November 14, 1918 
LAND &> WATER 
''What They have Missed": By Arthur Pollen 
THE war has ended without a victory at sea. 
"To-night," said Sir Eric Geddes, last Saturday, 
at the Guildhall, "our hearts go out, first of all 
in gratitude to the Commander-in-Chief of the 
Grand Fleet, Sir David Beatty, and his officers 
and men for what they have done ; and, secondly, in sym- 
pathy with what they have missed." It will, indeed, remain 
a lasting regret that the British Fleet has been denied its 
second opportunity. For two years Sir David Beatty and 
his loyal and gallant subordinates have worked unceasingly 
at war plans and war practices. It is alrnost tragic that this 
vast and noble effort should remain uncrowned. There is 
a sense in which they have missed everything for which 
they have toiled and watched so well, so loyally, so patiently. 
But in another sense they have gained the greatest victory 
ever won — not by arms only, but by chivalry and example. 
But victor^' at sea they have missed. And we have to 
seek the cause. 
It is simply that the German Navy has ceased to exist. 
Never has the emptiness of mere material strength been so 
clearly demonstrated in all its utter foohshness. A fleet, 
second to the British only in its strength of surface ships, 
and easily the most powerful in all the world in under-water 
ships, has, at a touch of fear or disloyalty or discontent, 
been brought as a fighting force to nothingness. It had 
the resources for a sea campaign as great as it would cer- 
tainly have been novel. It had the greatest opportunity 
in history. In March last, Germany saw both her first and 
her last chance of victor^', after four years of a failing defen- 
sive. It was a moment when, if ever, the enemy should 
have struck with all his forces, struck at sea as well as on 
land, and, even at great sacrifice, have made a final effort 
to prevent the soldiers of America standing alongside of 
their brothers of Europe. It has for months been a mystery 
why this effort was not made. At last, we now know why. 
The First Lord told us in his speech on Saturday. Already 
the battle of the Narrow Seas had gone against the German 
Fleet ; already the German sailors were losing any stomach 
for a fight. 
So the German Fleet failed Germany in the greatest chance 
Germany has ever had. There remained but one more 
thing to do. When the case of the F'atherland was hopeless 
on land, it might still have won the sympathy and respect 
of its opponents, could its fleet have shown the gallant spirit 
which smaller naval forces have so. often shown before. But 
it was too late. The red folly of revolt had taken possession. 
In vain the orders were given to prepare for a fleet action. 
The order was but the signal for a revolution, which the 
whole country has followed. The Grand Fleet, perfected 
for war, has ended the war with no opponent in the field at all. 
Very few, four and a half years ago, could have thought 
this could end in the enemy's such utter impotence at sea. 
And had anyone expected it, he could not have foreseen 
the cause. Yet the Nemesis was ine\itable, and should not 
have been surprising. The German Navy has come to nothing 
because it was abused. It has been spoiled, wasted, sterilised, 
by those who needed it most. Of all fighting instruments, a 
fleet is the most complex, in that it is compacted of the most 
wonderful material instruments, and can be worked only by 
a personnel of enormous technical accomplishment, and of 
the highest spiritual and moral elevation. If every human 
organisation depends for its effect on its being the expression 
of some idea ; if it must believe in its mission or perish ; 
if it is only when it does believe that it preserves that prin- 
ciple of spiritual life which enables it to act — if this is true 
of every association of men, it is terribly true of every fighting 
force. And of sea force this moral life — that is, this loyalty, 
patriotism, discipline, self-sacrifice — is the very quintessence 
of its being. In the best conditions sea life is all strangeness 
and discomfort. There i^ ever present the menace of death, 
ever facing it the colossal problem of struggling with the 
unbound forces of nature. The vast responsibilities that fall 
upon the commander of a ship can be borne only if he can 
rely upon a discipline, which is really meaningless and always 
precarious if it is not willingly given. The material — the 
highly diverse types of ships, of weapons and all the apparatus 
of sea fighting— springs into life only when the men, that 
are to work it and command it and direct it, are guided by a 
common sacrifice of self, a common and willing dependence 
on each other. The naval profession exists only by an 
inspiring purpose from outside itself. It could not exist at 
all, did not each man in it beUeve it to be the noblest and 
^eatest profession to which he could aspire. A high chivalry. 
an ardent faith, a burning pride in the day's work, these are 
not the ornaments, they are the plain essentials of the calling 
of the sea. The German Navy ceased to exist becausethese 
high attributes have been killed within it. 
The Genesis of the German Navy 
I do not know if they ever really existed. When war broke 
out the German Navy was without traditions of its own. 
It had been created almost out of nothing, and in two genera- 
tions. The Germans have a certain genius for laborious 
mimicry, a native passion for theory, a congenital delight in 
the scientific dissection of problems. They possess unflag- 
ging industry, and a certain ruthless logic in following where 
analysis points' the way. In evolving the navy they had the 
advantage both of these qualities and of the example of their 
military experience. And by 1914 they had produced a 
fleet that had every element seemingly necessary for efficiency 
. and .great achievement. In the first five months of war 
this navy exhibited, time and again, admirable examples 
of courageous action. In the engagements of the Heligoland 
Bight, between Sydney and Emden, between the squadrons 
of von Spee and Craddock, between the German armoured 
cruisers and Admiral Sturdee's forces, almost every incident 
entitled the enemy's navy to the credit of right action under 
the supreme test. There was further hardly an occurrence 
in the affair of the Dogger Bank or of Jutland that lessens 
the credit rightly earned in the distant seas. Had the Ger- 
man Navy made no other appearances in the war but these, 
had any other appearances been consistent with them, it 
must, whether finally successful or unsuccessful, have closed 
the war with a great and creditable record. But, unluckily, 
the German Navy, like everything subject to the Prussian 
contamination, was but an instrument of its master's policy, 
and when that policy demanded that the murder of the un- 
armed should become the chief business of the war at sea, 
the doom of the German Navy was sealed. How could a 
profession, pledged above all to being a fighting profession, 
and taught by history to fight with chivalry, maintain its 
character and keep its morale when, year after year, it was 
to exercise its daring only in evading our fighting ships, 
and its skill only in destroying ships unable to defend 
themselves ? 
_jln the last analysis it will most certainly appear that the 
atrocities which the rulers of Germany originated to the 
applause of the German people, have done the nation what, 
at the moment, must seem a worse service even than the con- 
demnation of the conscience of the world. For it must now 
be plain that whether frightfulness is morally justifiable or 
not, it never can have any military justification whatever. 
The humanising of war has come, not because torture, mur- 
der, rapine and arson were bad morality, but because per- 
mitting them made bad soldiers. This is law that cannot 
be broken with impunity. If the High Command orders 
and inculcates as right things which all military principles 
show to be wrong, it is the High Command that must ulti- 
mately pay the price. Rightly looked at, then, the German 
Navy has fallen a victim to the German submarine. And 
it is the only victim whose loss was of vital military 
consequence. The victory of the submarine in the present 
war is its victory over the German Navy. And the red 
flag that flies at the mast head of the High Seas fleet is not 
the gonfalon of freedom, not the red badge of courage, but 
the scarlet stain which innocent blood has left for ever on 
the German escutcheon. The curse of Cain has fallen on 
its arms. 
It is this truth that must console us, in our regret, that 
the chance that came at Jutland did not come — and now never 
can come — again. It does not mean that the amazing effort 
made by the British navy in the last eighteen months has 
been made in vain. This effort originated in the Grand 
Fleet, was thqn taken up at Wliitehall, was shown in its 
most effective form in the operations of the Dover Command 
after it passed into Sir Roger Keyes' hands last spring. When 
at the end of Apri' Sir Roger organised the blocking of 
Ostend and ZeebrUgge, and carried these put after the most 
exquisitely careful planning, with a dexterity that showed 
that no point of training or rehearsal had been missed, and 
with a gallantry that only a perfectly disciplined service 
could exhibit, I ventured in these columns to say that this 
initiative strike, coming as it did just when the Allied for- 
tunes were at their lowest on land, would show the enemy 
what he had to expect if he sent his fleet to sea. It was 
