12 
LAND & WATER 
December 19, 1918 
The Victory of the Fleet : By Arthur Pollen 
ON last Michaelmas Day the great General Luden- 
dorff went to his wavering Government and 
told them that the game was up. Germany 
must choose between an immediate armistice 
and a not very distant surrender. Now little 
more than a month has passed since the armistice— which, 
if it did not end the war, at any rate ended the fighting- 
was granted, and akeady it has passed into a generally 
accepted truth that the Allies could not have won but for 
the services of the British fleet. Thus the greatest of wars 
has ended in the greatest of victories, and that victory is 
attributed to sea power. 
What is singular is, that there is no agreement as to how 
sea power actually won. The strength of England, it used 
to be said, lay in the fact that the English never knew when 
they were beaten. For to believe yourself beaten is to be 
beaten, to be confident you will win goes far to being sure of 
winning. And once or twice at least to our enemies the war 
must have seemed settled in 
their favour ; once or twice at 
least they flattered themselves 
with the hope this was as obvious 
to us as to them. For instance, 
on the 1st September, 1914, 
the Germans must have been 
quite sure that France was con- 
quered ; in April, 191 7, the suc- 
cesses of the submarine seemed 
to guarantee the utter break- 
do'ATi of the Allies' communica- 
tions and, with it, the breakdown 
of the Allies' power to win. But 
this nation continued in the 
obstinate belief that things would 
somehow come right again — and 
they did. The enemy thus gained 
nothing by the loss of moral 
that was reasonably to have 
been expected, had the British 
mind been so logical as tn draw 
convincing conclusions from 
apparent phenomena, and so 
susceptible to its analytic pro- 
cesses, as to succumb to the 
cowardice of its convictions. 
Once more in a crisis our 
sturdy unreason proved our 
saving. It is then a useful 
quality — ^but it has its defects, 
for by the same unregulated 
processes of the mind by which 
you do not know when you 
are beaten, you are apt not to know why you have won. 
Certainly if the plain man asks by what act or action the 
British Navy has, in fact, prevailed, he will find some difficulty 
in getting a plain answer. There is, as we have seen, no 
doubt expressed^about the fact at all. The witnesses to it 
are of all classes and all countries, numerous and authoritative. 
But while they testify to the fact they suggest explanations 
that are both vague and various. Mr. Roosevelt, for instance, 
in a message to a meeting to celebrate Great Britain's day, 
dwells on our Navy's defensive and transporting function. 
" I desire," he says, " to express the deep obligation that 
America owes to the British Empire and above all to the 
British Navy, which in defending the Empire during the first 
years of the war, before we had entered it, saved us from the 
fate of Belgium, and which since then has transported and 
protected two-thirds of our army which went to Europe." 
General Biddle again gratefully proclaims the value of 
our transport, and attributes its success to vigilance. " The 
untiring, unabated, watchful waiting of the British Fleet 
rendered possible the feeding of the fighting forces, protected 
our armies in transit across the ocean, and contributed its 
full share to the victory won by the combined armies of the 
Allies." 
Our own Board of Admiralty, when congratulating the 
Navy on the surrender of the German Fleet — the culminating 
proof of overwhelming victory — dwells on the silent pressure 
that is independent of battle as if it were a static and not a 
dynamic affair. 
" The surrender of the German Fleet, accomplished without 
shock of battle, will remain for all time the example of the 
. wonderful silence and sureness with which sea power attains 
its ends. The world recognises that this consummation is 
due to the steadfastness with which the Navy has maintamed 
its Pressure on the enemy through more than four years of 
war a pressure exerted no less insistently through the Umg^ 
moriotony of waiting than in the rare opportunities of attack. 
And Mr. Churchill, once First Lord of the Admiralty himself , 
offers the following improvement on the Admiralty message. 
" Asked whether he was in favour of Heligoland being 
returned to this country, Mr. Churchill said that Admiralty 
experts had come to the conclusion that it was not necessary 
to demand it. There had always been two views as to whether 
it would have been of use to us during the war, but the view 
of the Admiralty was that the silent, but irresistible, ^avy 
in the Forth and at Scapa caused the Germans to surr nder, 
without placing our ships in danger." _ . . , . 
Now here you have, first an impartial, non-Bntish indepen- 
dent man of affairs, a man of the first rank in statesmanship, 
a soldier who has fought with bravery and distinction. As 
President of the United States he has been chief of a highly 
trained army, and of a fine, well- 
found navy. As a private on- 
looker he has watched the forces 
of war at work, with the eye of 
experience and responsibility. 
Yet, in complimenting the fleet, 
he omits all mention of its 
achievement in action ! Then 
you have another independent, 
impartial witness, a scientifically 
trained military man, for many 
months concerned in the conduct 
of the war, largely responsible 
in high office for the work of one 
of the armies, whose share in the 
victory has been decisive. Yet 
his tribute to the Navy is such 
as ' might be offered to the 
efficient administration of a rail- 
way ! Next, the Board of Admir- 
alty we have quoted is virtually 
the Board that made the tran- 
sition from the naval impotence 
of the summer of 191 7 to the 
naval dominance of 1918, and 
this body goes out of its way to 
eliminate battle as one of the 
causes of victory ! Finally, Mr. 
Churchill points gleefully to the 
fact, that sea power has the 
blessed quality of enabling you 
to win a victory at sea without 
recourse to so deplorable a busi- 
ness as risking your ships to do it ! 
Now all this is a little bewildering. For the British Fleet 
has not defended the British Empire, and by doing so saved 
the United States from the fate of Belgium, just by being 
the British Fleet. It surely must have done something to 
bring about so useful and so portentous a result. It could 
not save Belgium — how has it saved America ? And we 
may cordially agree with General Biddle, that to be proof 
against fatigue, to persevere, to be patient, to be vigilant,, 
is doubtless to attain to a high standard in virtues that 
have great military value. But a force possessing these 
virtues alone can hardly, by their mere possession, gain a 
victory. For there is nothing positive or active in the 
merits this eminent General ascribes to our seamen, and it 
goes against the grain to suppose that so tremendous a 
thing as victory can be gained without some kind of action, 
and that of a furious and irresistible sort. When one thinks- 
of the terrific war apparatus of Germany, it seems somehow 
absurd that " watchful waiting " should defeat it. And 
must not sea power be something more than " silent," if it is 
to be " sure, ' and do we carry things much further when 
we hear that the something it does is a " pressure " which 
is as insistent in the monotony of waiting as in the " rare " 
opportunities of attack ? Would it not be more illuminating 
to be told exactly what the pressure is and how it operates ? 
And it is difficult to thrill with martial pride when Mr. Churchill 
gloats on ships not being risked — for to the lay onlooker 
war seems compounded of almost nothing else but risk, 
with horrible holocausts of men, a lamentable destruction of 
houses, churches, ships, railways and all the accumulated 
treasures of art and labour, and an incalculable pawning of 
the fruit of future industry. What are we to make of it all ? 
Picturesquely enough, these diverse, but not too illuminating 
ADMIRAL SIR DAVID BEATTY 
