December 19, 191 8 
LAND & WATER 
15 
troyers in the neighbourhood of the target imposed upon the 
submarines' captains. It was, in other words, the consciousness 
that there would be fighting before sea pressure could be 
brought to bear, and the natural hesitation in facing the risks 
of fighting, that explains why our shipping was saved. 
But — and here you get the best of all vindications of the 
theory that all sea pressure \s\fighting pressure — those U-boat 
captains who had exceptional 
skill, judgment, and knowledge, 
plus the courage necessary for 
putting these gifts to use in the 
strain of accumulated menaces, 
made very light of convoy indeed. 
They could not, of course, always 
get through any screen. But 
they could sometimes, and when 
they did their reward was propor- 
tionate to the risks they faced 
and overcame. 
It seems, then, to be beyond 
dispute that sea pressure — which 
has been of such incalculable 
value to the Alliance, and came 
near being of decisive value to the 
enemy — is essentially a fighting 
pressure. So far then the theory 
would seem to be proved that all 
sea action is fighting action. 
For the other side of sea war, 
battle itself, is obviously fighting 
and nothing else. But to bring 
our theory home we must carry 
the argument a step further. If 
the primary operation, and all 
other operations of a fleet, depend 
on the constant exhibition of its 
military qualities, then the value 
of the fleet in war should be 
proportionate to the vigour and 
success with which this military 
function is displayed. To realise 
that this must be so, we have to accept a second postulate of 
the argument, which is that the effect of sea pressure, whether 
it takes the form of the stoppage of trade or of military aggres- 
sion against the enemy, is by no means to be measured by the 
matei ial losses, the disadvantages in land war, the privations 
of ihe civil population, etc., that it inflicts. Nor indeed 
chiefly by these. The real criterion is the moral, intellectual, 
and spiritual deterioration of the 
enemy. All military writers have 
rightly recognised this, not only 
as the more important and the 
more permanent return of success, 
but as that which is also the more 
immediate in its operation. 
The world has just witnessed 
the strangest phenomenon in 
naval history, namely, the sur- 
render without a blow of a fleet 
complete. When we ask how 
so singular an event has come 
to pass. Captain Persius tells 
us that, from the day after the 
battle of Jutland, no German who 
knew the facts was in any doubt 
but that the High Seas Fleet 
would never see action again. 
This admission has been seized 
to prove that Jutland was all, 
and indeed more than all, the 
glorious and decisive victory it 
was claimed to be. Now I demur 
to accepting Persius as an 
infallible, or even as a reliable, 
witness. Nor am I in the least 
concerned to dispute the fact 
that the Germans were soundly 
beaten at the battle cf Jutland. 
But accepting Persius literally, 
it seems that the only deduction 
from what he tells us is very 
different from that which the 
writers I have alluded to have drawn. And I am quite content 
to take the most famous of them, Mr. Archibald Hurd, to 
prove, not his case but mine. 
" The surrender of last week," he says, " was the seqrrel to 
the overwhelming British victory of Jutland Bank ;!nd the 
gravamen of the charge which the German people may lay 
against iheir naval authorities is that, if defeat had been 
admitted on June isl, 1916, they might havi been saved two 
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ADMIRAL LOKD FISHER 
SIR ERIC GEDDES 
further years of constriction, ixposing them to privations from 
which an honest declaration might have saved them, for the 
sea controls the land, and from the day of the Jutland victory 
tlie eventual issue of the war was in no doubt, since day by day 
Germany's home front was crumbling, and no more than 
the German sailors could the German soldiers arrest the 
process." Observe, this eminent writer gives it as his con- 
sidered judgment that the destruc- 
tion of the German Navy as a 
fighting force on May 31st, 1916, 
was so decisive an event in the 
war that, had that destruction 
been communicated to the German 
people, they would forthwith have 
realised the continuance of the 
war to mean nothing but useless 
suffering, and futile sacrifice. It 
was, then, the concealment of 
defeat, and only the concealment, 
that cost the Allies the million 
men that have been killed in 
action since that date, the ten 
million tons of shipping destroyed, 
the many many thousand mil- 
lions of pounds unnecessarily 
expe ded. It was this saving 
that might have been made, 
had only the moral results of 
victory been equal to its material 
results. 
Now, why was this amazing 
material result obtained without 
ts legitimate moral return ? 
The .explanation is perfectly 
simple. It is just that the 
ships surrendered a month ago 
at Rosyth were not sunk two and 
a half years ago off the Little 
Fisher Bank. Had they been 
sunk, the German people would 
■" never have had to charge their 
authorities with deceit. But, unfortunately, all the German 
dreadnoughts, save one, returned on June ist to the German 
harbours ; more astonishingj'^still, all the pre-dreadnonghts, 
save one, came home safely too. It was admitted that we 
had suffered three times the loss in modem capital ships.J^ ^ 
Those that have rated Jutland at something less than a 
complete victory have done so for two reasons. First, it 
seems to them that, had the 
Grand Fleet so deployed that the 
leading division followed directly 
in Sir David Beatty's track, the 
German Fleet could hardly have 
escaped destruction before the 
light failed towards seven o'clock. 
And, secondly, it seems to them, 
the deployment being as it was, 
that at 6.40 the situation could 
■still have been saved and the 
enemy brought to decisive action, 
had the Grand Fleet faced the 
risks of the destroyer attack and 
closed resolutely. The day might 
then have ended in a defeat that 
could not have been camouflaged 
or concealed. It is just because 
they realised the overpowering 
moral effect of indisputable vic- 
tory, and therefore the over- 
whelming tragedy involved in 
missing it, that they demurred 
so strongly to the doctrine that 
it was far better to save " the 
unprotected bellies of our ships " 
from torpedoes than to try for 
that kind of victory which our 
fathers, no doubt somewhat 
brutally, exacted from the naval 
commanders of their day. 
The critics may of course be 
altogether wrong. It is conceiv- 
able that Jutknd could not 
have ended otherwise than it did. But even so my argu- 
ment is not affected. Mr. Hurd is unquestionably right 
when he tells us that had the fighting, on that day of dis- 
appointments, been successful in sinking the whole German 
Fleet, that the heart of Germany would have been broken 
and the war ended by national despair. And that, after all, 
i= the point. All naval action is fighting action, and its effect 
is proportioned to fighting intensity. 
