WHAT THE NAVY DOES.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 September 1915, Page 3

WHAT THE NAVY DOES.

EFFECTIVE SUBMARINE WORK. GERMANY'S DIFFICULTY. In the course of the next few weeks the Baltic is likely to become the scene of interesting naval events (wrote Archibald Hurd in the London Telegraph of July 20). , The Germans have taken Libau and Windau, and they are preparing for an ■assault on Riga, a much more difficult proposition. The German navy is expected by the military authorities to co-operate, and, indeed, its assistance is essential if the enemy's ambitious military plans are to be carried out and Riga is to become a base of suppuei. In the early days of the war it was asserted in many quarters that the Great General Staff of the army would speedily exert its influence to force the High Sea Fleet to take the seas. Those who indulged in this anticipation underestimated the influence of Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz, who was at the very zenith of his popularity when the war broke out. If the Naval Secretary had been a weak and unpopular man the prophecy might have been fulfilled. Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz has had to confess to his military confreres that he is unable to stop us using the seas of the world because the odds against the High Sea Fleet—moral as well as material and strategical—are so overwhelming. whatever the soldiers may have 'been thinking of the poverty of the return for an expenditure not far short of £300,000,000, which the German navy has involved, the prophecy as to German intervention at sea has not been fulfilled. Nearly a year has passed. But the conditions are very different in the Baltic. There Germany possesses H stronger fleet than Russia and convenient bases. Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, in view of his failures—not forgetting the submarine policy, a fiasco, so far as we are concerned, but a tragedy to the Germans—can hardly exert against the movement for the bold offensive in the Baltic the same influence to-day that he did eleven or twelve months ago, when the bone of contention was North Sea policy. WEAPON OF THE WEAKER POWER. The prospect of activity by the enemy in the Baltic directs attention to considerations which are frequently overlooked. Time and again I have heard it remarked that it is curious that British submarines have been able to do so little in the North Sea. The answer to that line of criticism is: "Yon cannot hit a target that does not exist." The weaker (Powers must withdraw their trade from those waters which are under the control of superior naval forces, and hence there are no merchant navies for the stronger Powers to attack. The battleships, cruisers and destroyers of the stronger fleet keep the seas clear of the enemy's squadrons, and thereby remove the objeats of attack for the submarines. But the battleships, cruisers and destroyers of the weaker fleet remain in port, whereas their submarines find plenty to do in watching and waiting for the enemy's ships. At the present moment what is the position? A "•Naval Officer,"' writing in the Army and Navy Gazette, puts the matter very lucidly: "In the Baltic 1 . it is not the German submarines that have scored, but those of the British Fleet, which are working in conjunction with the Russian flotilla. Similarly, in the Adriatic neither the French submarines nor, to any large extent, the Italian boats have succeeded in securing any victims. It is those of the weaker Austro-Hungarian Fleet which have been able to sink a French and two Italian cruisers, and to injure a British vessel, though not seriously. In the operations around the Gallipoli Peninsula, too, the submarine coups have been mostly brought off by Germany." SUBMARINES IN THE NORTH SEA. In only two seas, apart from the Black! Sea, of which we know little, are the Allies weak in naval power; the one is the Baltic and the other the Sea of Marmora. In those areas British submarines have scored a series of successes, and they will achieve other successes, which will have one notable result on the German mind. We talk of the Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the High Sea Fleet, and are apt to forget that in this work British submarines have co-operated splendidly for nearly a year by the menace which they offer to the enemy. According to the Admiralty return, issued on the eve of the war, we had ninety-eight submarines built and building, and Germany thirty-eight, or a few more. Our capacity for constructing these craft is at least t\|fce as great as the enemy's. We have not suffered considerable losses, while goodness only knows how many of Germany's submarines have been sunk. At any i rate, this at least is certain: our ascendency in under-water craft is to-day very much greater than it was a year ago. The Germans have fully realised for some time the hornets' nest which will be about them if their men-of-war, with or without transports, issue forth in the North Sea; and now they have learnt, by the loss of the battleship Pommern, that they are not even immune from the peril of British submarines in the Baltic. EFFEOT OF MILITARY PRESSURE. Grand Admiral von Tirpitz can make out a good case for the inactivity of the German navy in the North Sea in the circumstances now existing, but I imagine he will find it difficult to resist the pressure of the military element in favor of an offensive policy in the Baltic. He will be reminded that the command of those waters is essential to the military plans, and that he must give safe conduct to transports. He has made one effort to invade Russia by sea and has failed with loss;. he will certainly be forced to make others. The enemy is learning that the submarine is not an exclusive German possession, and that it is dangerously blind, in some circumstances, as the fate of the American ship Leelanan reminds us. At any rate, when there is a target, other Powers can use under-water craft ■quite as effectively as those "clever" Germans. They must by this time have received the report that the Turco-G«r-man cruiser Breslau has been injured in the Black Sea. The injury has Been clone, apparently, by a torpedo fired from a submarine, presumably Russian, bub possibly British. The facilities for repair are contemptible. Wherever a German man-of-war shows any activity disaster is met with. In the circumstances the enemy cannot be very happy. He has read his Mahan. He knows that whereas military power makes a dramatic appeal by its suecession of stirring incidents and its daily communiques, the decisive influence on him m wall as on «m la bating faf

naval power, silent in its operation, and usually lacking in dramatic appeal. H» knows, moreover, that, owing to the constriction of the world through the od« vent of steam, naval force can be utilised in creating and utilising military force to an extent, in the present industrial con' ditkms, which was unthought of in the last great war. Consequently, in spite of the widespread advertisement of the forward movement against Russia, official Qer- , many to-day—sans sea command and alt that it connotes, sans ocean sans every element of Weltpolitik which was its peculiar pride a year ago—would be revealed, if we could look into ,it» heart, as a very depressed, despondent and well-nigh hopeless Germany,. Berlin is struggling to keep up appearance* itt the eyes of the civil population. Ger» many is living on hope deferred, but not abandoned—that is the virtue of her vast paper currency—and when hope i»* ferred 'becomes hope abandoned the gam* will be up. > '