HAS GERMANY ANY PLAN AT SEA?

Taranaki Daily News, 4 December 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

HAS GERMANY ANY PLAN AT SEA?

'BARKEN DASHES EAST AND WEST. THE "TRUMP" CAlii). (By A. C. Ferraby, Daily Express Correspondent.) As the weeks pass and the British Fleet's command of the seas remains unchallenged by the world's numerical second naval Power, one 13 driven mole and more to question whether the Teutonic General Staffs have any strategic plan of campaign at sea at all. The recent abortive raid by German warships towards the Russian coast in the Baltic and their hasty retreat when challenged by a small Russian flotilla; the failure of the Austrians to use their naval resources in defence of their dockyards at Monfalcone; the failure of the Germans to offer any support by sea to their much-harassed army on the Belgian coast last November and the utterly purposeless destruction of trawlers and small trading vessels by submarines are .all symptoms of a paucity of idea that it is not perhaps too optimistic to consider as foreshadowing complete strategic bankruptcy. It has been argued, not unreasonably, that Germany may be preserving her fleet in order that she shall have a "trump card" to play at the peace conference in the event of the war developing into a military stalemate. If that is her purpose she lias badly misread the lessons of history. In the ten years between Trafalgar and Waterloo Kapoleo'n rebuilt his fleet, but. like Wilhelm, he refused to let it measure its strength against the enemy. When the Empire fell France had 103 ships of the line, the equivalent of our modern Dreadnoughts. The possession of them was not enough to save Napoleon from exile; the use of them might have been. It must never be forgotten that German and Austrian naval matters are always in war under the supreme control of the military authorities. This is most remarkably illustrated in the writings of German strategists who have attempted to draw up plans for oversea invasion. They invariably place the control of the expedition in the hands of military men, even to such technical matters as the selection of the weather suitable for a landing. Our expedition to Gallipoli was carried out on precisely the opposite basis; the whole expedition until it was safely ashore was under the control, of the naval authorities. And it succeeded.

INTERIOR LINES. There is one striking difference between naval and military campaigns that is well illustrated in this war. As Lieut.-Colonel Roustam Bek has more than once pointed out, the German army is operating on "interior lines"—■ that is, it is inside a ring of enemies—and 90 is better able to hurry reinforcements fr»m one front to another or to draw fesh troops from the heart of the, country. That is an advantage. The German navy is also operating on interior lines, and it is at a disadvantage. It is hemmed in. It could beat the Russian fleet no doubt if it exerted all its force, but the Russian end of the Baltic is landlocked, and no path to freedom of action is to be won that way. The pin-prick policy of the "submarine blockade" lias no effect on the war. No German battleship will win its way to sea over the stepping-stones ,of sunken trawlers, if I may use a metaphor adapted ts the mentality* 1 of the German strategists. It is, and must always be, a »atter of astonishment to naval students that the enemy submarines have failed so markedly to affect in any way the »ver9ea forces in France and Gallip»li. That would have seived a Military abject, yet the Herman strategists have either overlooked it or have despaired of success. •ur submarines, on the other hand, have shown in the Sea of Marmora how useful such attacks can he. The sinking of Turkish transports has been of the utmost value to our hard-pressed forces on land. Tt is however, a curious and instructive fact that this very success of Ell and El 4 has demonstrated clearlv the limitations of the submarine.

LIMITATION'S. It is not, perhaps, realised generally that these warships have achieved that much-talked-of-feat—the forcing of the Dardanelles. The so-called impregnable defences of Constantinople, have been penetrated. All the same Constantinople has not fallen. A British submarine has torpedoed Turkish ships in the harbor of Constantinople. All the same Constantinople has not fallen. The reason is that the submarine, a 9 at present designed, does not, and cannot, hold the command of the sea. It is the weakest of all types of men-of-war; the most easily destroyed if caught. The anti-submarine craft can be found (Mr. E. H. Tennyson d'Eyncourt, the Director of Naval Construction, received the 0.8. in the Birthday Honors), and many technical difficulties have yet to be overcome before the underwater battleship can be evolved. We read much of the immense output of new submarines by the Germans. They are reputed to be gathering them from all sources. To what end. The submarines will not win this war, Since the beginning of this year two British torpedo-boats have been sunk by the enemy submarines in the North That is the total result of nearly six months of the war of attrition. How many new battleships and cruisers have joined our fleet in that time we do not know, but Mr. Churchill led us to expect about one battleship a month. ■The strategy that dictated a naval war of endurance for Germany has failed miserably. Has von Tirpitz any other idea?

Many years ago a great Victorian statesman (I believe it was 'Palmerst.on) said:—

"The Germans can till the earth or sail on the clouds and build castles in the air; but never since the beginning of time have they had the genius to cross the ocean or the high seas, or even to sail through the waters round the coast."

The history of this war justifies the gibe. The strategic barrenness of von Spec's cruise with the German China squadron is symptomatic of the whole German misconception of the teaching of Mahan. It wants only an attempted invasion of this country by Germany to expose for ever the futility of a militaryminded nation dabbling in sea war.