10 
LAND & WATER 
-Miiy 17, i(ji/ 
on coiuinon f;tound in thinking: this policy defective. Our 
contemporary nwv assumes that the addition of Sir Henry 
Olivei and Hear- Admiral J^uti as colleagues, will secure 
that the joiiit jwbcy of the three Admirals will be a lighting 
one. I >ield to none in ])referring the Board principle to the 
staff principle. Yet it is a remarkable result to expect. All 
will sincerely hope that the expectation may be realised. Hut 
what a curious light this throws on the whole controversy ! 
And Hotspur's question will occur to many. 
Looking at these changes as a whole, they are, while much 
less than was asked, or even hoped, a marked step in the 
right direction. They are, to begin with, an admission by 
the Government that the fact of naval failure is recognised, 
and that that failure: is in part to be explained by a muddled 
system of administration. But it is significant that whereas 
the critics asked for a reform of .system primarily to secure 
a more efficient military command, the most drastic of the 
reforms is diiected solely towards bettering the civil side of 
the administration. There is an obxious rea.son for this. 
It is a matter in which the Prime Minister is hiinself an 
expert. The man who originated the Ministry of Munitions 
has a right to be an optimist on tlie help that the lavish 
supply of material can afford to a fighting force. And he 
tjuite understands how tp secure that the supply shall be 
la\'ish. But the right professional control of the navy is a 
more recondite matter. To understand it requires tedious 
study ; to select from the Ser\ici! those likely to ensure it, 
needs both a comprehension of the jirinciples in issue and a 
real knowledge of the qualifications of, let us say, the senior 
two hundred officers on the Navy List. It is safe to say that 
no one outside the navy combines these two forms of know- 
ledge— and very icw within it. Let our linal obser\'ations 
on the changes be this. They jjromise a higher degree of 
success in obtaining a very important, but withal the least 
important, need of the naxT to-day. It will need time 
before the second, and more important, reform can be 
sulficientlv understood to be reahsed 
How hard an affair it is to understand and ajiply tlie 
principles of sea war may be gathered from a contribution to 
tjie recent correspondence in these columns and the Times. 
Lord George Hamilton, admitting the rightness of the principle 
put forward by Sir Reginald Custance, wrote as follows in a 
I letter pubUshed on May 8tli : 
" Wliy liave not the very conijK'teiit naval ,oliticers who have 
Ix^n controlling operations adopted tlie policy (of destroying 
the enemy's armed fleet) during the present war ? I assume 
the answer is incontrovertible — that ttie power of the defensive 
in the shape of submarines, forts and Jong range guns, has so 
enormously increased in proportion to offensi\e power, that 
to attempt to force an action upon a fleet so protected i^ to 
incur almost certain disaster for the attacking units." 
Lord George then continues as follows : 
" The defensive in warfare, both on sea and land, has of 
recent years obtained a mastery over the oSensive, and the 
old slap-dash methods of attack either on .sea or land, are 
impracticable unless disaster is to be cultivated." 
He went on to raise a point with regard to the submarine 
war and with this and the allegation that the old methods of 
war were slap-dash, Admiral Custance dealt, in what seems a 
very final minner. But the Admiral left the rest of the two 
statements that I have quoted without comment. They 
amount to tliis : 
(i) A fleet, protected by submarines, forts and long 
range guns — and Lord George might have added mines — 
cannot be attacked by another fleet without the certainty 
of a disaster. 
(2) In sea war generally, the defensive has obtained a 
mastery over the offensive. 
These two propositions, his lordship takes to be incon- 
trovertible. Let us see if this is so. 
The British Grand Fleet certainly cannot attack the 
High Seas Fleet in harbour while protected by submarines, 
mines and forts. It was not built for this kind of fighting. 
But a fleet proof against torpedo and mines and almost proof 
against gunfire, could certainly be built. Such a fleet could 
probably be brought close enough to destroy a fleet in harbour, 
certainly close enough so to obstruct its exit — wth mines and 
other suitable devices — as to neutralise the fleet for a con- 
siderable period. Many schemes for this kind of attack 
were worked out before war began and, had our policy been 
determinedly offensive, it could have been prepared for and 
made effective without inordinate loss. Has it ever been 
even considered ? 
Lord George Hamilton's second proposition is far wifier. 
He would have us lielieve that in a sea battle, the <lefensive 
has recently obtained the mastery. But is not the exact 
reverse of this the truth ? Before the war, everyone seemed 
positive that modern Dreadnought fleets— so deadly was the 
accuracy and so temfic the j)owcr of their guns — would 
destroy cacli other with grim rapidity. It is still pretty 
certain that jiu capital shiji of to-day could survive thirty 
hits from its own guns at any range. And, as a hundred rounds 
can be lired in less t]ian,tcn minutes, a moderate success in 
hitting would justify the pre-war anticipation. Never in the 
history of naval war has the relative sujieriority of the gun 
o\-er its target been greater. The reason actions have been 
indecisive or prolonged is not due to the masterful defensive 
j>roperties of^ modern ships, but to tlie fact that the re- 
quisite hitting has not taken place. Tlie Gfieiscnau, for 
instance was m action from one o'ch)ck till six, not because 
she could stand five hours' hammering by sixteen 12-inch 
guns, but because it took five hours for sixteen 12-inch guns 
to make the dozen or so hits that finally knocked her out. 
The only new thing in tlie way of defensive that a modern 
fleet possesses in action is an advantage, which may be only 
temporary, in the use of torpedoes. It is an advantage 
that only accrues when it is in retreat. If a torpedo and its 
target are approaching from opposite directions, the effective 
range must necessarily be nmch greater than when the 
torpedo is pursuing a shij) which retreats in the same direction 
as itself. A run-away fleet, then, has two long range weapons 
while the'ptu'suing fleet has only one. But if the conditions of 
the action are such — as when fleets are on parallel courses and 
opposite each other — that the attacking fleet can close to 
short range, say six or seven thousand yards, then the condi- 
tions will be the same for both sides aJikc in the tise of the 
torpedo and of the gun. 
Tlie issue raised by those who question our tactics at 
Jutland is simply this. Should the menace held over an attack- 
ing fleet by the torpedoes of tjte weaker be faced if facing 
the risk affords the only chance of decisive victory ? Those 
who say tliat the risk cannot be faced explain the refusal 
to do so by the behef that a torpedo hit is necessarily fatal. 
But the facts do not justify them. In 1915 two modem ships, 
the tierman Mol/ke, and the British Roxburc^h, were torjjedocd 
by submarines. At Jutland eleven German and one British 
capital ships were hit. Since then, one, if not two, enemy 
Dreadnoughts, one enemy, and two British cruisers, and at 
least one of our destroyers have been hit also. Of these 
eighteen or nineteen instances, only'one German capital ship 
and the two small British cruisers were sunk. It is unlikely 
that the Pommtrn was destroyed by a single torpedo, and, 
in the case of Falnujulh and NoUingluim, we know that one 
was struck by four and thi; other by three torpedoes And 
Marlborough, torj)edoed quite early in the Jutland fight, kej^t 
her place in the squadron and fired with \igour and regularity 
afterwards. There seems, then, to be very little case for saying 
that the torpedo risk should be a legitimate deterrent. 
On the other hand, other experiences of war show that 
the single shot from a big gun may liring about results 
which few anticipated. In the Dogger Bank affair Lion 
was incapacitated by a shell which damaged one of her engines. 
It is true that she was not lost, but the chances of victory were, 
so that this unhappy shot may be said to have been decisive. 
.-Vnd at Jutland there seems to be every reason for believing 
that Queen Mary, Indefatigable, and Invincible were none of 
them crushed by gunfire and gradually reduced to impotence 
and then destroyed, but that all simply fell to single unlycky 
hitsthat caused internal explosions. .Actually then experience 
of war teaches us that thirteen capital ships may be struck by 
single torpedoes without one being sunk, while of the coin- 
paratively smtUl number of battle cruisers that have been in 
action, four were destroyed, or eliminated from the battle 
by single shells. Would anyone on these facts hold that a 
fleet of battle cruisers, twice as numerous as that of tho enemy 
and with anything from three to four times its gunfire, must 
as a mailer of course, be kept outside the range of the enemy's 
guns ? It seems a wildly absurd proposition — though it is 
of course, true that when the Dreadnought type was designed 
one of the tactical advantages claimed for it was that such 
a ship would be able to destroy its enemy while keeping out 
of the enemy's range. But in theory I can see no way of 
distinguishing between the shell- risk and the torpedo risk. 
How are we to explain how so accomplished and ex- 
jxjrienced a student of naval affairs as Lord George Hamilton 
should set up the proposition that the mastery of the defensive 
at sea is " incontrovertible ? " I suggest that he does so, 
I)ecause this was the principle which, as a simple matter of 
fact, governed the command of the British Fleet at Jutland, 
and it is inconceivable to Lord George that the principle can 
be erroneous. .\nd does not this in turn explain our con- 
tinued proclivity to the school that holds such doctrines ? 
The predominant minds in this Cabinet, just as in its six 
l)redecefv;ors back to 1906, have been accustomed to believe 
a certain naval policy, arising out of certain principles, un- 
<luestionably right. They assume, therefore, that what has 
followed from this poHcy in action, must be right also. Events 
therefore, that appear to others — who hold different principles 
— to be almost stupefying in their error, seem to them just 
natural and incvitabh'! Aktiiur I'olle.s. 
