lO 
Land & Water 
August 2 2, 191 8 
The Enemy's Dilemma: By Arthur Pollen 
So s\viftl\' has von Capclle followed von Holtzendotff, 
his chief, into retirement, that the world has got the 
impression that the German Higher Command is no 
longer quite content with its naval policy. It cer- 
tainly looks as if the German people might be on the 
eve of learning that their faith in the U-boat has been mis- 
placed. Once more, then, these unhappy dupes must repeat 
their painful pilgrimage of disillusion. It is, after all, such 
a very short time since they were told that the U-boat must 
and would win. It is indeed hardly a year since the facts 
fitted the theory. And so admirable was the effect that, for 
many critical months, the nation was buoyed with the hope 
that, whatever its privations, our own would very shortly ■ 
be worse ; and as every one took for granted that our power 
of endurance was negligible, famine would be followed, if 
not by surrender, at any rate by a spirit more pliant when 
the next eirenicon should come along. It was the era of the 
Reichstag Resolution and the Pope's proposals. 
Unfortunately for the Higher Command, the effort to keep 
up the U-boat theory of victory was maintained too long. 
The practice of doubling our losses might work well enough 
for a time, but there was this disadvantage to it, that thinking 
Germans — -if there are any — had ultimately to contemplate 
an extraordinary^ antinomy. Out of forty million tons of 
shipping available to the Allies, twenty millions had been 
sunk, only a trivial amount had been replaced, and yet food 
was plentiful in all the Allied countries ! And, stranger yet, 
the American Army was coming over at the rate of a quarter 
of a million men a month ! The discrepancy between, not 
only the official theory, but the official statements and the 
obvious facts of the situation must surely sooner or later 
have led to the fall of those ministerially responsible. 
And it may be that von Holtzendorff and von Capelle 
are only being sacrificed to propitiate the people's anger. 
, It is only in brutal ways that the brutal truth can be 
conveyed. 
On the other hand, the advent of Scheer may mean much 
more. Able journalists, both in France and in England, 
are boldly proclaiming that they see in this a change in 
naval policy not less startling than thexhange we have seen 
here. We may expect, they say, to find it is no longer the 
submarine, but the High Seas Fleet that is to be Germany's 
chief weapon of future sea attack. They contemplate 
nothing else than that Sir David Beatty will be challenged 
to battle. Now, my readers may remember that it is more 
than six months since I pointed out that, if the analogy of 
1916 could be trusted, something of this sort might happen 
as soon as the failure of the pirate blockade became as obvious 
to the people of German}' as it already was to us. Two and 
a half years ago Germany's first attempt at ruthlessness was 
brought to a standstill by the American ultimatum. It was 
a painful political humiliation and unpleasantly derogatory 
to- German naval prestige. Something had to be done to 
divert attention from the incident, and von Hipper and 
Scheer were sent out on the expedition that ended in the 
Battle of Jutland. But once ruthlessness became a policy, 
the main factors in keeping the High Seas Fleet in harbour 
were, first, that its integral existence cut us off from the 
only mining policy that might be almost perfectly effective 
in keeping the submarines at home, and, secondly, that so 
long as the submarine was able to do what the German 
Admiralty claimed for it, there was no reason for seeking 
any other form of naval success. For, after all, if our sea 
supplies' could really be shut off from us, not only Great 
Britain, but the whole Alliance against the Central !Powers 
would crumple up. But if the submarine failed in its work, 
if its depredations were brought below the point at which 
the Alliance could build, then a new situation would be 
created. The argument for keeping in the High Seas Fleet 
would have gone : the necessity to restore naval prestige 
would become acute. 
But does it necessarily follow that an immediate sea-battle 
will be sought ? One can say, that the failure of one kind of 
sea war must tend to make the essaying of another extremely 
probable, and the parallel of 1916 would tempt one to say, 
further, that the effort must take the. form of battle. But 
before we commit ourselves to any such theory as this, let 
us remember that the case against a battle is infinitelv 
strongei* than it was. Germany is faced by a situation very 
different from that of May, 1916. 
In the course of the last eight months we have had re- 
peatedly to note proof after proof that this change has been 
profound. Take the North and the Narrow Seas. The 
winters of 1914-15, 1915-16, and 1916-17 were all of them 
marked bv attacks either on our seaboard towns or on oxu" 
coastal flotillas. Three of these attacks were made by 
units of the greatest size. Another was seemingly prevented 
only by Sir David Beatty 's catching sight of von Hipper at 
daylight on January 24th, 1915. But Margate, Ramsgate, 
Deal, and other towns on the Kentish coast, Lowestoft 
and other places on either side of the mouth of the Thames, 
were regularly raided when the nights were long and the 
daylight weather unfavourable to long-range gunner\\ 
These raids were all of them tip-and-run affairs. But some 
of them were costly in life ; all of them were exasperating. 
They showed that the enemy held the initiative. But in 
the last eight months there have been but two enterprises 
of this character. There was the incident of the attack on 
the Lerwick convoy ; there was the raid on the drifters 
lighting up the Channel barrages. This was the enemy's 
last effort. The convoys between our Xorth-East Coast and 
Scandinavia have not been interfered with again. How 
they are protected we have not been told. Let it sAffice for 
us that the protection has been deterrent. - Definite deduc- 
tions can be drawn from the fact that the forces sent thus so 
far afield have not been challenged. It means that British 
sea-power is not concentrated in a single anchorage, making 
perhaps occasional excursions, but normally quiescent. It 
must, at any rate, in part be under a constant mobilisation. 
It is, therefore, for the enemy to attack — if he likes to take 
the risk. There is, after all, a double purpose, in convoy. 
In its primary conception it is protective. But it is also 
intended to be provocative. In past wars naval battles, 
and on the great scale, have followed from the necessity of 
one side or the other to protect its trade. It is significant 
that such convoying as we have been doing in the North 
Sea has not yet provoked the Germans to action. 
Recent Enterprise 
This may perhaps be called only a negative evidence of 
the changed conditions. But positive evidence is far from 
lacking. We have not forgotten the raids on the Flemish 
ports, nor the very spirited action in which Botha and Morris 
distinguished themselves so signally, nor the many other 
incidents which showed that the change in the command at 
Dover marked an immensely important departure in naval 
policy. The reality of the change came home to us very 
quickly. The significance of the master strokes at Zeebriigge 
and Ostend was not that there was any new spirit in the 
fleet, but that the libido pugnandi, which haid marked it from 
the first, was at last wedded to a kind of preparation and 
leadership that knew how to put it to account. 
There have been no spectacular examples of this new 
initiative in the last two months. But we hear continually 
not only of constant enterprise, but of enterprise of a most 
original character. It was the logical development of previous 
events. The personnel of the Higher Command was so recon- 
stituted that the school of thought that had dominated our 
policy for twelve years was excluded from control. Unity 
and sanitv of command did their work. No one, for instance, 
can have failed to remark that July was signalised by a 
series of encounters between aircraft and seacfaft to which 
previous e.xperience affords no parallel. The seaplanes and 
airships, first systematically employed as anti-submarine 
scouts, are now being used by both sides for the direct att'ack, 
not on submarines only, but on destroyers, motor boats, and 
other craft. Between July ist and July 7th, there were 
two series of engagements of this kind in which the surface 
and air forces of the opposed sides met In conflict off the 
Flemish coast. On July 6th a British submarine was heavih' 
attacked by enemy planes, and one officer and five men were 
killed, and the submarine was so damaged that it had to be 
towed back to harbour. Between July nth and 17th a 
new series of operations of the same character was begun 
by us." On the 19th a detachment of the Grand Fleet 
appeared off the Schleswig coast, and sent its aeroplanes to 
destroy the Tondern Z6ppelin sheds. In the second week 
in August there was fresh activity off Friesland. British 
light forces and aircraft reconnoitring the coast fell in with 
very superior German air forces, and six of our motor boats 
were destroyed. Our own craft shot down a Zeppelin that 
fell in flames into the sea. Orjly last week a destroyer was 
sunk in an air attack on the Belgian coast. Such is a brief 
summary of the doings of the last few weeks published by 
the Admiralty. 
