LAND & WATER 
January 3, 191S 
unexpectedly subordinate to his junior. Rut it is in the day's, 
work to accept these things with simple loyalty, and it Mould' 
bo no compliment to the present First Sea Lord to select 
that for congratulation which every naval officer must look 
upon as the most obvious and elementary of his duties. 
The fact is recalled to show that in March 11)15, Whitehall 
did not yet know their man, and likely enough because he had 
not yet "been given his opportunity. But it was not long in 
coming now. It is known that on him devolved the chief 
share in the naval part of the two evacuations of the penin- 
sular, and that the naval part was the chief part. But his 
work at the bases previous to this and his subsequent work 
when he succeeded Sir John de Robeck in command of the 
Mcditeirancan, seem hardlv to be known at all. 
The abandonment of the" dallipoli adventure coincided, it 
mav be remembered, with the beginning of the enemy's sub- 
marine activities on a large scale in the middle seas, llie 
Mediterranean command was not limited to the Mediterranean, 
and it included the care of at least three lines of communica- 
tions to different large army bases, and necessarily involved 
the closest co-operation with the l-'rench and Italian fleets. 
I-ew if any naval officers, therefore, have ever undertaken 
duties more difficult, more extensive and various, or more 
complicated than tliose which now fell upon the new C -in-C. 
I see it has been stated, on the strength of his having com- 
manded the vessel in which tiie King once visited liik 
Eastern Dominions, that Sir Kosslyn VVemyss enjoys a reputa- 
tion as a courtier. This is about as illuminating a remark 
as to say that because he wears a monocle he has a reputation 
as a dandy. But it is true that Admiral Wemyss is, in the 
best sense of that much hackneyed term, a man of the world. 
It was this fortunate circumstance combined with a perfect 
acquaintance with the French language that smoothed his 
diplomatic path with our gallant naval Allies. He illustrated 
in short, but in an unexpected sense, the dictum of Nelson, 
that the best of all negotiators was a British Admiral backed 
by a British fleet. The Paris Conference, decided, I under- 
stand, and the decision was in every sense gratifying, that an 
Allied Naval Council was to be established. In acting with 
such a council Sir Rosslyn Wemyss has his Mediterranean 
experience to guide him. He has to welcome a new ally, the 
United States, as an addition to those with whom he has 
dealt before. It is surely a happy augury that these complex 
relations will be handled at the British end by one whose 
knowledge of the world, whose tact and diplomatic accom- 
plishment are unquestionable. ^ 
Howev'cr, the essence of the Chief Command to-day is fo 
get, first, out of the Britsh Naval force and then out of our 
Allies, the maximum dynamic effect against the enemy's 
effort to cut our sea communications. As most competent 
obser\'crs have long since realised, the defeat of the submarine 
is far less a matter either of new inventions or of mere multipli- 
cation of known weapons or weapon bearing units than a 
matter of the best combination of forces already in existence. 
This combination can only result from a rightly organised 
staff. What ground is there for supposing that Sir Kosslyn 
Wemyss will do better than his predecessors in this matter ? 
They are of the most solid possible description. They are, 
in point of fact, just these, that when faced with those exten- 
sive, varied, complicated and difficult tasks to which I have 
alluded above, Admiral Wemyss was able to deal with them, 
and deal with them successfully, precisely because, knowing 
exactly what he wished to do and being resolute to get it done , 
he also knew how to organise the men at his disposal, so that 
each separate task was clearly defined and plainly feasible. 
He profited, in other words, bv the grinding experience of 
(".allipoli, and realised that onlyby a rightly constituted staff 
could the manifold work of war be properly done. The scale 
of this achievement was naturally enough known to few. But , 
by July of last year, the evidences of it were available at 
Whitehall, and Sir Eric Geddes had not long been there before 
he had ajjpreciated their meaning. It will be remembered 
that it was almost his first act to bring Sir Rossi vn Wemyss 
into his councils. The change was announced in America 
in the second week in August. I may, perhaps, be pardoned 
for quoting from an interview with me in a Washington 
journal on the occasion.' 
" The really big stroke is the retirement of Sir Cecil Burnev 
and his replacement by Rcar-Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss. I 
have not a British Navy list by me, but, at a rough guess, I 
should say there arc probably forty officers senior to Admiral 
VVemyss who have been passed over to permit this officer to 
take "this position. Wemyss has long been regarded by the 
forward school as a ' white hope.' He was second in command 
during the Gallipoli campaign, where his promptness, energy 
and fighting spirit showed him not only a real leader, but ii 
man iwssossed of that cool quick judgment which is of the 
essence of the matter in war. 
" The cables say the new Second Sea Lord is to be relie\cd 
of certain departmental duties but do not tell us what the new 
duties arc to be But ii is not difficult to guess the character 
of the change. The rearrangement of two months ago brought 
about an amalgamation between the War Stafif and the Board 
of Admiraltv. The First Sea Lord was still left as the chief 
administrative head of the whole active Navy and of the 
Staff as well. I expect what will happen is that the First 
Sea Lord's functions will now be cut in half, that he will 
remain the chief professional administrator and the Second 
Sea Lord will become the chief of the War Staff. It will 
represent the triumph of the younger school. M'hen the great 
changes took place in Ma>-,' those of us who had fought so 
hard for them for so long approved everything that liarl been 
done, but complained that the thing had stopped too soon. 
We also saw that the thing could not remain stopped where 
it was. It had to be pushed to its logical conclusion.. . It 
looks as if Sir Itric Geddes had found an extremely ingenious 
and perfectly effective way out of the difficulty. If the 
appointment of Admiral Wemyss means what I hope it meaiis, 
we may expect to sec the vast potential power of the British 
Navy applied to winning the war in a fashion which has not 
yet been applied." 
It looks as if I did not very greatly misjudge the situation 
in August. What would seem to have happened is something 
like this. Sir Rosslyn Wemyss was tried at the Admiralty 
in the task of which he had shown himself to be a master in 
the Mediterranean. It was a task that had not been success- 
fully met elsewhere, because it had never been attempted 
elsewhere. If he made good with the same success at Whitehall 
there would be no need for a deputy First Sea Lord, but a 
clear case for making him First Sea Lord. In the event 
Admiral Wemyss did make good. 
Significance of Sea Power 
Surely the New Year could hardly open under happier 
auspices. The developments of the last few months havi; 
changed the position on land to the enemy's advantage in 
a most disconcerting and discouraging way. But as no one 
knows better than the enemy himself, it is at '.sea, and rot on 
land that the war will finally be decided. The factors, that is 
to say, on which victory depends, arc still those that derive 
from sea power. How well the enemy understood this 
a year ago was proved by his being compelled to drive the 
L'nited States into belligerency rather than forego his only 
possible stroke at the sea supplies that kept the mihtary 
alliance against him in munitions and stores, and the civil 
populations, on whose well being and contentment all military 
force is founded, supplied with the necessaries of living and 
prosperity. A year ago, when the enemy's efforts to make 
peace after his many defeats on the Somme had failed, when 
President Wilson's last effort at an amicable arrangement 
had shown all the world that no settlement by negotiations 
was possible, it became at once clear that a ruthless sub- 
marine attack on our supply ships would immediately be made. 
Those who remembered the terms of the German 
surrender to America of the previous May expected nothing 
else. For, with curious and quite unnecessary candour, 
Berlin, for once, instead of making a promise and breaking it, 
entered into an underaking that was purely provisional and 
warned the world that the objectionable sinkings would be 
resumed the moment it suited Germany's con\X'nience or 
necessity. In other words, from the day \\hen Von Tirpitz 
first threatened the world with the submarine, in December 
1914, until she drove America into war in F'ebruary 1917, 
Germany was never under the faintest illusion about the sea 
war being the real war. 
It is a vital matter that civihians in all countries should bear 
this fundamental truth in mind, especially a t the moment 
when the disappearance of Russia has altered the whole 
balance of power on land. F'or the disappearance of Russia 
and the change in the mihtary situation that results, do not 
in the least degree affect the validity of the axiom on whicli 
our enemy has acted consistently and from the first. For the 
mflitary change amounts only to this, that until the American 
army redresses the balance on land, the Allied forces are 
possibly insufficient to obtain a definite military victory. 
But, meanwhile, the enemy forces are still less able to obtain 
a decision in their favour. The change in balance, then, 
restores a situation gravely weighted against the Central 
Powers to equality onlj-. And it is, at best, temporary. 
The problem of the day, then, is civil endurance ; how shall 
we hold out till the enemy force is spent ? It is largely a 
matter of confidence of the certainty of ultimate and com- 
plete success. This confidence — if I am right in saying that 
ultimate success turns on the sea war — should now be better 
founded than it has ever been, for the reason that never before 
lia\c we had a better assura nee that a sea power \\ould be 
rightly used. The reform of the Admiralty, initiated by the 
criticisms of last April and May, begun by Mr. Lloyd George 
in the end oL the latter month, and now completed by Sir 
Eric Geddes, should form the turning point in tlie war. 
Arthur Pollkn. 
