TASK OF BLOCKADE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1940, Page 8

TASK OF BLOCKADE

HOW IT IS CARRIED OUT PRINCIPLES OF STRATEGY. BRITISH SUPREMACY. Simple principles of strategy 7 govern all naval operations, by whomsoever pursued, writes Edward B. Powell in the London "Daily Telegraph." Everyone is familiar with the expression “command of the sea.” The command of a given area of sea may be defined as the power of a belligerent to use and his ability to deny to the enemy passage of the waters in question. Command can only be established after battle decision between rival fleets has driven a combatant completely out of an area or for so long as a navy 7, penning the enemy fleet in harbour, can prevent intervention in the contested area.. Mining is subsidiary to this "containing" procedure; and the whole operation itself is given the name "blockade." Command, once secured, may be used for negative and positive military purposes; it is always utilised for frustration of invasion and often for forwarding expeditions against the enemy's homeland or colonies. It is employed for the protection of the blockading Power's trade and the prevention of that of the enemy. Neutral ships may, after the publication of the lists of contraband, be searched and denied the opportunity to convey, either on direct or indirect voyage, commodities to the blockaded contestant. Contraband found is confiscated. THWARTING NAPOLEON. But if the establishment of command be the beginning and its exercise the end of all naval strategy, it should be recognised that no command is ever absolute. After the most annihilating battle some enemy corsairs will range the seas. Through the closest blockade, raiders are always likely to slip and work havoc on the trade routes. In 1803 Keith. Cornwallis and Nelson blockaded the entire European littoral from the Rhine to the Rhone. England exercised command —militarily 7 but negatively—to avert the descent of the Grande Armee from Boulogne, and protected her commerce while throttling French trade. At last, in 1805, Villeneuve eluded Nelson, and initiated moves which ended at Trafalgar. Trafalgar was a famous victory, but it did not establish command; for that had existed for eighteen months behind the blockade. The camp at Boulogne had been struck before ever the battle had been joined. After Trafalgar there were fewer combatant ships to blockade, more English vessels available for English commerce protection and enemy trade destruction. Yet, in spite of that happy preponderance, as Hannay (Short History of Royal Navy, IL. 467) says: “'England’s navy suffered more small defeats and her trade was more harassed in 1813 than in any year of the war." From August, 1914, onwards Jellicoe blockaded the German fleet, from Rosyth and Invergordon and Scapa. England assumed command primarily over the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and, after hunting down stray enemy units, over the far seas. THE SUBMARINE MENACE. This time she exercised her command militarily but positively by sending soldiers into France, Gallipoli, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, and the German- possessions. She guarded hei trade, a task made unusually troublesome by the large-scale use of a new weapon, the submarine. The commerce of her rival she pushed off the sea. In 1916 came Jutland, which the Germans accepted as their final battle. Ironically enough, protection of our traders was made far more difficult by our defeat of the Germans. Giving up hope of breaking by orthodox methods our command of the sea, they resorted finally to intensive commerce destruction, to the “guerre de course,” by means not hitherto, nor now, regarded as civilised —'.their submarines sinking unarmed vessels without first placing in safety the crews or passengers of the doomed craft. The battle decision, beloved of the landsman, proved a boomerang rather than a blessing: though, eventually, the British Navy, aided by its allies France, Japan, and the U.S.A., killed the menace. Germany, with her sentimental lack of logic, has never ceased to proclaim that she lost the war through the stoppage of her food imports—-exactly the fate which, without possessing effective command, she tried to impose upon us. A weak enemy will always deny battle, submit to blockade, and try to contrive that units shall slip out from the blockade and make themselves a nuisance. ALL SEAS SAVE THE BALTIC. At present England and France, blockading by naval forces based on ports which may be guessed but not named, command, to a very considerable extent as against Germany, all the open seas of the world except the Baltic, and the enemy main fleet has shown no sign of attacking, or adventuring the minefields that seal the blockade. The British are landing an expeditionary force, and since Germany has no colonies to attack or active allies to assist her that is the sole British and French military objective. The trade of Britain and France has suffered, not through raiding cruisers like the Emden of Great War fame, but by submarines which were on predatory stations days before war began. There are ways of hunting them; and. in any case, trade can be convoyed. Convoy is the order of the day. Con-voy-enforced trade is secure. Prevention of the commerce of Germany goes on apace. We officially know there are practically no German ships on the seas. Liners, such as the 18.000ton, 21knots Scharnhorst, now in Japan, have sought neutral waters. At Vigo alone there are 54 such refugee ships. Many vessels have been sunk or captured: others, chased, have opened sea-cocks and committed suicide. Only the neutrals can help Germany and—- “ 'Tis dangerous .... to come Between the pass and fell-opposed points Of mighty opposites.” We have always claimed right of search and to confiscate contraband. An official list of absolute and conditional contraband was issued on September 2. Absolute contraband covers arms, fuel, and everything convenient to waging warfare; "conditional" covers all food and clothing. Contraband no neutral may take through the block-

ade, except to the amount of his normal requirement. Tricomalee and Colombo. Alexandria, Haifa and Gibraltar, Weymouth and Kirkwall have all been named as official examination stations, and even English merchantmen! have been requested to make clearance calls. A suspect ship may be required to unload cargo, which may become prize, a fate which in the old days would have befallen the offending ship herself. Most folk feel justifiably bitter about the inhumanity of submarine warfare. Germany accepted Part IV of the London Naval Treaty of 1930, ratified in 1935, and bound itself, irrespective of what othe/s might do, to the principle that the crew of a victim ship must be placed in safety, the ship's boats not being regarded as adequate refuge. The German argument for the unrestricted destruction of our trade probably amounts to this: You may have present command by blockading our main fleet; you may be able to send troops to France; you may strive to protect your own trade by convoy; you may actually destroy ours, since we are unable to convoy it; and you can search neutrals. None the less by as many submarine vessels as can elude your blockade we shall divert your attention and —who knows?— throw the whole naval, situation into fluidity. t We do not accent your view that we ought to save crews; if we did we could not use submarines: and we, have no other weapon. It is an old doctrine that a blockade to be legal must be effective. Germany claims" by her submarines to be imposing a naval blockade, but she certainly cannot effectively enforce it.