February 7, igi8 
Land & Water 
The Two Blockades: By Arthur Pollen 
Men, women of the working class, there is no time to lose 
after the horrors and sufferings we have undergone. A new 
and frightful disaster threatens our people — yes, even the 
whole of humanity. Only a peace without annexations or 
indemnities can save us, and the hour has come when you 
must raise your voice for such a peace. At this moment 
the German people must, by means of powerful demon- 
strations, manifest its will to finish the war.— Pamphlet 
published January loth in Berlin, signed by Bernstein, 
Brand. Cohn, Dittmann, Hease, Ledebour, Vagtherr, Hers- 
feld, and other leaders. 
A crowd of some 200,000 advanced on Thursday morning 
towards Charlottenberg, where it vehemently demonstrated 
wita cries of " Peace and bread." — The Amsterdam Tyd, 
February 1st. 
Hen Dittman has been arrested for attempting to speak at a 
meeting of strikers. — Cologne Gazette. 
Seven BerUn factories have been placed under martial law 
by the Chief Commander of the Mark of Brandenburg. He 
has also ordered the strikers to resume work at latest by 
seven in the morning of Monday next, failing which they will 
be punished according to military discipUne. — Central News. 
WTien they realised that the whole of the importations for 
civilian purposes were practically stopped they would see that 
shortage could not be avoided. — Lord Rhondda. 
The submarine is held. . . . the sinkings of merchant 
ships have now been reduced td a level lower than before 
Germany cast aside all restraint. . . . But we must 
have more ships. . . . Submarine destruction still 
exceeds production. . . American participation in the 
war must inevitably make large demands on merchant 
shipping, and yet we must strive at the same time to keep 
up with the demands of the Allied armies and with the vitaJ 
necessities of the European civil population 
—Sir Eric Geddes. 
Taking all the homeward bound ocean convoys since the 
inception of the system in the traddle of last year 14,180,041 
gross registered tons of shipping have been convoyed, with 
a loss of 1.44 per cent. — Sir L. Chiozza Money. 
The submarine . . . substituted the literally invisible 
. . . for the virtually invisible torpedo boat. But while 
no new principle was acided, a means so far more effective 
was substituted, that naval thinkers and writers at once 
perceived that the logical development of the submarine 
would convert Aube's guerre de course from a dream to a 
working theory." — Land & Water, January 24th, 1918. 
VVho were the naval thinkers and writers who so clearly 
foresaw what is happening to-day, and why did they not warn 
the Admiralty of the peril that was looming ahead ? " . . . 
(/-boat piracy was an entirely unlooked for development 
and we venture to doubt whether it came more as a surprise 
to the Admiralty than to those naval thinkers and writers who 
are now so wise after the event. — Naval and Military Record, 
January 30th. 
Sea-Power in Actfion 
THESE extracts from the press of last week 
seem to convey, in a manner that is at once 
dramatic and unmistakable, certain elementary 
truths about the facts of the war and the state 
of mind of people looking on at it. Perhaps 
the first of them is, that we can now no longer doubt that the 
Allied blockade has brought about such a stringency in Germany 
and Austria, that the peoples of both countries are sick and 
weary of war and its privations, and are shamelessly clamorous 
for peace. That they have made themselves heard is curiously 
striking, for the obstacles to their combining for any form of 
protest, overt or otherwise, have always appeared so great 
to observers here, that it seemed more hkely that they would 
prefer to die of hunger, than risk the perils tliat face mutineers. 
For to a military government the rebellious seamen at Kiel 
and the recalcitrant munition makers in Berlin are equally 
guilty of the crime of mutiny, a crime which Germany can 
generally deal with in a simple and fatal way. Perhaps 
the most surprising part of the present situation is that one 
member only of the Reichstag has been arrested, and 
that the enforcement of a state of siege was postponed till 
last Monday. Indeed, the deliberation of the authorities 
may well be the strongest evidence of the gravity of the 
situation they had to face. In any event it is the improbable 
that has happened. The German workman has become 
articulate — and there is no mistaking the meaning of his 
cry. It is simply that what neither sea nor land power could 
achieve by fighting, sea power alone has achieved by the mere 
static pressure of blockade. 
This civil populations of the chief enemy countries are then 
in the initial stage of disintegration—exactly the result pre- 
dicted of blockade in modern conditions. The weapon that 
for six months we would not use at all and then, for another 
twelve, handled so gingerly, has proved, when all is said, 
the most effective in our armoury. The thing has happened 
so exactly according to calculation, that one is left wondering 
whether the further historical precedent wiU follow, and the 
enemy try to seek relief by a victory at sea. His chances 
of success are obviously small even il he were to bring every 
unit of his sea force into play. For that matter, it is 
not at all sure that even a single sea victory, could he win it, 
would free the seas for him; For whatever the military 
reserves of the Allies, their sea reserves are greater yet. If the 
High Seas Fleet comes out then, it would perhaps be rather to 
revivify the moral of a despairing people, than in search of 
material victory that would reverse the sea position. But 
whether hunger and despair drive him to sea battl or not, it 
is certain that the situation leaves the German Higher 
Command with no third alternative to peace or a vigorous 
offensive somewhere. 
The case of Germany and the effect of our blockade upon 
it, naturally give rise to many forms of reflection. The situa- 
tion has a grim humour of its own, when we remember that it 
was Germany that was tlie first to start the bli ckading game. 
But it has grave warnings for us too, for our own pass is no 
laughing matter. It is clear from Lord Rhondda's state- 
ments that, for the next eight months, while we shall not be 
brought to Germany's extremity we shall unqtiestionably be 
brought far lower in food supply than the most pessimistic 
of us feared. We must see to it then that we find some 
appeal — as effective for the next eight months as has been 
military discipline amongst the enemy peoples for the last 
eighteen — that will make the f)eople of this country under 
the impending trifil preserve their moral dignity. 
The paradox that Germany, the first Power to threaten 
blockade by sea', should be the first to find its results intoler- 
able, is, however, not the only one of the situation. For just 
as Lord Rhondda is telling us that meat importation for 
civilian purposes have ceased altogether, the First Lord of the 
Admiralty is cheering us with a welcome confirmation of the 
news that the submarine is held, and that we haveMDrought — 
and can presumably keep — the losses by submarine beloA* the 
level at which they stood before the ruthless campaign began 
a year ago. How this result has been achieved is further 
explained by Sir Leo Chiozza-Money. The convoy system, so 
long declared to be impracticable, was tentatively inaugurated 
in the middle of last summer, and six months experience shows 
that a bare ij per cent, of tonnage is lost when the most 
obvious — if only because the sole— measure of protecting it 
is adopted. But we must go hungry because it was adopted 
too late, and 700 or 800 ships lost that could have been saved, 
and because the replacement of shipping — not that destroyed 
by submarine, but that taken for mihtary and naval purposes 
at the very beginning of the war — was not undertaken as a 
national effort, until more than a year after the necessity for 
such action had been pointed out. 
So, after all, those who have maintained from very early 
days that Great Britain's share in the war should have been 
primarily her sea share ; that an immediate and relentless 
siege would have been of more effect than the utmost possible 
military effort ; and that, from at latest December 1914, our, 
first business after enforcing blockade was to prepare the 
material and organisation for rebutting the enemy's effort on 
the same lines, were not so far wrong. The tragedy of the 
situation has been not merely that these policies were not 
followed earher, but that there was no possibility of their even 
being understood, until the whole structure of our naval 
administration had been utterly transformed. It would be 
the last and greatest of our misfortunes, were any spirit of 
re-action now to lead to the undoing of the revolution in our 
sea administration and sea policies that have been brought 
about in the last si.x months. Perhaps there is no danger of 
any such reaction taking place. But it is obvious that the 
complete transformation of the Admiralty, begun in May 
1917 and completed within the last month, has shocked 
and disgusted many old and faithful supporters of that de- 
partment as it used to be, and »f the men that for the last 
fifteen years have controlled it. Of this disgust there are 
many evidences. The passage I quote above, from the best 
and ablest of Service publications, is only one of many proofs 
that a majority of those interested in naval policy see little 
more in what has happened than a light-hearted, irresponsible 
and unjust dismissal of one after another of their old 
favourites. It is, of course, very unfortunate when men, for 
nearly a generation, marked for the highest commands, have 
succeeded to them in war, and then have to make way. for 
others, either because war has taken a course for which they 
were unprepared, or because they themselves have exhausted 
