April 2(^, iqiy 
LAND & WATER 
which would continue the process of loss and. consequent 
ultimate disintegration. 
If the reader will look at Map I aiid compare the two 
lines, tiiat from which the French started on the morning of 
Monday the i()th, and that on which they were estabhshed 
by the evening of Thursday the lotii, they will appreciate 
what has taken place. The mere advance on the map is 
insignilicant in both senses of that word, but it includes every- 
where upon the left and the right where the two efforts were 
made, the tremendous system of field fortifications which the 
Germans had elaborated in more than 2I years of work, and it 
has seized heights wliich were the object of the effort. 1 
To begin with the limestone ridge of Craonne (marked 
1. upon the map) : The line has not advanced to the occupa- 
tion of the whole ridge, but what it has done is to get across 
the saddle of the ridge at two points, one in front of Courtecon 
(at C), the other at the farm of Hurtebise (at B), and in 
both these places the backbone of the ridge is severed. 
Wliat is the effect of this ? In the first place, the hammer- 
ing of the advance has accounted for many thousands of 
prisoners and scores of guns. The guns, for- instance, on the 
spur or promontory at A which held Fort Conde, were 
abandoned. All the troops holding the wood at Ville-aux-bois 
were captured and so on all along this section of the front. 
But even more important than the losses in prisoners was 
the necessity of counter-attacking on a large scale to which 
the enemy was condemned. The value of strong works is 
that they economise men. When you lose your main system 
and are thrown back on shallow hastily prepared trenches 
behind, you must, if you are to hold at all, bring up many 
more men and suffer nmch higher losses, yon luive to counti-r- 
attack heavily (at a corresjjonding expense) while consolidat- 
ing your new line. If the enemy was to hold at all on the 
new and improvised positions to which he was thrust back 
now that he had lost his original strong lines, he must cover 
those positions precisely as in the EngUsh case to the north, 
by violently re-acting at critical places. These critical 
)jiaces were the saddles of the ridge which the French had 
seized and the open ground below Craonne and in front of 
juvincourt, where the French progress had been exceptionally 
rapid. Counter-attacks of the very strongest sort were 
delivered on the fourth and fifth da\'S of the action against 
all these jroints, and everywhere caused very heavy losses 
indeed to the fresh divisions brought up. The worst loss was 
in front of Hurtebise Farm at B, where the Germans came 
up the slopes from the valley of the Ailette River and were 
caught under the French fire from tlie height above. But 
losses only slightly less grave were also incurred in front of 
Courtecon at C, the other point on which the French hold 
the "ridge and the slopes beyond. The counter-attack iu 
front of Juvincourt was equally- broken. The upshot oi 
the matter is that no matter how nmch of their reserve the 
Gennans draw upon with the object of preventing the line 
going further back in this sector, they cannot escaj^e corres- 
pondingly heavy losses from the continued bombardment 
and the necessity which still exists of counter-attack while 
they are consolidating each new hnc. ' 
The central sector of heights, Brimont Hill and Nogcnt 
Hill (the full name of the village is Nogent L'Abesse), the 
F'rench left alone. The Russian brigade which took Courcy 
on the canal to Rheims, did not press the attack on Brimont, 
while Nogent was not touched at all. What was done was to 
make the advance east and west of the Central Group so that 
. this Central Group became a new salient subject to con- 
verging fire, and with this object the second part of the 
action, that upon the right or east (upon the hill group 
marked 3 in Map I.) took place. The consequences of the 
latter were numerically less than the consequences of the 
attack upon the long Craonne ridge. It yielded less prisoners 
and less guns. The inevitable counter-attack was on a less 
' developed scale and therefore less costly. But, on the other 
hand, it gave an observation post of the utmost value into 
the hands of the F-rench. From the. summit of the Moron- 
villers H ill group one looks for miles and miles right over the 
Champagne district. The system has been compared by 
many travellers to an island standing out of the sea. The 
bare rolling fields of Champagne with their poor chalky soil 
and rather stuntwl ))arallel plantations of pines are here 
diversified, not only by the bold outline of tiie hills but Ijy 
their wooded slopes. The whole hill group has not been 
seized in this case any more than in the case of the Craonne 
Ridge, b;iit the summits have been seized and from them 
one looks right tlown on all the countryside and has good 
obsei-vation of, though not domination over, the hill of 
Nogent with its batteries directed against Rheims. 
The figures of the blow as a whole are familiar to newspaper 
readers in this country : 19,000 j^risoners and something 
oyer one hundred guns fell into I'lench hands during the 
five days' fighting. But let it not be forgotten that much 
more important tlian the advance, or even than the loss in 
prisoners and guns,- was the compulsion imposed upon the 
enemy here as in the case of. the British offensive to bring up 
hurriedly from their strategic reserve in the middle of April 
troops which they had hoped to keep intact until, at any 
rate, the end of May sUid perhaps until the beginning of 
June ' II. Bellog 
The Admiralty 
The following letter on the modern constitution oj the 
Admiralty from an eminent Flag Officer has been addressed 
to the Editor of L.'Wd iv Water. The subject is of exceptional 
importance at the moment, and the criticism is moderate in 
lone and constructive in character ; it gives support to the 
principal contentions of our Naval ivriter, who will reply to 
il next week. We hold over Mr. Pollen's article to-day. 
SIR, — In conunon, I am sure, with all your readers, I 
have been following Mr. Pollen's articles with the 
greatest possible interest. Your correspondent is 
almost the only exponent in the press of what most of 
us consider enlightened naval views. During the last six 
months, especially, we have been hoping against hope that 
the doctrines which he has been setting out with such assured 
authority might soon be reflected in the policy of the, Govern- 
ment. In this we have been disappointed. There has been 
no change in the system at Whitehall. We have reached a 
crisis in the war when, unless there is a radical improvement 
in our naval policy, the whole issue of the campaign 
mat" be jeopardised. Yet our naval power is so great 
that if only it could be put to the best use, there is no reason 
wiiy it should not obtain an ultimate and even a speedy 
\ ictory. But our naval power cannot l^e jnit to the best use 
unless naval administration is reorganised upon right ])rin- 
> iples. • It is only in his last article that Mr. Pollen has hit 
upon the rc'dX causa causans of our misfortunes. I allude to 
llie confusion of functions in the Board of Admiralty — a 
1 onfusion so great as to make it utterly inoperative as a Board 
at all. I shall achieve my object if I can make it clear how 
it is that if a single body of men are set to control both military 
policy and the semi-civil function of the supply, serious errors 
are bound to follow. 
What these errors have been in the past has been ver\- 
clearly set out in your columns in articles between Scptembei- 
■I last year and February of this. They may be summarised 
.1-. follows : 
(i) Our Admiralty was dominated for the ten years before 
1 914 by what is called the " Materialist " school of thought, 
and it seems to have drifted into war in a belief set out bv 
Mr. Churchill in the following terms : " Without a battle." 
he said, " we had all that the most victorious of battles could 
give us." He explained the statement later to mo;an that it 
was impossible for a battle fleet to close an enemy battle fleet 
if the latter were defended by torpedoes, because to do so 
would expo,se the unprotected bottt)ms of our ships to under- 
water attack. It was news to most otficers in the Navy that 
the Fleet need not fight, and that such risks should not be 
faced if the chance of fighting ofi'ered. On many occasions 
during the war some of our admirals and captains have faced 
these risks without fear, and without disaster. But it seems 
to be plain now that the Admiralty did hold this doctrine. 
It is significant, at least, that the only two flag officers in 
command in action, who were members of Mr. Churchill's 
Board, acted on it. When Sir David Beatty ceased to be able 
to direct the operations at the Dogger Bank, through an 
injury to the iiagshi)), his successor in command, according 
to the Admiralty statement made at the time, withdrew from 
the ])ursuit because of the ])rescnce of submarines. At ithc 
IJattle of Jutland, when bad light made long range gunnery im- 
])ossible, the British Mei-t, tliough for more than two hours 
within 12,000 yards of an enemy not faster than itself, and 
l)eing approximately twice as numerous in capital ships and 
far more powerfully gunned, was not brought into decisive 
gunnery range on account of the threat held over it by the 
(ierman defensive torpedo tactics. (See Admiral Jellicoe's 
speech at the Fishmongers' Hall.) On these .two enormously 
important occasions, therefore, the doctrine of taking no 
risks prevented a decisive issue from being sought. It can 
hardly be doubted that the reluctance to take risks arose 
primarily from the belief that victory w;is umiecessarv. 
(2) As the torpedo forbade close action, the only cJiance of 
victory lay in lon^ range gunnery. But this theorv was not 
supported by the de\eloi)ment of a system of fire control tliat 
