8 
LAND & WATER 
November 30, 1916 
clearness those who were marked out to succeed them. , 
This vagueness as to the fitness of men is part of the penalty; 
\vc pay for the fact that, in the ten years preceding; the 
war, naval administration was entirely in the hands of 
one school of naval thought, which had held the study 
i>f the principles of naval war — as exhibited by hi^tmy 
!ind luialysis— in absolute contempt. This long pre- 
dominance had the result that led to almost all officer^ w liu 
had less faith in mcT& material than in mihtary principle, 
war trained men, with scientific methods, were ostrai iMtl 
both from High Commands and posts of administrative 
responsibility. What may be called the historical and 
.technical schools of thought, therefore never had a chance 
of achieving that welding of past experience with modern 
methods, on the achievement of which as everyone can 
now see the successful use of new material can alone be 
based. It was the proscription of these officers tliat 
really explains the anarchy of thought that prexailed 
at \Vhitehall in the closing years of peace. And it is 
no wonder if it is a difficult thing now to pick out the 
men who best combine personal ability with a grip of the 
right principle on which those energies should be em- 
ployed. Mr. Balfour, liaving once found that the Situation 
lias not been met by a blind acceptance of the ad\ i>ers 
he inherited, may now find that it may not be hi^ Inst 
or even his second choice of new advisers, that will meet 
the case. But the past at least has this lesson, that 
should a new occasion for revising appointments arise, 
it may be better to act on it with greater alacrity. 
Right Principle Vital 
It is really a vital matter to realise that, unless the 
Navy is run upon right principle, no personal ability in 
those that run it can compensate for the blunders that 
must ensue. How far we arc from the general acceptance 
of right' principle has become obvious during the last 
four months. My readers, I fear, may be a little wearied 
by recurring expositions in these cohmins of the vagaries 
9! Mr. Churchill. But the duty of setting them out, 
though tedious, is one that cannot be eva^icd, because 
Mr. Churchill was head at the Admiralty from 191 1 until 
May 1915, and the principles he holds to-day were cer- 
tainly the principles which guided Admiralty polity then. 
It would, of course, be unjust to impute these heresies 
to his naval colleagues at that time. But it is impossible 
to deny that they failed to teach their Chief what right 
principles were. We must realise how ominous it is that 
such rank heresies could prevail, if we are to understand 
the stupendous difficulties with which Mr. Balfour is 
surrounded. 
Mr. Churchill's latest outbreak occurs in his reply to the 
critics who pointed out the stupefying absurdities of his 
stateinent, that without a decisive victory we could 
enjoy all the fruits that victory could bestow. He now 
tells us that this was not an announcement of principle, 
but an argument which we have all failed to understand. 
He never meant us to understand that victory was un- 
important. It was his delicate way of tclhng us that 
it was wholly unattainable. It was the argument, in short, 
that the grapes were sour. Victory is unattainable be- 
cause out Fleet cannot, and ought not, to fight the Ger- 
mans at all. He ought not to seek decisive action— 
that is get into such contact that the guns will be effective 
■ — because the Germans (unhappily) are armed with 
torpedoes, and the under bellies of our battleships are 
not protected against them. In Mr. Churchill's mind 
the train of reasoning must run something like this. 
Every torpedo that is fired must hit. Every hit must 
penetrate. Every penetration must cause the loss of a 
ship. Therefore not to run away when tojpedoes 
may be used is to commit the suicide of a squadron. 
Mr. Churchill's former heresy, bad as it was, was better 
than this. It only said that a fleet need not fight because 
^■ictory was without value. The new doctrine that a 
ileet cannot fight but must always run away, really 
strikes at the root of everything. It is the sheer in- 
sanity of nonsense. 
And it is announced to the world at a most unfortunate 
time. It will be received by the enemy with that satis- 
faction reserved for those who can truthfully employ 
those words of comfort—'' I told you so " ! For it is 
exactly upon this reluctance to take risks that the Ger- 
mans have built all their naval hopes. They even have 
^le effrontery to say that this hope was realised at the 
Tjattle of Jutland. The whole thing is beautifully set 
out in the writings of Captain Hoirweg of the German 
. Press Bureau. It was adumbrated in an article in the 
Scioitific Aiiicrican of last July. The Times of Saturday 
last printed a scries of extracts from recent and more 
elaborate exposition of the theory by the same writer. 
The theory is briefly this. The Germans were never such 
fools as to suppose that with a fleet of sixteen battle- 
ships and five cruisers, they could attack and defeat a 
fleet of twenty eight battleships and nine criusers. But 
they were quite prepared to take on the battle cruisers 
with all their forces, if we could give them an opportunity; 
and quite confident that if the engagement, so produced, 
ended by an encounter with the Grand Fleet, they could 
stand, the Grand Fleet off by torpedo attacks and so 
escape from the overwhelming gunfire of the more num- 
erous and more powerfully armed squadron. We 
know, of course, that they did make two organised 
torpedo attacks at Jutland, and that these, amongst other 
manceuvres, enabled them to open the range. But they 
achieved this end, not because no British Admiral dared risk 
an under water attack upon his ships, but because the 
falling mist, the peculiar conditions of light, and the late- 
ness of the hour made the obvious reply to these manceu\ res 
impossible. This being the case, "it is surely djubly 
and trebly unfortunate that the politician most closely 
identified with the selection of the officers who commanded 
at Jutland, the man who presided over the successive 
Boards finally responsible for the fleets with which we 
began the war, and the fleets that we have built during the 
war, shoifld now come out in the open and say that the 
German jeer is neither a libel nor an insult, but just a plain 
statement of an obvious principle of modern naval war. 
Aktiu'k Pollicn. 
Story of a Coward 
Those who remember ]\h-. Sidney Dark's first novt.-l. The 
Man who would not he Kin^. will scarcely recogni-.e the author 
in his new book, Ajrciid, (John Lane, ds.), in which in place 
of writing light and amusing nrattcr over and round a rather 
abstract problem, he takes up the tragic side of life and deals 
with it in distinctive and gripping fashion. Jasper Sedley, 
the hero of this present baok, was a physical coward ; h2 
funked as a small bay, he funked at school, and he lost the 
woman he loved through sheer funk in a critical minute — 
and the rest of the book is the story ot his redemption. 
The author has been at great pains to delineate the character 
of this boy, and the delicacy of the work is such tliat he 
shows Jasper's fine moral fibre while emphasising to the full 
the boy's weakness and limitations ; there is, too, an 
epigrammatic quality in certain ])assages of the book which 
afford the necessary reUef from a rather painful study— this 
as regards three-quarters of the book. The last chapters 
tell how Jasper, by the grace of God, found himself and became 
a whole man. 
In those last chapters is shown, with forceful simplicity, 
the love of a father for his son, and the regeneration of the son. 
There is, too, a glimpse of the war, and this mainly devoted 
to telling how the realisation of the threat that the war brought 
with it gave play to the best that is in men, and in some cases 
remade them altogether. Contrasted with the earher des- 
criptions of Jasper's life, these last chapters picture the 
change of view-point that the war brought to Britain as a 
whole — the microcosm mirrors the world. 
The end of the book, simply and directly written, is work 
of a very high order — Jasper passes from physical cowardice 
to the highest form of self-abnegation and courage, and the 
skill of the author is shown in that he makes us beheve in 
the vital change in the man. The book is an excellent 
psychological study, and an inspiring piece of work. 
The Yeoman Adventurer, by George W. Gough. (Methuen 
and Co., 6s.), begins with the day when Mr. Oliver Wheatman, 
of the Hanyards, went out to catch a big jack, and tiicrcby 
walked straight into a maze of ad\-cntures that leads the reader 
on from page to page, through the great days and .scenes of tiie 
'45, in company with some very gallant" gentlemen, and in 
the service of such a lady as Blackmoie's Lorna Doonc— 
the book is of the same type as Blackmore's classic, and has 
an equal hold on the reader. It is romance of the kind that 
is growing all too rare, in wliich, without morbid analysis, 
character is clcaHy depicted, and if the aiithor has gone to the 
limits of credibility in order to achieve his ending, he is to be 
forgiven, for his story is such that one will be reh'ctant to 
nut it down, and thankful for a real romance. 
