12 
Land & Water 
April II, 191 
{Continued front page 9). 
angler with the appetite or voracity in the fish. They deal 
with the quarry not as a creature that can be tempted to the 
surface, but as a resolute denizen of the depths, and proceed 
to intercept him between his starting-point and his destina- 
tion by means from which, being invisible and submerged, 
he cannot escape. The professional fishermen, in otlier 
words, recognise that the under-water quarry, if it is to be 
attacked wholesale, must be attacked by under-water means. 
The application of this counsel to the case of the submarine 
has, from the first, been obvious enough. The arming of 
merchantmen and their convoy by gun- and depth-charge- 
carrying destroyers, the regular patrolling of infested areas 
to search for submarines while recharging their batteries 
on the surface at night, the employment of aeroplanes to 
discover them near the surface — all these things may be 
likened to the angling side of the fisherman's craft. It is 
no doubt the more attractive form of fishing. It appeals 
more to the artist and to the sportsman. But it is too 
accidental to be the method that gets satisfactory results in 
fish brought to market. For this, wider and, if you like, 
brutal ways are better. For obvious reasons, you cannot 
trawl for submarines, nor does it seen; likely that stationary 
obstacles, whether nets or otherwise, ' would be effective — if 
merely designed to impose a passive barrier between the 
submarine and his destination. Through any such obstacles 
as these some means could certainly be found of using a 
torpedo to clear a passage. But it is not at all certain that 
the submarine could ever find a way of evading continuous 
mine-fields, spread from shore to shore over the Channel 
and North Sea, and repeated at different depths, so that at 
no level or even on the surface could a safe passage be found. 
It looks, then, as if the only wholesale method of dealing with 
the submarine is to^make its_^passage through any tract of 
sea that it is bound to pass, if a destination is to be reached, 
wholly impossible. 
The advantage of a Kola Bay port to the Germans would 
be the possession of a port free from what might be called 
the geographical shortcomings of her present naval bases. 
It is, of course, not a base that would be of value for anything 
except for submarine work, for it is inconceivable that any 
useful number of surface ships— even of the fastest de- 
stroyers — could pass through our guard and reach so distant 
a point in safety. And from this it follows that it is in 
theory a port, the use of which by submarines could be denied 
to the enemy by\close investment. As has so often been 
pointed out, the present German bases cannot be blocked by 
a mine-barrage because mine-fields must be protected by 
surface ships, because the integrity of the German Fleet 
would make the defence of a mine-field near to the German 
harbours possible only by employing our own battleships 
there, and because to emjiloy our battleships in narrow, 
shallow, and uncharted waters, would expose us to such 
disadvantages as to make the risk almost impossible. But 
if no powerful surface sliips could be brought into Kola Bay, 
then a close investment of this inlet by a mine-field, watched 
by surface vessels more powerful than anything the enemy 
could have there, should, as I have said, be possible. But 
I use the phrase "in theory" because the actual operation 
would present extraordinary difficulties. For we should be, 
presilmably. without a base on the Murman coast ourselves, 
and to maintain an inshore watch in the Aictic regions, 
1,200 miles or more from the nearest port in which it would 
be possible to refit ships and refresh crews, would be an 
undertaking entirely without precedent in warfare. Em- 
phatically', therefore, the problems that must arise from the 
German possession of a port in Kola Bay are far better dealt 
with by prevention than by cure. Arthur Pollen. 
Mr. Wilson's Great Stroke : By Arthur Pollen 
I 
DOUBT if the majority of Enghsh people really 
appreciate the fuU significance of what President 
Wilson, seemingly at the suggestion of General 
Pershing, has decided to do, not only with the 
American troops in France, but with all the troops 
that can be got to France in the immediate future. 
^The decision in itself is that the American battalions are 
to be brigaded as occasion requires with the French and 
British battalions, and to be sent into the firing line — of 
course, under their own colonels, majors, and company 
officers, but — as units controlled by French or British 
Brigadier-Generals of Division and so upwards. To many 
people, the President seem^, in this, first to have done no 
more than meet a very clear necessity of the situation, and, 
secondly, only to be following a course for which he himself 
and the British Admiralty have already supplied precedents. 
As to the first point, I see it stated that there are in France 
a large number of American troops available for the purposes 
designated, a nvunber which must very much exceed the 
total of the Allied losses in the battle which still continues. 
Of the timely value of this reinforcement there can be no 
two opinions. As to the second, a precedent for the principle 
involved has existed for several months in the case of the 
American destroyers operating in the Atlantic under the 
ultimate command of one of the most experienced and most 
brilliant of our senior admirals. They are, of course, only 
part of the forces at the disposal of this officer, and to make 
the analogy complete, Admiral Sims commanded the entire 
combined forces himself for a period. 
This reciprocal action by the Governments of the United 
States and Great Britain is, I believe, entirely without 
parallel in history. It has often happened that Allied forces 
have worked together under a Generalissimo, but in each 
case every unit, and every individual in it, looked to the 
national commander-in-chief for orders. What was unique 
in this Anglo-American naval arrangement was that the 
captains and officers of English and American ships came 
under the direct orders of an officer nol of their own 
natioriality. Those who have been privileged, to see at first 
hand how this arrangement has worked in practice have 
been deeply impressed by the skill and tact, no less than by 
the fine warlike and patriotic spirit which has alone made 
its complete success possible. And it is not a far-fetched idea 
to suppose that the real authors of President Wilson's epoch- 
making decision are Rear-Admiral Sir Lewis Bayley, Vice- 
Admiral Sims, and the officers and men of both nationalities 
who have served under them 
But, precedent or no precedent, the case of the Army is in 
reality an infinitely more striking affair. For seamen are as 
a race apart. The long training and the sustained self- 
devotion necessary to^ gain mastery of a science and a craft 
incomprehensible to the lay segregate the sailor so com- 
pletely from the landsman that when a common cause bids 
them unite their forces, it is almost easier for English naval 
officers to feel the bond of brotherhood with American 
colleagues than with brother Englishmen not of their own 
high and select calling. The professional training of the 
soldier confers no parallel aloofness and, where you have the 
citizen soldier, there is almost no qualification of his purely 
national prejudices and characteristics. Without question, 
every American who volunteered for this war — and nine out 
of ten of those in France must be men who had gone into 
training before the draft came into force — did so to become 
a member of a purely American force, to fight under the 
Stars and Stripes for the credit and glory of his own country, 
to be commanded by American generals, and to be led and 
directed by an American staff. 
To sacrifice so much of this ideal, to consent to so much of 
the merging of so much of the national identity — this would 
be extraordinary in any event. It approximates to the 
heroic in the case of a nation so singularly self-conscious of 
its nationality. The President has not, of course, by any 
means abandoned the building up of an American Army 
with its whole apparatus of Generals, Staff, and so forth. 
But the decision not to wait for the realisation of this plan 
before enabling his ardent countrymen to strike a blow for 
justice and freedom, has necessarily postponed the Army's 
creation, and to do this called for moral courage of a very 
high order. It is a thing that claims our sincere gratitude, 
and not the least of its many pleasing aspects is the very 
obvious satisfaction of the people of America with their 
President's decision. 
Three months ago, in these columns, 1 offered my tribute 
to the unlimited willingness of the American people to make 
every effort and every sacrifice demanded of them for victory ; 
but it did not occur to me that this particular demand would 
so soon be made. But circumstances have made it necessary, 
and great and unusual as the event is, those who realise that 
America's determination to fight and not to stop fighting 
till victory is won, will^not be surprised that the President 
has not hesitated to do what to a more narrow view of 
national dignity would have seemed prohibitive, or that the 
nation as a whole should have endorsed this finer vision 
with unanimous enthusiasm. 
