The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1917. TRAFALGAR AND JUTLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 October 1917, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1917. TRAFALGAR AND JUTLAND.

In a recent article jn the Daily Mail Mr. H. W. Wilson, the well-known writer on naval questions, dwell* interestingly on the evolution of war vessels, making a comparison between the vessels of Nelson's time and those which command the seas to-day. It is but little more than a century since Nelson, after achieving one of the most glorious victories won on the seas, died with the sound of the guns ringing in his ears. But as well might one compare the vessels of that relatively recent time with those of to-day as the canoes by which the first inhabitants reached these islands and the leviathans which now traverse the seas of thft Southern Hemisphere. Two stupendous changes have come since Nelson's time. The submarine, as Mr. Wilson reminds us, has rendered it possible for enemy craft to elude surface ships, and appear on the line of communication protected by a superior surface fleet. On the other hand, aircraft have given to the superior fleet a new power of attack which did no; • -:ist in Nelson's day. It is now conceiuibie 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 the blue water" is retained. For it is not the "blue water" on the surface that counts alone to-day. We must command 'the "green water" 100 and 200 feet below the surface as well. Nelson aimed, above all things, at destroying the enemy's fighting ships. He was penetrated, that is to say, by the offensive spirit. On the contrary, like every 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 o! Trafalgar, precisely as Napoleon stopped a premature rush upon an enemy army at Austerlitz a few weeks later. "Do not imagine," he wrote, "that I am one d those hot-braineo. fight at aa immense disadvantage, without an adequate object." "It is only numbers that can annihilate," he wrote on the eve of Trafalgar, "and it is annihilation that the country wants, not merely a splendid victory." To obtain crushing and extraordinary results he departed from all the convention and formalism oi his time. Ho was not one of those people whose lives are spent in carrying out or 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 boyhood 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 Ms time. It was as though a modern admiral, disregarding submarines and torpedoes, had pushed swiftly in to close and decisive range. Not only that, hut he swung his ships on both sides of 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 passionate pursuit of his great end, which was to concentrate overwhelming force on a part of t>.c enemy, and to destroy that enemy There had been nothing like the Battle of the Nile before that battle was fought One hundred and nineteen years have ~ passed, and there has been nothing like it since. He condemned the old fetisl ' g of the. line of battle, the worship ol is which has, Mr. Wilson asserts, once mon 0 crept into the Allied navies. The imraor tal ordeiyfciCrafalfiar expressly state! • »,w»L~^

forty sail of the line into a line of battle in variable winds, thick weather, and other circumstances which must occur, without such a loss of time that the opportunity would probably be lost in 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 is true to all time. Therefore, ar. 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." Villcneuve tried to get into a single line, and then trusted to mere shooting, without any display of manoeuvring of will-power. "Inert line in all its horror, in all its error." It is against this that naval thought has to guard—the inert line of battle; the passive defensive in war. 'lt is not true that Nelson countenanced the plan of sitting still or of passive defence in the face of a great danger. Because he was content with a long-range blockade of Toulon; because he left the French ships there in peace so long as they were there; it does not follow that he would be content with a long-range blockade of the German coast in days when (1) the Allies have a naval preponderance of nearly four to one, whereas in Nelson's day Britain had about one and a half to one; (2) when submarines are sinking our shipping at the rate of fifteen to twenty ships per week; (3) when there are aircraft and other appliances .with which the enemy can be reached. The British Admiralty of his 1 day, though it made many mistakes, conItained men familiar with naval warmen whose greatness, as in the case of Barham, we of this generation have rediscovered. They were not likely to pre. pare such plans. They knew the history of war and were full of it. "What we need at this hour," said Mr. Wilson, I "to guard against the two equally ruinous extremes of the inert, passive defensive ' a,nd the insane offensive, is a war staff containing officers who have studied not so much gunnery or engineering or tactics or torpedo work, as war, its science, and its history. Napoleon always began and planned his campaigns by studying history. General Petain was a lecturer on military history. So was General Ludendorff; so also once was Moltke. We can win this war at sea by bringing men of the same type to Whitehall and giving them at once power and responsibility, now that we have excellent fighting officers in command of our squadrons and fleets."