CHAPTER IV

THE GRASP OF THE MEDITERRANEAN[B]

SEA- AND LAND-POWER

Others may use the ocean as their road, Only the English make it their abode; Our oaks secure, as if they there took root, We tread on billows with a steady foot.

_Edmund Waller_, 1656.

It is important next to consider the situation in the Mediterranean, where sea-power is of momentous importance to the Allies. In those historic waters the fate of many nations has been decided. They are a vital link and the highway of the British Empire. Between Gibraltar and Port Said two thousand miles of British welfare lie outrolled. To France, with her great possessions in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunis, the importance of this sea highway is supreme. She must, in this war and at all times, traverse its waters or she will be undone. Italy has won a great position In the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, and she would wither away and perish if either fell under enemy control. Trieste is her object, and she has proclaimed a protectorate over Albania the better to establish her power in the Adriatic, and she has her new possessions in the Libia Italiana of Northern Africa. From the operations in the Mediterranean we shall learn something more of the relation of sea-power to land operations, and of the limitations of that power, and we shall see the allied navies of England, France, Russia, Italy, and Japan in co-operation. We shall know why the enemy made a great submarine stroke in the Mediterranean when everything else at sea had failed.

[B] See Map II., at end of book.

The French battleship squadrons were concentrated in the Mediterranean before the war. The cruiser squadron in the Channel, like David against Goliath, was willing to encounter even the whole German High Sea Fleet; but the French had been assured of British co-operation, and all danger was forestalled. In the Mediterranean the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ had come west, and had bombarded Bona and Philippeville; but the French Admiral, going south from Toulon, was on their heels, and they fled to the east again, running the gauntlet of the British squadron on their way to join the Turks.

They had intended to raid the French transports at sea. At this time the French were bringing their troops from Algeria and Tunis, amounting in all to nearly 100,000 men, with guns, horses, mules, stores, ammunition, hospitals, tent equipment, and all the requirements for field service, to join the main army in France. It was a great responsibility for the French Navy, increased many-fold when troops began to come from their eastern possessions through the Suez Canal.

Failure would have meant disaster. But the whole of the transport work was managed without the loss of a man or a horse, and was a wonderful success. It could hardly have taken place with so much security if the British squadron had not been in the Mediterranean, and not at all if the Grand Fleet had not held the German High Sea Fleet fast in its ports by the blockade in the North Sea. From that time forward for many months, until the Italians came into the war, on May 23rd, 1915, the French squadron was employed in neutralising the Austro-Hungarian Fleet in the Adriatic, which did not dare to move. The blockading squadron was extended across the Strait of Otranto, with occasional sweeps to the northward, to control hostile operations, if possible, at Cattaro and along the Dalmatian coast up to the approaches to Pola, where the submarine _Curie_ was entangled, and lost to the Austrians. The French base for these operations was at Malta, but an advanced base was established in the island of Lissa. The blockade was completely successful in checking every effort of the Austrians to strike at the stream of transport in the Mediterranean, though it could not avail to save Montenegro or hold back the Austrians in their advance into Albania. No fleet can operate beyond the range of its guns, unless its flying officers carry their bombs into inland countries.

The blockade maintained through the winter at the Strait of Otranto was exceedingly arduous and filled with peril. Enemy destroyers and submarines were at work, issuing from the wonderful island fringe of the Dalmatian coast, and the French knew their peril. The armoured cruiser _Léon Gambetta_ was sunk by submarine attack, with the loss of Rear-Admiral Sénès, who was in command, and every officer on board, as well as nearly 600 men. The armoured cruiser _Waldeck-Rousseau_ suffered damage by torpedo, and the new Dreadnought _Jean Bart_, with Admiral Boué de Lapéyrère, the French Admiralissimo of the combined fleets, on board, was touched, though only slightly injured. There were other submarine attacks and losses of small craft, and some losses were inflicted upon the enemy. British cruisers were attached to the French Flag during these operations, and they continued to co-operate with the French and Italians in Adriatic waters and in the Ægean, where the French and Allied naval forces were the guard of all the operations at Salonika and in the Piræus. Fleets and armies have co-operated in the Mediterranean from the very beginning of the war. In May, 1917, the British monitors, which, with the converted cruisers, had been operating with the military expedition against the Turks and Bulgarians, appeared in the Adriatic, and rendered valuable aid to the Italians in their advance towards Trieste. The naval coalition has been a marvel of effective organisation.

German professors have sometimes said that the land would sooner or later beat the sea—that “Moltke” would become the victor over “Mahan.” That is the convinced opinion of the Pan-Germans, who say that the railway will yet prove the more rapid and the more secure means of transport than the steamship. The lines from Antwerp by Cologne to Vienna, and from Hamburg to Berlin, and thence through the very heart of Europe to Vienna, and on by Belgrade and Sofia to Constantinople, and from the opposite shore of the Bosphorus to Baghdad and down to the Gulf, and by a branch through Persia to the confines of India, were to give commercial and, perchance, military command of two continents. Enterprise by the branch railway through Aleppo and Damascus against Egypt, with a view to further developments in Africa, was related to this conception of land-power. The measures adopted by the Allies for the reconstitution of Serbia, the expeditions to the Dardanelles and Salonika, the strong action taken in Greece, the naval movements on the coast of Syria, the operations in the Sinai peninsula and Palestine, and the expedition from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad were the answer to these gigantesque projects of the enemy.

Behind them all lay the working of the fleets. Every class of ship and almost every kind of vessel employed in naval warfare has been used in one or other of these operations—the battleship, cruiser, destroyer, torpedo-boat, submarine, mother ship, aeroplane, aircraft-carrier, mining vessel, river gunboat, motor launch, mine-trawler, armed auxiliary, special service vessel, transport, store ship, collier, oiler, tank, distilling ship, ordnance vessel, hospital ship, tug, lighter, and a crowd of other craft. All these are required for the work of the Navy in the Mediterranean, as elsewhere, and they have been employed with a quality of seamanlike skill, enterprise, resource, courage, and success such as the history of the sea has no previous record of. The appearance at the Golden Horn of a British submarine, which had traversed a Turkish mine-field, was the sign of new powers in naval warfare. We are lost in admiration of the self-sacrifice of officers and men, both of the regular naval service and of the mercantile marine and the fisheries, the latter being the heroes of the perilous work of mine-sweeping. The British and French navies, and the vessel representing the Russian Navy, acted in the closest co-operation, and all the naval forces worked in intimate association with the armies.

Where there was failure, the failure was due to the inevitable limitations of sea-power, which has already been suggested with reference to the North German coast, Zeebrugge, and the Montenegrin and Albanian coasts. The history of the Dardanelles expedition will not be written here. Beginning with a bombardment of the entrance forts on November 3rd, 1914, which had little other effect than to stimulate the defence, continued after an interval of months by the great naval attacks in March, 1915, in which enormous damage was done to the forts at the entrance and, to some extent, at the Narrows, but with the loss of British and French battleships by the action of gunfire and drifting mines, the enterprise concluded with the landing of the Allied armies in the Gallipoli peninsula. The troops were compelled by outnumbering forces and concentrated gunfire to withdraw. The combined attack should have been made at the beginning. The unaided naval attack had merely stimulated the defence. Here was the greatest demonstration of which there is record of the limitation of sea-power. In the attack of such a military position naval forces are essential, but military operations are required if the desired success is to be attained.

This is true of all the operations in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. Sea-power gave the means by which the army drove back the Turks from Egypt, and it was the support of the advance in Sinai and Palestine. It gave protection to the transports which carried troops and Army requirements to Salonika and the Piræus, patrolling the routes or providing convoy for the ships. The enemy realised his opportunity, and his submarines began to develop great activity in the Mediterranean. Certain transports were sunk and an attempt was made to cut the communications of the expeditionary forces with their base. Some considerable losses were suffered thereby, but gradually systems were developed which gave a reasonable sense of security. The British, French, and Italian flotillas were employed, and that of Japan came to their aid. Never had such naval co-operation been witnessed before. We cannot separate the advance in Mesopotamia from the Mediterranean operations because the same object inspired both—viz., that of arresting the threatened development of German commercial and military power, through Asiatic Turkey to the Persian Gulf, and through Persia to the borders of India. The first advance to Kut-el-Amara and Ctesiphon proved disastrous because undertaken with inadequate means; but the Navy rendered brilliant service, and, in the second advance, a sufficient river flotilla of gunboats and transports made possible the advance to Baghdad and beyond. The naval flotilla co-operated with most excellent effect in this advance, played havoc with enemy’s craft, and recaptured H.M.S. _Firefly_, which had been lost in the retreat from Ctesiphon.

Thus we see the Navy operating in the great central theatre of war and on its outlook to the East, exerting influence, transporting troops, forming the base of armies, and everywhere proving an essential factor in all that was done. It was confronted in the Mediterranean, as elsewhere, with the new weapon of the submarine in very active form. That menace, and the campaign against it, shall be the subject of the next chapter.