TOPICS OF THE DAY • HALF-TRUTHS AND THE NAVY.
WE have never been among those who think, or, we should prefer to say, profess to think, that the Liberal Party and the Liberal Government have any but the best intentions in regard to the Navy. We do not doubt their patriotic aspirations, but we have every right to ask whether they are not bemusing themselves with half-truths about the present European position and its bearings upon the safety of the nation. We are bound to confess that the course of the Navy debate on Monday does not reassure us. We find little proof in it that the Cabinet sees the problems of foreign policy and national defence steadily or sees them whole. In the abstract, Mr. McKenna was, of course, perfectly right to say that to spend a single penny beyond what is absolutely necessary for our defence is to waste the national resources, and that such waste is to be condemned. Unfortunately that is one of those half- truths which are often quite as dangerous as positive errors. In existing circumstances it is most unwise to approach the problem with which the nation is confronted with a too rigid enforcement of the principle we have just quoted from Mr. McKenua. We must look, not at a narrow section of the problem, but at the whole of it, and we must never forget what our ultimate object is. That object is not merely to secure the command of the sea, but to secure it in such a way that it shall be unchallenged, or, at any rate, not subject to the kind of competition to which it is at this moment exposed owing to the action of Germany. The capital evil of the present situation is that we are engaged in a competition with Germany for the command of the sea which is not only ruinous from the economic point of view, but is fraught with very great temptations and provocations to an out- break of hostilities.
While that competition lasts there is always the danger that the German Government may hold OA a point has been reached where they are so nearly equal to us in maritime force in the North Sea that it is worth their while to run the risk of putting the matter to the test, and of proving to the German people and taxpayers that the vast sums they have spent on their Navy have not been, as a considerable section of Germans are already inclined to believe, spent in vain. In other words, the competition must not be allowed to reach the point where the German Government, pressed from many quarters, will be tempted to say : "Now or never ! " That point has not yet been reached ; but it may be reached if we hold, or even appear to hold, too closely to the maxim that we will not spend a penny more than can be shown to be absolutely necessary to give us the command of the sea. German naval experts may make a different calculation from that made by our experts as to what force will obtain the command of the sea, and may in the end prove to be wrong ; but no one who cares for the peace of the world will want to tempt them to put their erroneous theories to the proof. A struggle with Germany in which we were successful would be a very great evil, even though infinitely less an evil than one in which we were unsuccessful. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's lines about the virtuous woman are applicable to the situation : "He comes too near, Who comes to be denied."
The Power which comes to be denied in a battle for the supremacy of the sea with Britain comes too near. There- fore, as we have said, our object should be to make it perfectly clear to the Germans that it is useless for them to compete with us for the command of the sea, and that if they engage in that competition it will be at their economic peril. But the way to make the Germans retire from the competition is to prove to them, not only by precept but by example, that we are outbuilding them so thoroughly and so rapidly that it is hopeless for them to try to catch us up in the race. We want to make it impossible for any German statesman, however optimistic, to say to his fellow-Germans :—" Just one more sharp struggle, one more supreme effort, one more act of self-sacrifice, and you will have accomplished your great aim, and will pass the winning-post before your potent competitor." Rather we want to give a good case to the prudent Germans who will say :—" We must look at facts. Our competitor is too far ahead of us already, and is going too strong, to make it possible for us to pass him. The effort to do so is sure to be unsuccessful, and will exhaust us and leave us less fit than we should otherwise be for competitions in other directions. Therefore let us give up a struggle in which we cannot be successful, and devote ourselves to those where we know we can be supreme."
To continue our metaphor, we have reached a point where the best way for us to prevent German competition from becoming dangerous, and to inspire in German minds the feeling which we have just described, is to put on a spurt, and to keep up that spurt, whatever temporary inconvenience it may cause us, till the competition has come to an end. The spurt should put such a distance between us and our rivals as must cause a sense of depression in their minds, and reinforce the arguments of those who are becoming doubtful as to the wisdom of their present policy. To change our metaphor to one which we have employed before, the command of the sea is up for auction. But it is a peculiarity of the auction at which the bids are made that they have to be paid in gold, and that lie who fails to make the last bid does not merely lose the object desired, but may be said to lose also the money which he has unsuccessfully bid. If Jones bids £50,000 for a Raphael, and fails to get it, the £50,000 remains in his pocket. But if Germany bids fifty millions for the command of the sea, and does not obtain it, she loses her fifty millions as far as the command of the sea is con- cerned, though no doubt her Fleet may remain of use for certain other purposes. The result of this is that at the auction for the command of the sea one Power dare uot merely "run up" another Power for the sake of embarrassing it with heavy expenditure. The cost and the burden are too great. So much for abstract theory. We must next seek to apply it, and ask what steps we ought to take to keep down German competition, and make it clear to Germans that their sacrifices will be in vain. In our opinion, the proper way is to let it be known that for every battleship or war vessel of importance that is completed by Germany we shall take care to have two of equal or greater power completed a month or two earlier. No doubt to do that would, considering our present lead, give us greater power than is absolutely necessary to secure the command of the sea. It would not, however, give us a greater superiority than is absolutely necessary to overcome the dangers of German competition. We venture to say that if we really convince the Germans that we shall not simply talk about completing two ships for one of theirs, but shall actually do it in every case, German competition will die away, and the demand which is already beginning in Germany for a reversal of the policy of challenging our command of the sea will gradually become irresistible.
Granted that the country accepted, as we believe it would accept, our principle if it were put to it by the King's Government, how could it be brought home to the Germans ? We believe that the most effective plan would be for the House of Commons to be invited to pass a Resolution directing the Admiralty in so many words to make such arrangements as would enable them to complete two war vessels equal to, or greater in strength than, each war vessel which in any given period might be completed by that European Power which possessed the largest number of effective fighting-ships. We do not suggest an exact form of words, but we feel sure that it would not pass the ingenuity of Parlia- mentary man to find one which would make our meaning clear without using language contrary to the comity of nations. Possibly for two years or so our Ship- building Vote might have to be a little larger than neces- sary, but in the end we are convinced that the result would be as economically as it would be defensively sound. The moment German competition fell off we should be able to resume a much lower scale of expenditure than we shall probably have to meet if we continue to encourage competi- tion by letting Germans imagine that they have only got to make "one more spurt" to get level with us, or even beyond us. What wise men should dread most in the present situa- tion is the risk of our giving this temptation to the Germans, and thus bringing about the very thing which lovers of peace most &sire to avoid. We have always thought that there was something to be said for the Irish priest who defended his parishioners for shooting their landlord in the following terms : "What right had he to tempt the poor people of this district to kill him by going about unprotected ? " We do not want to tempt the governing people of Germany to shoot at us by our inadequate protection, or what may seem in their judgment inadequate protection. The more ardent a man is in the cause of peace, and the more anxious he is to avoid the horrors of a European war—and in our opinion it is impossible to exaggerate those horrors—the More, it seems to us, be should be determined not merely to secure an adequate naval force for this country, but to put an end to the terrible competition with Germany which is wasting the resources of both countries and doing grave injury to both nations. As we have said, the only way to prevent war is to prevent the competition reaching the danger-point where Germany may suddenly be tempted to cry: "Now or never ! "
We shall be told, no doubt, that what we have written is cynical and unjust, and that we are representing the German people as anxious to Hy at our throats, whereas that great people are sincerely anxious for peace, and no more want to attack us than we want to attack them. Let us say at once that we are fully alive to the good intentions of the German people, and to their desire not only to keep the peace in general, but to remain on good terms with us. Unfortunately, however, it matters very little what the bulk of the 'German people think,—we might almost go further and say, what the bulk of any people think, however democratic their forms of government. It is a delusion to say that nations, not statesmen, make wars. Now, as always, the great acts of State are done by the rulers and not by the ruled. We do not wish to bring a general indictment against the statesmen of Germany, or of any other country, as being essentially warlike or aggressive. In the abstract, no doubt, the German rulers genuinely desire peace. At the same time, a near acquaintance with great affairs tends to make men cynical and pessimistic, and, perhaps we should add, over-anxious. Statesmen are apt to be burdened with the feeling that unless action is taken at a particular moment it may be too late. They therefore often hurry their countries into war, or into acts which lead to war, out of a dread that they may be forced to fight later at a disadvantage. No statesman on the Continent, we venture to say, believes in the possibility of permanently maintain- ing the peace. But once granted that wars are inevitable, statesmen soon get to bold that it may be a positive duty to provoke war at a moment when they judge that their country would be able to wage it at an advantage. The existence of this temper in foreign statesmen is necessarily a peril to this country, because it is one which is not entertained by our own statesmen, owing very largely to our insular position. Our statesmen not only do not share the feeling, but find it very difficult to believe that their Continental colleagues entertain it, and hence there is here a very real danger for us,—a danger . increased by the fact that foreigners generally do not believe in our simplicity, but think that we are governed by the same feelings and anxieties as they are, and that the words of peace which are always in the mouths of our public men are purely Machiavellian, and conceal a deep aggressiveness. Continental statesmen not only believe that the world is governed by blood and iron, but also cannot believe that any one here really thinks otherwise.
Once more let us say that, as the command of the sea is absolutely vital to our interests, and as it is of supreme importance to attain that end at the least possible price, our immediate business is to take action which will tend to put an end to the ruinous competition into which the latest developments of German naval policy have forced us. But there is only one way likely to put an end to that competition, and that is action which will con- vince our rivals of the uselessness of further challenging our position. Remember, however, that action to keep the com- mand of the sea and to put an end to competition does not necessarily mean the building of more 'Dreadnoughts,' or indeed of any particular type of battleship. As to what is the best type we offer no opinion, but we still hold that further inquiry is needed into the difficult problem of how to obtain the best value for the money we spend on the Fleet.
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