WHAT WOULD NELSON DO ?

Hokitika Guardian, 10 November 1917, Page 4

WHAT WOULD NELSON DO ?

TRAFALGAR AND JUTLAND

(By 11. W. Wilson, Author of “ Ironclads in Action.”)

It is one of the signs of the times, and a not unhappy sign, that in defence of the naval strategj’ recently pursued by the Allies an attempt is made to show that it is based upon the doctrines of Nelson.. That is not, of course, the belief of instructed foreign critics. Admiral Degouy, who alone has writ ten boldly on the subject, has said that he deteets-in the Allied war at sea rather the “ Collingwood method ” than the “ Nelson touch.” Perhaps the best way of clearing our minds on this most vital point the real principles of war (which vanish- not nor alter), is to see what Nelson’s doctrine and what the “ Nelson touch” really was. ■ Two stupendous changes have come upon us since Nelson’s time The submarine has rendered it possible for enemy craft to elude surface ships and appear like £ jack-in-the-box, on the lines oi communication protected by tlie superior surface fleet. On the other hand, aircraft have given fc the superior fleet a new power o; attack which did not exist in Nelson’s da}’. It is now conceivable that the whole Allied merchant marine might be sunk while the whole Allied surface fleet remained safe. It is possible, that is to say, to lose the war at sea while “ command of blue water” (whatever that means) is retained. For it is not the “blue water” on the surface that counts alone to-day. We must command the green water iooft, 200 ft below the surface, as well. Nelson aimed above all things at destroying the enemy’s fighting ships. Pie was penetrated, that is to say, by the offensive spirit. He was not carried away by it. On the contrary, like every really great commander, he was careful of his ships and men. Though he went down to battle transfigured with courage he never gave a point away. He stopped a premature rush on the enemy fleet on the eve of Trafalgar, precisely as Napoleon stopped a premature rush upon an enemy army at Austerlitz a few weeks later. He believed that “nothing great can be achieved without risk,” but he was not an advocate of battle in all circumstances. “Do not imagine,” he wrote, “ that I am one of those hot-brained people who fight at an immense disadvantage without an adequate object.” When he anticipated action he wanted to have all possible force with him. “It is only numbers which can annihilate,” he wrote on the eve of Trafalgar, “and it is annihilation that the country wants and not merely a splendid victory.” JUDGMENT AND INDEPENDENCE. When, however, lie had gained contact with an enemy fleet he never let it go. He made his plans for battle, carefully consulting his captains and saturating them with his thought till they themselves in action could improve on his arrangements because they.knew his full intentions and that he would support them with his last drop of blood. His watchword was, “ Now, had we taken ten sail and allowed the eleventh to escape when it had been possible to have got at her, I could never have called it well done.” He never ceased to blame himself that after the Battle of the Nile two out of thirteen enemy ships got away from him. “I think,” he wrote to a friend, “ if it had pleased God that I had not been wounded hot a boat would have escaped to have told the tale.” ' If he had lived it is pretty certain that not an enemy would. h*ve escaped from Trafalgar*

To obtain these crushing, extraordinary results lie departed from all the convention and formalism of his time. He was not one of those people whose lives are spent in carrying out of giving routine orders. He was, indeed, an indifferent disciplinarian and his ships were not always in order, but his was an intensely original mind and had meditated from bovliood upon naval war. As a youth he was famous in the Navy as a tactician. At the Nile he took tremendous risks and fought a night battle contrary to all the ideas of I his time. It was as though a : modern admiral, disregarding submarines and torpedoes, had pushed ' swiftly in to close and decisive | range. Not only that blit he flung , his ships on both sides ot the enemy line in the dark, so that there was real risk of their- firing into one another. He subordinated all qualms, all fears, to the pas--1 sionate pursuit of his great end, which was to concentrate over- ; whelming force on a part of the 1 enemy and to destroy that enemy. I There had been nothing like the ( Battle of • the Nile before that | battle was fought. One hundred-and-tweuty years have passed and I there has been nothing like it since

When only a subordinate, he showed his judgment and independence by breaking from tbe line of battle and turning an indecisive encounter into a victory. He condemned the old fetish of the line of battle, the worship of which has once more crept into the Allied Navies. The immortal older for Trafalgar expressly states it is almost impossible “ to bring a fleet of forty sail of the line into a line of battle in variable winds, thick weather, and other circumstances which must occii-”, without such a loss of time that the opportunity would probably be lost ol bringing the enemy to battle in such a manner as to make the business decisive.”

His prediction was vindicated at Jutland in these days of steam. The principle which he laid down was -true to all time. Therefore at Trafalgar he adopted dispositions which enabled him to throw a very large fleet swiftly upon the enemy in such a manner as to secure decisive results. And his opponent’s tactics and orders ? We have only to read the scornful comment of a great French officer: “ Inert line in all its horror, in all its error.” Villeneuve tried to get into a single line, and then trusted to mere shooting without any display of manoeuvring or will-power.

THE PASSIVE DEFENSIVE. “ Inert line in all its horror, in all its error.” It is against this that naval thought has to guard—the •inert line in battle ; the passive defensive in war. It is not true that. Nelson countenanced the plan of sitting still or of passive defence in tbe face of a great . danger. Because he was content with a longrange blockade of Toulon, because lie left the French ships there in peace so long as they were there, it does not follow that he would have been content with a long-range blockade of the German coast in days when (1) the Allies have a naval preponderance of nearly 4 to 1, whereas in Nelson’s time Great Britain had about il to 1 ; (2) when submarines are sinking our shipping at the rate of 15 or 20 large ships per week ; (3) when there are aircraft and other appliances with which the enemy can he reached. It is not to be supposed that Nelson would have given the slightest countenance to half-baked schemes of wild and reckless attack. The British Admiralty of his day, though it made many mistakes, contained men familiar with great war—men whose greatness, as in the case of Barham, we of this generation have rediscovered. They were not likely to prepare such plans. They knew the history, of war and were full of it. What we need at this hour, to guard against the two equally ruinous extremes of the inert, passive defensive and the insane offensive, is a War Staff contain ingofficers who studied not so much gunnery or engineering or tactics ortorpedo work, as war, its science, aud its history. Napoleon always began and planned his campaigns bv studying history. General Petain was a lecturer in military history. So was General Ludendorff; so also once was Moltke. We can win this Avar at sea by bringing men of the same type to Whitehall and giving them at once power and responsibility, now that Ave have excellent fighting officers in command of our squadrons and fleets.

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