25 AUGUST 1917, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

NAVY AND ARMY.

" War once *awed inn? he waged offen,ireIy. oggretv;vely. The enemy .71{$1 bat he fended ell. Ind mitten dOZ33.-513HAN, quoted by Admiral Jellicoe, April 190, 1917.

r lifE time has come to speak quite frankly of the war on the Western Front. The opportunity which we stilt possess for dealing the enemy a knock-out blow by driving him from the coast of Flanders mist be used to the full. Though, like the greater part of the Press, we have often hinted at such a measure, and shown our expectation that the course of events must soon make the Government realize that here is our essential policy, the policy of the big rather than of the minor objective, we have hitherto not deemed it right to deal with the matter in explicit terms. The reasons for such reticence no longer exist. Those reasons were as follows. Though we always believed that the Germans must be filled with wonder that we tolerated their presence at a point so injurious to our Naval and Military position, we hesitated to draw their attention too emphatically to the great strategic advantages which they possessed and of which we were deprived. Next, it was not absolutely clear to its that the experts at the Admiralty and at the War Office felt prepared to advise the taking up of the question of the Flanders coast in deadly earnest, and pressing it to the utmost. Remember that, once begun, nothing but pressing it to the utmost will do. Half-measures and tentative efforts would be far worse than pure inaction. If the policy of clearing the coast from the Dutch Frontier to the end of the Trench line—that is, from Het Zwyn to isiieuport-les-Bains—is once undertaken, we must see it through, cost what it will. Clearly then, whilst there was any doubt as to the highest Naval and Military authorities being in favour of the plan, it would have been not only most unwise, but a culpable breach of duty, for a news- paper to press it upon the Government. It would mean in the final result an attempt to force the hand of the directing officers at the Admiralty and at the War Office. There are many dangerous things in war, but almost any blunder is better than operations forced by newspaper clamour upon an unwilling Cabinet, and unwilling soldiers and sailors. Operations, whether Naval or Military, or, still more, com- bined operations, are doomed to failure if entered into in the spirit of men who say : This is wrong, this is dangerous, this is a gamble, but we were obliged to undertake it because of a popular demand." Yet how often have Ministers in the past said this when faced with a newspaper plan of campaign! Now, however, our lips are unsealed in both respects. Nothing is more clear than that the Germans realize fully that if they are driven from the Flanders coast they are more than half beaten and that they must stake their all on holding Western Belgium. There is no possibility of supplying them here with any knowledge which they do not already possess. They are literally trembling with expectation. *To prove this one has only to note how the matter is openly treated by expert writers in their Press. Take, for example, this recent utterance of the Vossische Zeitung :— " A base in Flanders would enable England to annihilate with her air equadrona the whole of our industrial basin, and to drive Germany completely from the seas. German industry would be at her mercy. We must hold our positions between the sea and the Lys, or we shall lose the war entirely. The fate of Germany is now being decided in Flanders.-

Here is another quotation from the same paper which is even more explicit :—

In the possession of Flanders lies the solution of the question of victory or defeat both for ourselves and for England. If, at the close of the war. it is ours, it will furnish to with the basis for all the claims which we must make and press forward, and to which we are justified in our quality as a Great Power. . . . It in not the lust of conquest that animates us. 'We do not stand on the- Flanders coast to make conquests. but only to defend that which to us is holy soil—the natural frontier of our Fatherland.... As a matter of fact, we have already won the victory. Had Sir Douglas Haig believed I l i lllllll justified, after the first few days of his offensive, in attaching the laurels of victory to the English banner, theft, without doubt, the greatest Fleet oil earth would have appeared off the Flanders and Dutch coasts to deprive us of what remained. They slid not venture to place the precious armada in jeopardy. This in itself i3 the best proof we could desire that tire victory 1163 been ours."

Finally, we may quote an article contributed by Colonel Gadke to the Socialist newspaper Forwarts. Writing on August 10th, he declared that, while there might be differences of opinion in Germany as to the political value of the Flanders coast, " its present military value is of vital importance." He goes on :—

" The occupation of Ostend and Zeebrugge by the English Army would rause impressions throughout the world whirls would perhaps have the most far-reaching political consequences. We may, therefore,consider the English as beaten as long as thebloodyloases suffered in their attacks fail to shatter our position on the coast. But for the same reason we must also count upon terrific attempts to carry it by storm, perhaps upon a wider front and with greater masses of troops than on July 31st and August let. We must alm reckon upon these attempts being speedily renewed before the ' tr %boat war has had effects which menace the mechanical power of the British Army for offensive operations. Sir Douglas Bailee troops will be deprived of their striking force the moment their ammunition, their tanks, and their aircraft are materially diminished in quantity. The 'G'-boat can thus become for in an auxiliary of the field army."

Unless we are so over-subtle as to think that t hese are elaborate efforts to lure us into a premature attack, no more proof is required of German fears and expectations. As to our scruple against overbearing our own experts, Naval and Military, by newspaper clamour, we need now have no anxieties. It has become common knowledge that both the Naval and Military advisers of the Government need no pressure from any source to make them adopt the strategic policy weare advocating. At onetime it was alleged that the Admiralty dial not favour action on the Flemish coast. They were supposed to deprecate it as involving those engagements between land forces and capital ships to which they are strongly averse in principle. It has of late, however, become abundantly clear that the Admiralty are in no sort of way an obstacle to combined operations for the purpose of clearing the enemy from a coast-line where their presence is menacing in a high degree, where they obtain immense advantages for the conduct of their submarine campaign in home waters, and finally whence their air operations against London and our southern and south-eastern coasts are rendered possible. The Admiralty recognize that the proper form of defence against the hornets of the sea and air is the defence provided by attack. To drive away these pests we must destroy their nests. But the nests of the submarines are on the coast, and of the aero- planes not many miles inland. Admiral Jellicoe as long ago as April 12th used words which showed that, though he did not believe that as a rule it was the business of a capital ship to stand up against a land fort, the fortified Belgian coast required our closest attention. He quoted from Mahan the words which we have used as the text of this article, evidently meaning them to be applied to the fortified Belgian coast. Hitherto we have tried there the miserable policy of fending off the enemy instead of smiting him down. If the Admiralty are what we may venture to call thoroughly sound on the subject of the Flanders coast, so, we feel confident, are the Military advisers of the Government. It would indeed be almost a misuse of language to speak of their desires in this respect as " an open secret," so plainly are they written in the course of recent events. Who can doubt that these events point to combined opera- tions ? Without combined operations, what is now happening on the Western Front would be comparable to acting Handel with the part of the Prince of Denmark omitted. To sum up, we should have to pretend to a total blindness to the tendency of Military and Naval opinion and of events if we were to seem to entertain doubts as to whether our leading sailors and soldiers believe that the hour has come for dealing the enemy the blow which he dreads more, and has always dreaded more, than any other which we could deal him in the vast theatre of the war.

Though in writing as we have written we do not believe that we have exceeded at any point the just rights of a news- paper, we are not going at the very crisis of the war to say anything which could be embarrassing to the Government.

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We have had of late far too much of journalistic pinpricks, sometimes with a good purpose and sometimes with a bad. We eau understand, and from certain points of view respect., the unwillingness of the War Cabinet to take a plunge which requires faith and courage in a very high degree, a plunge involving tremendous responsibilities, a plunge which for the men who take it may seem to risk their whole future. It has been one of the misfortunes of the events of the past year that they have tended to discourage our statesmen from assuming responsibility, and have rather induced them to play for safety. We have always deprecated the way in which a great part of the Press, and through it the public, received the Reports of the Dardanelles and Mesopotamian Commissions. Those Reports no doubt contain dis- closures of grave strategic and administrative blunders, but we have always felt that it was utterly wrong because of them to make scapegoats of the Cabinet. Action 01 that nature must tend to deprive our rulers of the spirit of initiative and attack which it is essential that a War Cabinet should possess. What is wanted now, and what we desire to recommend to the nation, is not eritieism of, but loyal support for, the Government. That is the way in which the British people can best help to win the war. Let them give the Government, as it were, a mandate of boldness. They must make the Cabinet feel that if they adopt the policy of combined operations with which we are dealing, they will have the whole nation at their back, and that they will he in no danger of having those operations interfered with, or stopped in the middle, owing to some partial failure. This being so, the British people, and the peoples of the Empire, must resolve that no temptation, however great, will make them resort to recriminations. What we must have, and what the nation can supply if it is in earnest, is an absolute concentration of the national will-power. We must each and all put every: ounce of ourselves into the conflict. In the first place, the War Cabinet, on whom in the last resort the responsibility will rest, must feel that they have got behind them not a mob of grumbling, grudging critics, ready to seize on any incidental failure or apparent lack of judgment, but. a body of cool-headed, yet at the same time loyal and eager, assistants in the great task. Next, the soldiers and mailers responsible for working out the details must entertain a similar confidence in the nation, and something more in regard to their immediate chiefs in the War Cabinet. They must be able to feel that them will be no hedging on the part of our rulers, no attempt to shift the slightest part of the responsibility from the shoulders of the men who give the mandate on to ihoso of the men who execute it. The cruellest, the most shameful thing that can occur in war happens when ruling statesmen, who can command or forbid any operation, shelter themselves by saying to the soldiers or the sailors : " Oh, well, if you insist on such-and-such action, you must be allowed to take it, but we think it a risky, almost hopeless, business, and feel pretty sure that you will make a mesa of it. Still, do as you please." That is an attitude out of which nothing but evil can ever come, and we are confident that it will not be adopted by the present Govern- ment. What our rulers have got to do if they once allow an operation is to tell those who work under them—those who are exposed to the awful strainer directing the operation --that as long as they do their duty they will be defended from unfair criticism.

Finally, our ultimate ruler the Prime Minister, must. feel that if, through some accident of fate, failure overtakes him, the attitude of the British people will be that which Napoleon once attributed to them. A few days after Waterloo, when thinking bitterly of the way in which his Field-Marshals and the Assembly in Paris had deserted him, he declared : " Had I been a British ruler and suffered such a defeat, I should not have been deserted by a single General nor have lost a single vote in the Assembly." At the same time, our Admirals and our Generals must feel that they will never be thrown to the wolves by the men who have given them the order to dare great things.

It it clearly not our business to say anything as to the where, the when, or the how of the policy we advocate, except to point to the fact that it is now August 25th, and to give in barest outline the advantages that flow from combined operations—from Naval operations on the Belgian coast in sympathy with the Military operations on land. In the first place, the capture and occupation of Zeebrugge and Ostend would deal a tremendous blow to German submarine activities in the Channel, and do far more than any invention, however subtle and ingenious, towards destroying enemy undersea craft. Next, we should be enabled to seize the aerodromes whence come the craft that annoy us (we can never admit that it is more than annoyance) by scattering bombs over our seaside resorts and in the streets of London. Further, we should ourselves be able to establish aerodromes from which we could, as the Germans them- selves have admitted, wreck " the industrial basin " of Ger- many. Lastly, we should have made the German military position in Belgium intolerable. At present the German trench line, or rather the mass of defensive positions behind the &et ditches, rests upon the sea, and since we have hitherto acted so supinely on the coast these lines have had the firmest and beat of resting-places—one that cannot be turned by land operations. When once, however, the coast comes into our possession, German lines thrusting themselves westward would be "in the air." Therefore the Germane would have to withdraw until they could find something solid on which to base themselves. Such are the advantages of the plan which we are advo- cating. By combined operations—by using our Fleet, not tentatively and half-heartedly, but on a great scale and on a well-thought-out system--we can immensely increase our total offensive force on the Western Front. 1Ve can call in the sea to redress the balance of the land. To put it in another way, we can to a certain extent coin our monitors, our cruisers, and our older battleships into brigades and divisions. It used to be mid that sea-power, in spite of its vast importance, could never conclude a war. That must always be done in the last resort by the Army. It may very well happen that in this most topsv-tuisv of wars just the reverse of the old rule will prove tine. The Navy will conic in at the end of the war and help the Army to give the coup dc gam.

There is one other possibility, one that no man can con- template without a thrill of exhilaration. It may well be that if our Navy acts on the yeast as we hope it will act, and the Germans continue to feel as they arc feeling now about the importance of holding on to the Nienports Zeebrugge line at all costs, the High Canal Fleet will come out to drive off our " interfering Fleet." In that ease the greatest Naval action of the world may be brought about. Of the result we have no fears. Ut re:slant oinne.s —Let 'on all come.