CHAPTER X

WHAT THE BRITISH NAVY IS AND WHAT IT FIGHTS FOR

Where shall the watchful sun, England, my England, Match the master-work you’ve done, England, my own? When shall he rejoice agen Such a breed of mighty men As come forward, one to ten, To the song on your bugles blown, England— Down the years on your bugles blown?

_W. E. Henley._

Antagonism between England and Germany became the central fact in the international situation many years before the war. There seemed to be a fundamental antithesis between the ideals of the two peoples. The freedom of the Englishman, guaranteed to him by sea-power, appeared effeminate and undisciplined weakness to the German; the freedom of the German, guaranteed to him only by the military strength of his autocratic State, was regarded as feudal dependence by the Englishman. Not to bring about a conflict, but to avert one—or, if the worst came to the worst, to engage in one with success—was the motive of British policy. There was no visible ground for German aggression, but deep-seated antagonism was the element of danger which successive Premiers and Foreign Ministers had had to take account of in appraising their country’s future, and, with the guidance of their colleague at the Admiralty, who based his judgment on that of his naval advisers, they had obtained the means to build up the Fleet, which was to be the country’s and Empire’s defence.

Armageddon was foreseen, though there was hope against hope that, in the great crisis, the dire struggle might be averted. It was known that Belgium and France would have need of England if the dogs of war were let slip. Many soldiers and writers had pointed out that Belgium would become the inevitable pathway of aggression. German writers had declared it an injury that the Congress of Vienna had not established Germany on the North Sea, and Arndt had expressed the ardent desire of the German heart to reconquer the great western rivers, implying the domination of the seas. There were dangers in these lesser countries. They were full of possibilities. _Qui trop embrasse mal étreint._ Belgium would cry aloud for English help. As to Italy, it was difficult to believe that she could hold to her compact with the Central Powers. Russia, it was known, would be against them. Thus in all her naval efforts, long before the war, England, while guarding her own interests, was working and building up her naval strength, in conscious knowledge of the duty she might one day have to her friends who have now become her Allies. This is a very important point, and it leads to a brief survey of great sacrifices and unstinted efforts which Englishmen have made in the past.

The Fleet that went into the war was the most powerful, best organised, and best equipped in every essential particular in the world. Yet, for a very long anterior period, Englishmen had remained unconscious of what they owed to the Fleet. They had fought brilliant campaigns in China, Afghanistan, India, Burma, the Crimea, Abyssinia, and elsewhere, in which the Navy was a most essential factor, though it had scarcely appeared in the public eye. It was therefore from a low ebb that the British Navy rose to the high-water mark of the war. It was not until about the year 1882 that the tide began to turn, driven forward by the lively breeze of a very useful agitation, in which the late Mr. W. T. Stead took a prominent part, and which is believed to have been inspired by the present Lord Fisher and the late Mr. Arnold Forster. A great shipbuilding scheme was put in hand in 1889. Ever since that time, under far-seeing First Lords and First Sea Lords of the Admiralty, the task of asserting British naval supremacy has gone forward. Expenditure on the Navy mounted from £31,000,000 in 1901 to £51,500,000 in 1914, which latter was thought a monstrous figure; but it was not a penny too much for the great interests which had to be safeguarded.

Battleships of increasing power, cruisers of many classes, destroyers, submarines, and auxiliaries were built. Lord Fisher came to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord in 1904, and during the subsequent six years an enormous work was carried on. The battleships culminated in the Dreadnoughts—that class of ships with a main armament of all big guns—the cruisers in the battle-cruisers, destroyers grew more numerous and of much greater power, submarines were developed in range and sea-keeping qualities. None of these types have stood still. The Dreadnought developed into the Super-Dreadnought, and the latter has developed into the ships of powers before undreamed of, which no one has yet described. The submarine has been changed out of recognition, and no one suspects what these British vessels can and will do when “The Day” really comes.

All these mechanical developments of the Fleet, which are so essential at the present time, grew out of the impetus given in and after the year 1904. But that was not the only thing which placed the country in such a position of advantage at the beginning of the war. The battle-fleet and cruiser squadrons had been reorganised to coincide with the needs of the Empire, owing to the shifting of the stress of naval power from the Atlantic and the Channel to the North Sea. Some squadrons in distant waters were reduced in strength to correspond with the requirements, and non-fighting ships—vessels too weak to fight and too slow to run away—were brought home from distant seas, and their officers and men were made available for modern ships. A system of nucleus crews was adopted for the reserve ships to facilitate mobilisation and to make sure that the ships would be really fit for sea. Before that time the whole Fleet had been pivoted on the Mediterranean, and a British warship was rarely seen in the North Sea. By progressive steps the naval front was changed from the South to the East. On the east coast of the United Kingdom destroyer and submarine flotillas were based on ports prepared for them. A great dockyard was erected at Rosyth, and all along the coast naval bases were developed, and every preparation was made for the possibility of war. These were developments of great significance, and the immense and growing strength of the British Fleet justified the French in concentrating their battle squadrons in the Mediterranean, and leaving at Brest and in the Channel only a division of cruisers, supported by flotillas.

Fleets of warships are meant to fight when the need for fighting comes; but there was no affront to Germany, no cause for resentment or agitation, in the concentration of the main strength of the British Fleet in such places, and with such bases, that they could carry their power into the North Sea. Force attracts force in strategy as in physics, and the growth of the German High Sea Fleet at Wilhelmshaven, with the great sea canal thence to Kiel on the Baltic, inevitably brought about the British concentration. How magnificently advantageous was the position secured has already been shown. In an earlier chapter it has also been explained that by the strategic position occupied by the Grand Fleet, and the grip held on the entrance to the Channel at Dover, the North Sea became strategically a closed sea—a _mare clausum_.

This fact, which is a fact of geography as well as of strategic concentration, has made the enemy restive and resentful. We are described as the “tyrants of the seas,” and the “freedom of the seas” became a catchword of the Germans. Every ruler who has felt the hard pressure of British sea-power, whether his name was Louis, or Napoleon, or Wilhelm, has, perhaps inevitably, taken this line in denouncing us to neutrals and endeavouring to array neutrals against us. In an earlier stage of the present war this was the consistent plea of German statesmen. But when they instructed their sea officers to sink the _Lusitania_ and many other ships, and when they threatened with disaster neutral ships which approached the British Isles, they became themselves the tyrants of the sea in a very real sense, and they thus arrayed the United States and other States against themselves, and brought a new Armada to strengthen the already superior British Fleet.

The war is a fight for freedom. The British Navy is fighting, and glad to have the Allied navies fighting in co-ordination with it, for the liberation of oppressed nations and countries from military domination. Command of the sea implies no restriction of navigation. It exists only in war time. In time of peace the British Navy guaranteed the freedom of the seas, and will guarantee it again when the war is at an end. We cannot do better than quote on this question what that distinguished American writer Admiral Mahan said:—

Why do English innate political conceptions of popular representative Government, of the balance of law and liberty, prevail in North America from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific? Because the command of the sea at the decisive era belonged to Great Britain. In India and Egypt administrative efficiency has taken the place of a welter of tyranny, feudal struggle, and bloodshed, achieving thereby the comparative welfare of the once harried populations. What underlies this administrative efficiency? The British Navy, assuring in the first place British control and thereafter communication with the home country, whence comes the local power without which administration everywhere is futile. What, at the moment when the Monroe doctrine was proclaimed, insured beyond peradventure the immunity from foreign oppression of the Spanish-American colonies in their struggle for independence? The command of the sea by Great Britain, backed by the feeble Navy but imposing strategic position of the United States, with her swarm of potential commerce-destroyers, which, a decade before, had harassed the trade even of the Mistress of the Seas.

In concluding, therefore, we see how the British Navy, having served Great Britain and the British Empire so efficiently and so well in every interest and possession, fighting constantly against every stealthy device of the enemy, has served the Allies not less well and worthily. And we discover, too, that the Navy is ever friendly to neutral Powers, and that the command of the sea which it exercises in the war is the panoply of freedom and liberty throughout the world.

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Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

Page 6: “If Nelson, in 1789,” should be 1798.

Page 10: “by in Navy” was printed that way; probably should be “by the Navy”.

Pages 11 and 29: Footnotes were unmarked in original, but have been marked as footnotes here.

Page 66: “Nieuport” was printed that way; should be “Nieuwpoort”.