March 29, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
23 
The Liaison of the Seas 
By Arthur Pollen 
Fleets in Being, 1914 
FOR two years and a half the panorama exhibited 
by tlie world's life has been a kaleidoscope of 
unanticipated marvels. To-day we can neither 
see tliese things singly nor together. Should the 
discreet historian, when the right time comes, set out 
these new wonders of the world in some just order 
of proportion, he will place, one cannot help supposing, 
(ireat Britain's achievement in keeping the liaison 
with her land forces over seas very high in the list 
indeed. When Sir Edward Carson, about a month 
ago, introduced the Naval Estimates, he gave some 
facts by which to measure these performances. Up 
to October joth last we had moved across the seas 
eight million fighting men, and one million sick and 
wounded ; nine and a half million tons of supplies and 
munitions,, a million horses and mules, and forly-seven 
million gallons of petrol-fuel for the vehicles that modern 
invention has substituted for horses. I find it quite 
impossible to appreciate the significance of figures like 
tlu'se. They leave the impression of an unrealizable 
prodigy — as when you are told about the speed of light 
or of the temperature of the earth's centre. And, strangest 
of all, the thing has been done virtually without loss. 
When the first expeditionary army left these shores, 
before anything was known of what the German sub- 
marines could do, before conclusions had been tried with 
the main squadrons of the Germany Navy, there was 
nmch shaking of heads. Never had the doctrine of the 
" fleet in being " been flouted with such wild temerity. 
The (Jcrman Navy was second only to the British in the 
power and number of its chief fighting units — and the 
disproportion in August 1914 was not such as to lead 
one to suppose that it was a force that could be brushed 
aside as negligible. What if strong German squadrons — 
fast cruisers, destroyers, the older battleships say — had 
raided the Channel and disputed the entrance of the main 
French ports, sinking our transports and creating delay in 
the junction between the British forces under French and 
the I'Yench forces under Joffre, while the main fleets were 
occupied far away in the northern mists ? Would the story 
of the great retreat of August and the decisive counter- 
stroke of September have been the same, had not the British 
troops been at Mons to break the brunt of the whole 
German right on that fateful Sunday afternoon ? If 
the saving of the German Fleet was purchased by the 
failure of the German army, the cost was high indeed. 
If this was an error of omission, no effort has been made 
to repair it. But then it was an opportunity that could 
not recur. Never, at any rate since then, has German 
sea power on the surface struck a blow of the least 
obvious military value to its side. It has never, I mean, 
checked any direct military action of ours by sinking a 
transport, by capturing a" supply ship, by threatening 
our sea communications by any overt blow. 
But the novelty in sea war to day lies in its being a 
double war. There is a fleet of surface ships and a 
fleet of under-water ships and, to some extent, each fleet 
carries on its operations independently of help from the 
pther. The under-water fleets do not fight each other, 
and in pre-war days there were many— and those of 
high authority— who even thought that while the sub- 
marine could fight the surface ship, the surface ship could 
not fight the submarine. So that it seemed a very marvel 
of boldness that vast overseas military operations — 
that could not continue if the sea communications 
were successfully attacked— should be undertaken before 
the enemy's surface fleet could be destroyed, or the 
efficiency of his under-water fleet be measured. Indeed, it 
seemed incredible that those communications could be 
maintained in face of the submarine threat. These 
prophets of evil have proved false prophets. We have 
maintained forces overseas, not in one theatre, but in at 
least six. And if the tonnage of transports and supply 
ships that have been lost is compared with the bewildering 
figures I have quoted from the First Lord, it will be 
found that the toll taken has been so tiny as to be trivial. 
Yet the toll taken of the merchant shipping is an3/thing 
but trivial. So great is it that Ciermany has a real hope 
of starving us, if not into surrender, at least into com- 
promise. It is two years and four months since von 
Tirpitz gave us his perfectly frank warning that the 
w lole resources of Germany would be devoted to an 
under-water blockade of these islands. . He would call 
a new sea world into existence to redress the balance 
of the old. We should not have needed this threat to 
realize that the thing was inevitable. It is six and forty 
years since Admiral Aube, reasoning from the naval 
caution of Germany, in the war of 1870, made the start- 
ling statement that the war of fleets was a thing of the 
past, and that any Power making war upon England 
would, in future, rely upon the guerre dc course alone. 
Fourteen years later, the evolution of the fast torpedo 
boat suggested to him that now the means had appeared 
that would leave us defenceless. His famous pamphlet 
of 1885 " A Seaman's View of Sea War " and its successor 
in 1886 " Sea Power and Colonies," were curiously 
prophetic. First, he reiterated his theory that the 
capital ship had had its day. The future of sea war 
lay in the attack on trade. Its instruments would be 
innumerable torpedo boats for attack, gunboats for 
defence and, working with them, cruisers to combine 
the highest speed with the smallest size compatible with 
efficiency: " The factors that constitute the superiority 
of these instruments of war," he said, " are number, 
speed and invisibility. ' ' Then in the succeeding pamphlet 
he showed this strange prevision : 
This war of the future, this guerre de course, a war at 
once offensive and defensive, will be possible on two 
conditions only. The first is one purely monil — it will 
have to be a war sans merci — ruthlessncss, when all is 
said, is a necessary condition of such war. Just as a 
lion is what he is precisely so that he can surprise tiie 
prey he tears to pieces, so the torpedo boat is a torpedo 
boat precisely so that he can sink the enemy's vessels on 
sight — torpedo them that is, by catching them defence- 
less and by surprise. It is the only reason of their being. 
Let us make no mistake about it. This ruthless, atrocious 
form of war is inevitable. And in it we shall see the 
sanction of the supreme law of progress, for of this the 
last word is the abolition of all war. So that the cruelty 
of the attack on trade will be justified by its success. 
The second condition tliat will make this war possible 
is that the necessary torpedo boats and cruisers can 
now maintain themselves upon the trade routes (because 
of their speed, their numbers and their invisibihty) and 
so will close them absolutely to all enemy vessels. 
Arming the Enemy 
It is tempting to analyse this remarkable saying. But 
let us for the moment content ourselves with noting it 
as an example 'of the strange foresight that in so many 
fields has anticipated the character of future events, 
without realizing that the instruments necessary to them 
have to be quite different from those the prophet pro- 
posed. When the subma;rine was developed to the 
point of being able to do all that Admiral Aube thought 
torpedo boats and light cruisers could do, everything 
seemed to be ready for the literal fulfilment of his 
prophecy. It is not necessary to remind the reader 
that it was the British Admiralty that between 1904 and 
1 910, by developing the submarine to the dimensions of 
a submersible cruiser, gave it the function of ocean 
piracy that converted it almost from a toy into a terror. 
The A class laid down in the first of these years had a 
displacement of little more' than half that of the 
contemporary destroyers, and about equal to that of 
