THE WAR AT SEA.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 November 1918, Page 7

THE WAR AT SEA.

GERMANY'S SIGHT AGAJNSX , MIIISH SfiA-POWJSIi,

THE UNBREAKABLE STRANGLEHOLD,

Prince von Bulovr, formerly Imperial Chancellor, wrote: "A resolute English policy could easily iiave rendered iu innocuous .before our naval claws had grown, but by 1314 we had grown so big that we could venture on a war with England with high spirits."

At the outbreak of war, the German navy represented a cash outlay of about 30U millions sterling. It was the second largest fleet in the world; far larger than that of France; hut very much smaller than that of Britain . The United States and Japan were comparable in numbers of armored ships to Germany and France respectively, but as a balanced force the American fleet fell far below standard, and Germany's position as second naval power was unchallenged. Britain was: an 1914 iacontestably supreme. The British Navy, concentrated as it was in the North Sea and at the very doors of Germany, thus dominated the whole naval situation. Though it did not comply with the technical definition, the blockade of Germany was none the less real from the outset, and as the war went on it ibecame more and more definite and complete. Germany lniilt some new ships, but not many more than had already been authorised before the war; and while this was true also of the other European Powers, Britain immediately began to expand her navy in all directions. This, of course put the enemy still further in the minority. The entry of the United States "into the war mode a new and great addition of heavy ships to the force at the Allies' disposal: and the American fleet, hitherto weak in the lighter and swifter classes, was rapidly increased by the construction of a large number of destroyers of the most efficient type The Mediterranean, where Germany hnd, after the flight of the Goeben and Breslau to Turkey, no surface ships, was controlled at first by the French. Assisted by tlie British squadron in that area, they blockaded the mouth of the Adriatic and prevented any Austrian warship appearing in the open Mediterranean. When Italy entered the war, the Allied position navallv was unchaller.gablc, and the Austrian ignominious. There was only one serious naval problem in the Mediterranean —the submarine.

In short, the naval war was, apart from the submarine, an Alllied triumph, ami the absolute negation of everything that had been built for by the Central Powers in pursuance of a policy which had actually ibeen wrecked by events prior to the war. THE GERMAN NAVAL POLICY. "Under the existing conditions, in order to protect Germany's sea traffic and Colonies, there is only one means, viz.: Germany must have a fleet of such strength tliat, even for the mightiest Naval Power, a war with her would involve such risks as to jeopardise its own supremacy. "For this purpose it isn ot absolutely necessary that the German Fleti should be as strong as that of the greatest sea-power, because, generally, a great sea-Power will not be able to concentrate all its forces against us. But even if it should succeed in confronting us in superior force, the enemy would be so considerably weakened in overcoming the resistance of a strong German that, notwithstanding a victory gained, the enemy's supremacy would not at first be secured any longer by a sufficient fleet-"—.(Extract from the explanatory "preamble" to the German Navy Act, 1900).

The passages quoted above have been used very often to enlighten British readers regarding Germany's naval policy both before and during the war; and they are so illuminating that nothing better can readily be fonnd to emphasise the naturo of the situation when the war began. They also point clearly to Germany's naval failure, which (has played so great a part in her defeat. For the German Navy has failed; and it failed because the fundamental assumption set out in the "preamble" was wrong, and the policy itself therefore illogical and futile. It eo happened that Britain, the naval enemy whom Germany in 1900 had in her eye, was able to concentrate all its forces against Germany, and the chance for inflicting the crippling, though merely partial, defeat thai the preamble specified, never presented itself. Germany dedaied that it was "not absolutely necessary" to have a navy as great as the British; but this was an argument of necessity because it was obvious that she would not (have been permitted to outbuild the British, so long as Britain was not carried away by the impossible theories of the "Little Navy" school -of agitators. But the German policy •was nevertheless not one of defence; it was essentially offensive, and sought, by indirect strategy to undermine the supremacy which it could not ihope to crush; to weaken it till it lost its dominating position either by comparison with Germany, or in face of other potentially hostile Powers. Tlie German naval policy was descended from the Germans' comprehensive misunderstanding of British affairs, which presupposed, among etfhcr things, tho disruption of the Empire in case of war, and had not yet become need to the Idea that the "splendid isolation" of Victorian days, when England had no alliances, WM one. And bs she herself expeated, and as Germany certainly did not expect, the domestic troubles which Mosa vittUn tJ»e British Empire after the war broke out wer« mere trifles, which mm ncgUgJbla a* Manp&r&d with the wonderful nattttority which fto overseas: \owniokw» dbptayad.

BfiIAKDOWI? OF TBE THS'OEt, Tfce tn the wmking of OwMnny'a fttml Behense Waß tl« entente wkfc far It pvefl Wife way for a asking fey Which the British Bav*i totefoiU jft {be Mediterranean w*re glided ftvp the fear® of' jinnee (Hritai» retajping there merely 'D waall sqiMdMß), with a fcorrssgopding delegation British eara of French etipeerns in t&« Earth ana Atlantic. . i Germany had indeed deleted tlfis flaw in her naval suheaje, awl ths few years psmr to the vht Mir. Archil Hind) 5® P ttrt V.B|s h Jtite Trifie Jpanee had, -though f>i§ gess tra* for their ftnaqagij

terranean. But though Italy had gone thus far, sh was not prepared, as thetest of war showed, to join in a partnerI ship of international crime, and the; ships that were laid down in Italy torthe strengthening of the Triple Alli*ance were used in helping to wreck it. Britain's distant naval stations were lot heavily established; and, ltaving one Inemy alone to deal witili, she concentrated her force in the North Sea, and protected her possessions all over the : globe by a closely centralised strategy. It was no longer probable that Geimany could reduce Britain's control of the North Sea to a doubtful, not to say a certainly negative, quantity. This change of policy, due to a larjjc extent to Germany's naval aggressiveness (which the Kaiser had not inamply expressed in his title of "Admiral i ; the Atlantic"), brought about such a condition that the German Fleet was "masked" immediately the war began. A "strangle-hold" closed upon Germany, and she never escaped from it. CHIEF POINTS OF THE NAVAL WAR. The naval ihistory of tho war ael u - ally begins a little before the waj itself. When the Austrian heir was assassinated, a British squadron was enjoying the hospitality of the German Government at the reopening of the Kiel Canal, to which they had been bidden to observe the improvement that lad been made in that strategic water» T ay. It had just been widened and deepened,, to enable the new -battleships to pass between the Baltic and the North Sea—without going round Jutland, The news of the assassination broke up tho festivities, and the squadron returned to home waters—past the island of Heligoland that Britain had sold to Germany, and that had been made into defending fortress—and to the great annual naval roview. This function closed towards tho end of July, and European affairs were already so strained that the usual review leave was cancelled, and the Fleet was kept, as it had leon during the review, on a war footing, and ready for instant action. Hysterical literature and ignorance of the nature of modern naval warfare combined to create quite mistaken ideas in the popular mind as to whit would happen at sea; also, as the war went on, as to what was happening. The common notion that at some early date, ever to be remembered like that of Trafalgar, the fleets would rush at each other and fight a great battle, whose final effect on the war no one could rightly estimate, had its adherents on both sides of the North Sea. But the initiative at sea ia generally possessed by the weaker party, and the German Navy lhad no such foolish notion. It intended to wait until the British Fleet had been whittled down by attrition, and then "The Day" might come. Before long, therefore, the first fantastic illusion faded out. But it had substitutes, little better, and not all confined to tho thoughtless. The British public was encouraged to think of the German Fleet "skulking" in harbor, from which, aa Mr Churchill was foolish enough to prophesy, it would be dug like rats out of their holes. And. conversely, the German public fooled itself witthi the idea that the British warships were hiding in some mysterious northern fastness of the Ultima Thule. Each nation, in its worst moments, pictured the North Sea churned to foam by the wash of its battleship?, raging outside the dens df the inaccessible and cowardly enemy. In sober fact, the naval situation was governed by much greater things than fruitless coal-burning or cowardice. When the Germans did not fight, caution rather than cowardice was their motive; and when they did they usually fought bravely.

GERMANY TURNS TO THE U-BOAT.

Britain assumed complete control of tho North Sea, without a shot being fired; and only once was a serious attempt made to challenge that control, or rather to attack it. Immediately there began a great sweeping up of merchant shipping. Germany, well prepared for coming events, had endeavored to anticipate this by instructing her shipping how to act if war broke out; but by 28th September 357 enemy vessels, totalling 1,140,000 gross tons, had been captured by British cruisers, as against 86 vessels, of 229,000 tons, captured by Germany. The vast bulk of German shipping abroad, however, was interned. Soun the German flag was extinct upon the open seas, except for an odd raider, which was eitihei rounded up and destroyed, or after an adventurous career reached port and stayed there.

Germany's original naval policy, _as we have seen, was one of attrition, directed against the British naval suppremacy; and attrition continued to be her policy at sea throughout duplicating precisely that policy as pursued by the Allied armies ou land. The simple major strategy of the High Sea Fleet having failed, Germany turned her wear-ing-down tactics against the merchant marine. Soon fie war at sea became almost purely one of attack upon civil shipping, and of defence against that attack. Fierce and vivid glimpses of combat between tlie navies themselves were scatered spaisely over the expanse of this monotonous but intensely tragic struggle. With no hope of using cruisers in tlie open sea, Germany assumed the responsibility of using the submarine to attack shipping. The power of this then scarcely tested type of warship had already been discussed, as against battleships particularly, but its natural limitations closely restricted its effectiveness in that respect during • tlie war. Against unarmed ships it was, however, an instrument of the greatest power. Germany rightly realised thai the strength of the Allies at sea was not really in their fighting fleets, but in the merchant marine which those fleets protected; that without the foodstuffs and military tran sports they couM not figlit; and that if they existed, she must inevitably suffer defeat. She was inexorably driven to the submarine; but her decision to use it, cloaked though it was under excuses both subtle and bare-facedly faSse, merely made her defeat the more certain. Half-measures witihi the U-boat had no appeal for Germany, the innocent perished with tlie gnaty, aad the submarine finally brought "the wotH in arms against Germany;"