To this we would reply that, as their Fleet is
in any ease so greatly inferior to ours that they cannot safely risk a trial of strength in the North Sea, a reduction of that strength does not very much matter. If you are too weak to win, why bother about the degree of your weakness, especially if by weakening your total strength your Navy would secure a great local gain And here comes in what we may call one of the chief curiosities of the war. The naval metaphysicians have always declared the command of the sea to be one and indivisible, and that there was no such thing as a local command. That, of course, was perfectly true in the. abstract, but owing to mines, submarines, and the narrowness and sinuosity of the channels that lead into the Baltic: that sea has become an exception to the rule. You can have a local command of that sea almost as effective as you can have of the Caspian.. Foe naval purposes the Baltic is as much a mare elausum as the groat Asian salt-water lake. The Germans have, no doubt, carefully reviewed all these considerations, but there seems good ground for the belief that they have come to the wrong conclusion. So be it, and so may it continue to be.
Previous page
