LAND & WATER 
January ii, 1917 
The Sea War, 1916 
By Arthur Pollen 
IN revif !\ving the lessons of 1916, we saw last week 
that th ie most significant of these were : 
I-'irsH That eight modern ships, carn'ing guns 
capabl t of sinking any enemy with two, three, or at 
most four salvoes —according as the enemy might be 
lightly or ' heavily armoured, and the salvoes were those 
of 15-inch , 13-5 or 12-inch guns — did not, as a simple 
matter of fact, succeed in sinking more than one in the 
course of three hours. The reader does not have to be 
reminded that this failure of modern gunnery is not at all 
the failu re of the personnel, but of the system, the 
unanticij )ated difficulties of action having been demon- 
strated, in e\-ery engagement of the war, to be such that 
results c »btained in battle practice in a few minuttni, arc 
not obt ained in actual lighting conditions in less than 
scNcral hours. 
Secoi idlv. That, as a result of the German fleet having 
escapee 1 at Jutland, while it might be so deterred from 
sortie, by the fear both of submarines and fleet attack, 
if it V entured once more upon the North Sea, as to be 
^■irtua•ily demobilized that nevertheless that fleet could 
not b 3 said to be ventralised. 
Till irdly, That the reason it was not so neutralised was 
that • hntil the German fleet was destroyed, the blockade 
of tl le submarine exits could not be effected with the 
force s now a\ailable to us. 
Strategic Analysis 
r iome of my readers have questioned the accuracy of 
m\ ■ strategic "analysis and my use of terms. I stated, 
for • instance, " It "takes two to make a battle and sea 
w: ir differs from land war in this that one belligerent, 
if he possesses adequately protected harbours, may 
w K.hdraw his forces from "the field of war altogether. 
I Iftnce the winning of absolute superiority by battle is 
' io t to be attained by the will and resolution of one side 
OB.ly." And I went on to add that where the superior 
P' jwer can " neither force the enemy to decisi\e battle 
I? or completely neutraUse his fleet," the superiority of the 
f .tronger fleet must still be termed conditional. Is this 
' distinction between land and sea war scientific ? Is the 
German army on the Western front neutralised by General 
Nivelle and Field-Marshal Haig's forces in any sense 
different from that in which Admiral Scheer's conmiand 
is neutraUsed by Sir Da\id Beatty's ? 
I submit that there are two points of difference of the 
most \-ital character. To begin with, the Allied forces in 
the West are engaged in a constant and direct attack, 
upon the armed forces opposed to them. From July 
to No\-embcr, combined forces of massed artillery, air- 
craft and infantry enabled the Allies to destroy and 
capture section after section of the enemy's fortifications, 
and in these operations to kill, wound, and capture 
many hundreds of thousands of the enemy, thus bringing 
about there that diminution of his numbers, and 
demoralisation of the survivors which, if applied con- 
tinuously, must result in the complete overthrow of his 
organised forces. It is this overthrow tliat is the con- 
dition of final and absolute victory. The nature of the 
organisation necessary for overwhelming an en- 
trenched army makes it impossible to continue these 
processes during tlie winter. But night raids over the 
trenches, day and night raids by aircraft, and the con- 
tinuous and systematic employment of long range, 
heavy artillery maintain, during the winter months, 
a strain on the enemy. These minor, but incessarit, 
attacks, cause constant losses and serve not only 'io 
embarrass his efforts to im])rove his defences against the 
ne.xt period of sustained attack on the grand scale, but 
perpetuate the demoralisation and discoiitagemeiit 
already effected. 
Now it is obvious that no such direct attacli can be 
made on the German fleet in harbour as was made, during 
tlie battle of the Somme, on the enemy land forces. 
Nor can the results of an attack which cannot be de- 
livered, be enhanced and continued by any naval equiva- 
lent to trencli raids, nor the artillery bombardment on 
communication trenches, depots and \ital posts in his 
rear. Nor can his fleet be subjected to the continuous 
and galling espionage of aircraft. Nor can that espionage 
be varied by bombing. At the best we can say this : 
If the pressure of sea force, from which the German 
Admiral would like to. bvit cannot relieve, his country, 
is made intolerable, the (ierman fleet may be goaded 
into occasional sorties, either in full strength or by light 
cruisers and destroyers, in the hope of inflicting some 
injury u])on their sea oppressors which, if it does not 
improve the internal situation materially, may restore 
to some extent the country's moral. But, on the broad 
fact there surely can be no dispute. By relentlessly 
pushing the principles of artillery attack to their furthest 
logical conclusion, an entrenched army tO'day is, essen- 
tially, no more secure against a superior enemy than the 
same army would be were it engaged in open manoeuvre 
fighting. The acti\e engines of attack arc superior to 
the passi\<' resources of defence in the long run. What 
is gained by entrenchment is not the avoidance of the 
final issue, but only its postponement. But sea power 
has developed no equivalent to the modern use of siege 
artillery on land. \\'hile, therefore, it is in one sense 
perfectly true to say the German fleet is neutralised and 
also that the (ierman army is neutrahsed, yet that there 
is this difference between'the two: the first force can, 
if our resources remain unaltered, easily maintain itself 
intact until the war is over, whereas it is certain that the 
war will be ended by the defeat and destruction of the 
(ierman army by processes already pro\ed to be adapted, 
and equal to the clesired end. 
But this is not the only sense in which the balancing 
of the two forces differs" according as those forces are 
military or naval. It is broadly true to say that from 
the battle of the Aisne until the beginning of the battle 
of the Somme, the opposed armies in France did, in fact, 
neutralise each other. 'Neu\e Chapelle, the Champagne 
and Artois attacks, and the attempt at Verdun, so far 
from disturbing this theory, seemingly only confirmed it. 
for they apparently proved that every effort to substitute 
the policy of attack for the policy of being content with 
neutralisation was doomed to failure. I am aware, of 
course, that this conclusion was fallacious, and that the 
• doctrine of " stalemate," was a heresy. But the pause 
that occurred while the means of attack were being 
produced looked like an equilibrium which the ignorant 
assumed must be constant. And in this sense the 
present positions of the fleets is comparable to the then 
position of the armies. It is here that the great dis- 
tinction introduced by the development of the submarine 
comes in. While the German army was still demobilised 
from direct attack, on the Western front, it was not 
able, by its mere existence, to make a second form of 
indirect attack upon the Allied forces possible. But the 
military stalemate at sea — brought about, of course, by 
the withdrawal by the enemy of his fighting ships from 
the field — ^^leaves the enemy main fleet with one enor- 
mously important function which it can discharge un- 
disturbed. It can and does protect the submarine 
exits. It is, in other words, the German High Seas 
Meet that is the real force behind the submarine attack 
on trade, so that the, steamers that have been sent to 
the bottom since the beginning of August are just as 
much trophies of .Adfniral Scheer and 'Vice-Admiral von 
Hipper as were Queen Mary, Indefatigable and Invin- 
cible. They are all the spoils of the Battle of Jutland. 
This is so for very obvious reasons. The chief of them 
is that the close blockade of an acti\-e and well-balanced 
naval force— that is' of the battle fleet equipped with 
powerful cruisers, fast scouts, and destroyers, and \yith 
the approaches of its harbours protected by submarines 
or blocked by its own mines — has become virtually ini- 
possible. Several elements have comliincd to bring this 
result about, the principal being the incrosed speed at 
