THE STATE OF THE NAVY. D URING the past few weeks
there have been certain rumours that the Navy, owing to want of foresight in this or that direction, or owing to a lack of driving-force in the Board of Admiralty, was not in so positive a position of superiority as had been supposed. Some naval "experts," who may, we think, be aciuitted of any desire wantonly to undermine confidence in the Navy, seem to have been infected by the disease of "cold feet." Thus those who were never before inclined to waver in their trust in the Board of Admiralty have been tempted, or at all events invited, recently to wonder whether all was going well. Something more than vague misgivings has been disseminated—not widely, it is true, but in a rather lurid form. We have been told that German Dreadnoughts carrying guns which would outrange even those of the 'Queen Elizabeth' would soon burst forth from the Kiel Canal. Men who are readily awed by rumour talked of these ships by name. One of them was the 'Hindenburg.' Se non e vero e ben trorato .1 It was therefore time that the bogies were knocked over the head, and this extremely useful and salutary act was performed by Mr. Balfour in his admirable speeches of Tuesday and Wednesday in the House of Commons. He did not boast ; he did not pretend that surprises are impossible ; but he did offer an account of his stewardship which ought to convince and reassure every man who can keep his mind free from panic. We have read a great many speeches on the Navy. We have never read speeches which seemed to us to be in a righter spirit than those of Mr. Balfour. They contained an explicit guarantee that everything is being done which an intelligent, wide-awake, and energetic Board ought to do. More than that we cannot ask.
It is very easy for a newspaper to invent its own particular bogy, or, let us say, to believe in a particular bogy on the strength of some slender but attractive evidence, and then to say : "Here is this appalling danger. We are only performing a public duty in demanding to know what steps, if any, the Admiralty are taking to meet this particular challenge." Mr. Balfour very rightly did not attempt to deal with the x bogy, the y bogy, and the z bogy in detail. In his review of the situation he simply assured us, in effect, that the Navy was being made as strong as possible, and as well prepared as naval ingenuity can devise, to meet all conceivable risks. He must have convinced all those who needed to be convinced and were open to conviction that if the Navy cannot be said actually to command success, there never was a time when it more thoroughly deserved success. Let us quote Mr. Balfour's words as to the condi- tion of the Fleets :— " They am much stronger than they were six months ago They are still stronger than they were twelve months ago, and their excess over what we possessed nineteen months ago is still greater. In every class of ship, big and little ships designed to meet on equal or superior terms the German High Seas Fleet, auxiliary ships, patrol ships, anti-submarine ships, light cruisers, destroyers, flotilla leaders, submarines, every kind of ship available in modem war, we have increased, and largely increased, since the war began. Well, then, let us dismiss vain and empty fears. As I said yesterday, war is necessarily and always an uncertain game. It may be true, and it is true, that maritime warfare under modern conditions and against the new form of attack constituted by submarines, aircraft, and mines is a more uncertain game than it was in the good old days when it was merely a question of counting your 'seventy-four' battleships and your thirty-six-gun frigates and the rest- Therefore I repeat again that I will make no boast about the British Admiralty. I will not guarantee it against misfortune or accidents. But I say in perfect confidence that it is stronger in the face of any overt attack which it is likely to meet, that it is far stronger than it was at the beginning of the war, and is, I believe, stronger than it has ever been in its history."
In only one respect is the Navy less strong than when war began. The armoured cruisers lost have not been replaced. Nevertheless our superiority in this branch over the German Navy is still enormous and is not contested. Mr. Balfour stated that in all our warlike stores, and in naval guns and ammunition, our strength was much greater than at the beginning of the war relatively to the number of ships in existence, and that it was still continually increasing. The chief anxiety to the Admiralty was the question of labour. When Colonel Winston Churchill was at the Admiralty skilled labourers were allowed to go to the front. Mr. Balfour said that the remedy for the defect was three- fold : to recall skilled labourers who would be more useful at home than abroad, to dilute skilled labour further with unskilled, and to induce the workers to turn out more in the time. Another very interesting point was his answer to the rumour that yards were not being used to the best purpose. We have all heard of the contractor who remarks : "It is all very well for the Admiralty to say that they are building ships as fast as they can, but here is a slip in my yard standing idle. What have they got to say to that ? " Mr. Balfour's answer is that he has investigated many such cases, and they are all capable of the same explanation. The contractor means either that he can produce more ships if he is given more labour, or that he can produce more ships if only the Admiralty will give him the particular orders which at the moment he can carry out. But it is, of course, the business of the Admiralty to get exactly the ships they want, not to order what they do not need at a particular time. And as for the labour, the Admiralty would naturally supply it if they had it. The contractor's complaint merely brings us back to the notorious labour question. Yet there are many doubting souls who misjudge the Admiralty for no better reason than that they have been told by a friend who knows a contractor, and who was told by the contractor himself, so that there could be no mistake about the matter, &c., &c.
We have intentionally not dealt in this article with Mr. Balfour's crushing rejoinder to Colonel Churchill so far as it was a personal indictment. But one point is so germane to our subject of the state of the Navy that it must be mentioned. The charge that the Government were not sufficiently pressing on the construction of Dread- noughts was actually made by Colonel Churchill, who had himself delayed the fitting out of new Dreadnoughts by taking away their guns for monitors. In taking the guns he may have been right, but the charge in these circum- stances took an extraordinarily impudent form, as ho compared the rapidity with which the monitors were prepared for sea when he was First Lord with the slowness with which the present Board is supposed to be making ready their gun-denuded Dreadnoughts. Moreover, "bustle, hurry, and push," as Mr. Balfour raid, may often prove to be the slowest method in the end, as has been shown by the need to remodel some of the types built under Colonel Churchill's slashing regime. The spirit of the Navy is unquenchable. It is equal to all its tasks, and while it is not dismayed by anything Germany may have in preparation, it is the part of self- respecting landsmen not to be alarmed by bogies. Wars, it is true, are a history of surprises. But at least we may say with confidence that so far as the Admiralty can provide against surprises they are doing so.
Previous page
