THE UNCHANGING SEA FIGHT.
FIGHTING at sea changes its character less than fighting on land, no doubt because it is conditioned by an unchanging element. It might, however, be maintained that land fighting changes in these days only to become more like its old self. As the Greeks sat down in front of Troy, so the Germans sit in front of Verdun, and the long lines of fighting men sit facing each other from the Channel to the Swiss foothills. Of course the strain is continual in Northern Europe, whereas the classical fighters joined the combat only now and again and filled in the intervals with personal combats "between the lines." The turn of the wheel in land fighting has been slow. The range of cannon when gunpowder was invented drove armies to a more respectful distance from each other. It seemed that the ever-increasing range of artillery and musketry would drive them still further apart, and that they would close upon each other only when infantry rushed the position of wavering men or cavalry swept in pursuit on to a demoralized army in flight. But the inevitable compensation came. Men burrowed like conies to escape the effects of metal, and armies approached each other from behind ramparts of earth, which were continually advanced by tho sappers. Before' Sebastopol the opposing armies lay for months within a few yards of one another. Even grenadiers to-day are restored to a position of importance from uhich they seemed to be deposed a hundred years ago. But if the vicissitudes of land fighting move in a gigantic circle, they still have the appearance of rapid change with every new campaign. The changes in sea fighting are small by comparison.
The fact that seamen are placed on a floating platform ties their movements to a fixed and final fora'. Soldiers may dispute whether a serried mass of men in a land battle may not, in spite of huge losses under a terrible fire, have the advantage over men in open order. For one thing, the compact mass enjoys a sense of support, conveyed by shoulder touching shoulder, and this is of a measurable moral value. Then, again, there is the truth—at least, an ascertained truth within certain limits—that the momentum of a crowd will carry it further than the sum of individual personal resolves would enable it to go. It is as though the crowd developed a mystical determination of its own which is not explicable by any reference to the characters of the individuals composing it. Some such doctrine as this perhaps justified the use of the German phalanx against the Russians a year ago. In any case, this is a question which is taken entirely out of the hands of the seaman and is decided for him by circumstance. He is bound to fight with the fullest co-operative sense. He is part of a war-machine which Stevenson, as he looked down upon a ship of war in the harbour of a Pacific island, described as "an ant-heap for activity." There would be confusion in so comparatively small a space if each man had not a task that keeps him to his allotted place. All things combine to emphasize this co-operative sense of the sailor, and impress it upon him till he cannot think of his work except as a small contribution to an immense and intricate effort in combination. If the organiza- tion breaks down, the ship becomes unworkable, or at all event' falls short of playing her part in the higher combination of which she in her turn is only a unit. Naval tactics depend upon the precise movements of worlds within worlds. If any particular world suffers the earthquake which is produced by the arrival of salvoes of shells, by a torpedo, or by an internal explosion, the constant co-operation of the ship's company receives its final illustration. Every soul on board goes into the sea when the ship founders. There is no prospect here of the wounded being drawn out of the conflict and gently tended behind the lines. Doctors, bearers, and wounded are all engulfed in the common element, and lucky is the man who is rescued from a shattered boat or a floating piece of wreckage.
The psychologist might exhaust himself in comparing the sustain- ing and unnerving influences which make the differences between land fighting and sea fighting. The sailor who had a mind to run away—if there be any such in the Navy, which we think highly improbable—could not do it. His legs are not his servants or his masters. The engines rush him forward to the attack, and the only man—the Captain—who can give the word to stop will certainly never do it so long as a spark of hope remains of firing on the enemy with success. It is easy to say that the sailor must fight because he cannot help it—that he is always in the position of the man with his back to the wall. But there is no record of a modern British sea fight that we know of which displays the sailor fighting in that spirit. He is always seen as the cog in the machine, perfectly cool, perfectly preoccupied with his business, which indeed has become so much a habit with him that he has no time to think of anything else. His motive is habit, not desperation. If his nerves be racked, it is during the time when his ship is gradually approach, ing the enemy. When the battle is joined he has no such hours of waiting as often fall to a soldier in the middle of an action. All the time he works so hard that he has no opportunity to think at will. That, we gather from all accounts, is the common experience. As for being paralysed by the imminence of death, he has become intimate with the idea of death long before. Everything depends upon the mental approach to thoughts of death. The sailor knows that if his ship sinks in battle there is no hope for him worth specu- lating about. He is, therefore, not troubled by doubts. His feeling is that death has been accepted in advance. He tells himself that he will be lucky if he escapes it ; he does not tell himself that it will be bad luck if he is killed. The writer remembers being told of an inventor's scheme by which torpedoes would be tiny submarines navigated by a single man inside. A torpedo, instead of taking its only appointed course, would be capable of changing its direction at the will of its navigator. The navigator would, of course, perish when the torpedo struck. The writer remembers wondering whether a branch of the Navy could be built up on this principle of condemning a certain number of officers and men in advance to certain death in battle. But, with the -wonderful story of the North Sea battle in our minds, can any of us really wonder whether such a service would lack recruits ? One is more inclined to think that every officer and man in the Navy would clamour to enter it If by so doing he could serve the Navy better.
Even the change from sail to steam did not essentially alter sea fighting. Nelson manceuvred for the weather gage ; Sir John JcIlicoe manceuvres for the better conditions of light. Although action may begin at a distance of more than fifteen miles, low visibility brings the ships close together. And we may be certain that in a fog the fighters would search for or.e another till ship crashed into ship, and one was perhaps locked with another till the old scenes of boarding were reproduced. Our sailors, being masters of seamanship, are not like the Romans, who tried to make 'good their inferiority to the Carthaginians in seamanship by turning a sea fight as nearly as possible into a land battle—by locking the ships together and pounding away at close quarters. Our sailors excel in manoeuvre and the lightning judgment which it requires. They prefer to fight on the terms they can impose, but they would net hesitate to prove that they were equal to the oldest forms of that traditional sea fighting which changes little in accidentals and not at all in essence.
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