, like madness. But it is the only 
supposition which explains the neglect to develop to their 
utmost the means of fighting, to prepare for a complete 
policy of naval offensive. 
A Poh'cv of Passivity 
The neglect to prepare an instant and effective blockade 
derives immediately from the theory that the role of the 
fleet is purely defensive, that if it is strong enough in 
numbers it is in no danger from attack. For, in the old 
wars one of the chief means of forcing an enemy to fight 
was to stop his sea supplies. But if you do not want the 
enemy to attack, if your prejudice is entirely in favour of 
passivity, then you will neglect the means of pi^ovoking 
a fight, just as you will neglect the methods for ensuring 
victory when the opportunity for a fight comes. ■ Now, 
as I have already pointed out, everything in the conduct 
of the fleet itself is a flat contradiction to the Churchil- 
lian heresy. But it has not been repudiated by the 
Admiralty, and we carmot be surprised if some critics 
interpret the lack of initiative of which they complain, 
by the supposition that Whitehall is still tainted by the 
wholly defensive ideas that marked its policies under its 
former chief. It follows then, that Mr. Balfour's admin- 
istration is for the moment suffering, not only from the 
consecpiences of the failure of its predecessor to prepare 
for war and to run it on right principles, but from the 
obloquy attaching to the wrong theory that explains 
those failures. 
The whole situation has now been complicated by the 
trouble over the Air Board. Into the merits of this 
question I do not propose to enter. But so far as one 
can judge from public controversy it looks as if the root 
of the trouble lay in the failure of the men at the top to 
appreciate the operations and, therefore, the needs of the 
men who do the actual work. Is it possible that a similar 
weakness marks the administration of the anti-submarine 
cam])aign ? Most of us now have a general idea of the 
character of the work that the anti-submarine force is 
called upon to carry out. The Admiralty's recent reply 
to the German slanders o\er the destruction of L'41, 
