20 
Land & Water 
August 15, 191 8 
Free Speech and the Sea : By Arthur Pollen 
THE fifth year of the war has been ushered in by 
some very remarkable events and by a few not 
less remarkable sayings. The change in the 
military situation in France speaks for itself 
to those who can take their minds back one 
month, when the majority were wondering what kind of 
defence the Allies could make to the next, and perhaps the 
greatest, German attack. The change in the situation at 
sea has not been marked by any great happenings in the 
campaign itself. But the significance of the change is 
brought home to us by von Holtzendorff's retirement — for 
he was the secretary who, not in 1917, but a year before, 
went bail for ruthlessness bringing England to her knees 
in six months' time. The Premier, in his review of the year 
in Parliament, opened with an eloquent and noble tribute 
to the immense service the British Navy has rendered the 
Alliance. It is not without interest that he did not repeat 
the statement of a few weeks ago, viz., that the ruthless 
piracy of last year cante as a surprise. In Edinburgh, it 
will be remembered, he said that we had "no right to expect " 
it even from Germany. It was a curious expression — 
especiallv when one bears in mind that when Berlin surren- 
dered to Washington, in May, 1916, the capitulation expressly 
stated that if the British blockade were not raised, the "new 
situation" would restore to Germany her freedom of action. 
It was noted in these columns at the time that this phrase 
had only one possible meaning. It was that Germany 
would offer peace terms before the end of the year, and that 
if those were rejected her final blow would be struck. When 
those peace ferms were offered and rejected it was again 
noted in these columns — a week or .so before the campaign 
began — that the time for denunciation of the 1916 pact 
had now arrived. 
As a fact, the only surprise was that we were not ready 
for the attack when it came. And just how unready we still 
were after five months of it, we may gather from Sir Eric 
Geddes' speech on Vote 8. A year ago, he reminded the 
House we were losing 550,000 tons of shipping a month. 
We were faced with a situation considered "almost incon- 
ceivable and insoluble" by many. No one could say what 
would be the success of our measures — many of which were 
in an embryo state — for meeting the enemy's attack ! During 
the last twelve months the position has gradually changed. 
Shipbuilding has gone up, ship sinking has gone down ; 
and the reduction has been obtained by a greater production 
of warships and small craft of an anti-submarine character. 
Here, of course. Sir Eric Geddes is reporting to us, not the 
judgment of those who had studied the jproblem, but the 
situation he found at the Admiralty when he arrived there 
in May last year. The Board was faced by a set of facts 
which — after full warning — they had not conceived to be 
possible, and they presented a problem, which after two 
years' experience was still, to them, insoluble. Not one of 
them knew what to expect from the measures they put in 
hand for dealing with it ! It was dealt with, and successfully ; 
but not only by a greater production of warships and small 
craft of an anti-submarine character, but by employing 
these scientifically — that is, by convoying the ships exposed 
to attack. By that time over seven milhon tons of shipping 
had already been sunk. A few months showed that convoy 
reduced the losses by more than half. Had it been adopted 
from the first we should be 3,500,000 tons to the good to-day. 
Yet this principle, so universally advocated, was one the 
success of which no one at the Admiralty could foretell ! 
Many hard things have been said about the old regime 
at Whitehall, but nothing so utterly blasting as this sober, 
cool, unexaggerated, plficial statement. It is, I think, 
doubly interesting as coming just at a moment when the 
Germans have at last awakened to the fact that their naval 
policy has been even more misconceived than ours. One 
is tempted to ask why it is that two such intelligent nations 
could have gone so wildly wrong over such an extraordinarily 
simple matter ? A momentary delusion might have made 
von Tirpitz think that there could have been no answer to 
a submarine attack on trade. And, given a higher command 
to whom the idea of such an attack was novel — a startling 
assumption — one can understand a momentary hesitation 
in resorting to so well tried a naval principle as convoy as 
a reply to it. But it is almost inexplicable that the antidote 
was so long postponed ; and again almost inexplicable that 
the Germans did not see that it could not be postponed for 
ever. To some extent, no doubt, the British error created 
the German. By allowing month after months and indeed, 
year after year, to pass without attempting to defend our 
trade, von Tirpitz and von Holtzendorff had some excuse 
for supposing that we recognised it to be indefensible. And 
once committed to ruthlessness — and to paying its price, 
viz., the belligerency of the United States — there was, per- 
haps, nothing for it but to go on as they had begun. 
Political Pirates 
But when all is said, it is impossible to read such scraps 
as one gets of German speeches and writings without per- 
ceiving that the policy of piracy originated not in the sober 
reasoning of a trained staff, but in the frothy rhetoric of the 
Pan-German billlies. It was not Tirpitz the sailor, but 
Tirpitz the politician that begot it. And popular confidence 
in this policy has been kept 'going entirely by the daily 
fabrication of facts and figures to prove it successful. Behind 
the whole German error, then, there is_to-day, and has been 
from the first, a propaganda of megalomania and men- 
dacity. Yet, so far as one can see, there has been little 
attempt to suppress the expression of opinion hostile to 
the campaign. So long as the Admiral's staff was free to 
invent facts of its own, it was quite indifferent to the argu- 
ments of others. It will be interesting to see how Admiral 
Scheer deals with the situation when the truth asserts itself 
in the German mind. For even to th^ most confiding Hun 
the absence of famine in England, France, and Italy, the 
growing British Army, the materialised American Army, 
the redoubled munitions, guns, and material — all these 
things must appear curiously inconsistent with the state- 
ment that nearly twenty million tons of the world's shipping 
has been sunk, and that British and American shipbuilding 
cannot keep pace with its current destruction. Not that 
the fight to stifle the truth will not be stubborn. The 
Bavarian Minister of War, complaining recently of the harm 
done by disturbing rumours as to the food position, added 
that there were, however, worse offenders than such news- 
mongers. There are some people who pass on facts with 
which they become officially acquainted, which facts go from 
mouth to mouth and so do immeasurable harm. Was theie 
ever a more naive admission ? 
The. Admiralty illusion that the situation arising from 
ruthless attack was at once "inconceivable and insoluble," 
can be explained very simply. It is that candid discussion 
on these matters was forbidden on the grounds either that 
it would convey valuable information to the enemy, or that 
the attempt to prove that the British Admiralty was follow- 
ing a wrong policy would discourage the nation and so shake 
its moral, or disparage the country's naval advisers, and so 
weaken the discipline of the Fleet. But if we look at the 
state of things to-day and compare them with what they 
were, and accept the First Lord's explanation of the change^ 
we must see that a greater freedom of debate might, so far 
from doing any harm, have done inestimable good. When 
one remembers how persistently, in the first days of the 
submarine campaign of 1915, the building of destroyers 
and the adoption of the convoy principle was urged till all 
such discussion was stopped by the censorship in July of 
that year, one is tempted to wonder whether a different 
policy, just as effective for maintaining public moral and 
service discipline might not have been followed. No one 
will dispute the harm of continuous and unanswered attacks 
on the naval command, whether at headquarters or at sea. 
Criticism, after a certain stage, may certainly become a 
danger. It may be highly desirable, it may, indeed, be 
altogether necessary to silence the critic. But I submit 
he should be silenced not by force, but by reason. It is 
idle to say that a naval officer responsible for a certain policy 
at Whitehall must not be criticised because he cannot reply. 
He has the First Lord as a spokesman, and the whole appara- 
tus of his department to provide the material for the reply. 
A conscientious writer is not trying to cause mutiny in the 
Fleet, or revolution in the State. If he is wrong in his 
facts and in his doctrines and so misleading in his argu- 
ments, it should not be difficult to confound hmi. 
There are many indications that we are turning now to 
better ways. It is nearly three years since the present 
Prime Minister told us that a nation that could not be trusted 
with the truth could not be trusted to go to war. Well, 
the truth in principle and doctrine is not always obvious, 
so that telling the truth is not the simple thing' it sounds. 
It is generally only arrived at by analysis and discussion, 
the play and interplay of debate. 
