TOPICS OF THE DAY.
COMBINED ACTION.
ALTHOUGH the progress of the British and French Armies in Flanders and France is all that could he expected, although the spirit of our men is high and confident, although the losses of the enemy in the recent fighting have certainly been much greater than ours, although the true measure of our progress is not the geographical advance but the turn of the moral balance against Germany—although all these things are true, it is the part of a wise nation to insure itself against failure in every possible way. If a nation can insure itself in one way, it is good ; if it can insure itself in more than one way, it is better. As we see the situation, we are undoubtedly winning the war ; but the question is whether we are winning it quickly enough. Therefore our thoughts turn to methods of insurance. If Destiny would kindly keep the ring for us while we go on at one present rate, there could be no shadow of a doubt about the result. Month by month the position of the Allies improves and that of Germany (we are thinking in moral terms) grows worse. Bat reckoned in such terms as these the end still seems far enough away, and before it is reached one of those unforeseen and startling vicissitudes which are characteristic, of all wars, and have certainly been characteristic of this war, might intervene. The Germans might have a surprising run of successes with their submarines, and this might coincide with a poorer harvest than we coil* on or with some other physical disadvantage, and altogether we might find our resources for making war just below the mark when a critical opportunity presented itself for a supreme and decisive effort. We do not in the least expect a failure. For one reason, we have sufficient faith in the " ultimate decency of things " to think that the wickedness of Germany will not be allowed to triumph in a world whose affairs are, after all, directed in the main by ordinary human beings. But we should nevertheless be mad not to take every precaution. We find ourselves opposed from the English Channel to the Swiss frontier by a line of German troops which is being gradually forced back, but which is being very slowly forced back. A break, a piercing, may come, but it has not come yet. There is no room for the strategy of former wars, in which there was always the possibility of penetration, outfiankins, or encirclement if a General's intuitions were swift and his troops were mobile. In the present fighting we capture a Port Arthur only to be faced by another, and only to know that more Port Arthurs lie behind. Surely in such circum- stances every one who ponders the problem must ask himself how the British people can insure themselves against the risk that the job will take just too long. We repeat that we do not ourselves think that we should fail even if our rate of progress could not be increased. Our simile of a foot race holds good ; one of the competitors is running himself to a standstill even though both seem to be running equally and answering step by step. The final spurt reveals the difference between them. But a mood in which all the perils and mischances of the future take on a very real appear- ance is the right one for any man who would insure himself wisely. How can we modify the physical fact that line is opposed to line without a break from the English Channel to the Swiss frontier ? Since by means of mere manoeuvre there is no getting round the German line, which is based at one end on the sea and at the other end on a neutral country, how can the equivalent of a turning movement be achieved ? There are only two conceivable ways, so far as we can see. One is by, so to speak, extending our land line into the sea by means of the Fleet, and the other (which is at the present moment a more speculative means) is by producing such a vast number of aeroplanes that we could shatter the German lines of communications, bridges, and depots, and for all practical purposes prevent reserves and supplies from reaching the German fighting lines. Aeroplanes are the cavalry of the air. They perform the functions of raiding, reconnoitring, and pursuing. They are indeed ten times swifter than cavalry, and they fire machine-guns as they go, which cannot be done from horseback. There are enormous possibilities here, and the Americans ought to be able to help us greatly, for they are great and rapid mechanical constructors, and we believe that they will prove themselves particularly skilful and daring fliers. We hope, however, to write on that line of insurance more fully on another occasion. To-day we want to dwell only on the extension of the land line into the sea.
Last week we praised the success of the General Staff in keeping the secret of the whereabouts of the latest attack. Not one person in a thousand—for all had been talking of the Belgian coast as the very next jumping-off place—guessed that our next advance would make a Third Battle of Ypres. If we are to insure ourselves against the general advance being too slow, however, it is at the very place about which expectation was temporarily deceived that we must contrive to produce the equivalent of a turning movement. We do not say this on our own authority. The fact of the strongly fortified Belgian coast—Ostend and Zeebrugge are now suck coast fortresses as the history of war has never known—is recognized by those with an absolute right to speak as a difficulty that has to be faced and overcome. From Zeebrugge come the raiding craft which threaten our Channel communica- tions, and not far from the coast within the German lines are the starting-points of the aeroplanes which raid England. On April 12th Sir John Jellicoe said :- " Zeebrugge forms another of our problems. It is difficult to deal with now, owing to German occupation and fortification of the Belgian coast. No naval officer, even before this war, ever believed that it was the business of a capital ship to stand up against a land-fort, as land guns always have greater facilities for finding the range than a gun mounted in a ship. But the fortified Belgian coast as a fact which we have to face, and the destroyers maintained there hare made our work of guarding the Straits of DOM' more difficult."
The fact has truly to be faced. Of course the First Sea Lord is not alone in this opinion. The Times, for instance, has unceasingly advocated attacks from the sea on the Belgian coast, and has pointed out how these can be combined with co-operation from the land aide and with bombing raids. Combined action between land and sea forces is indeed a method of the greatest promise, because ships can lie where they threaten the enemy's flank. They start in the position of troops which have half accomplished a turning move- ment. We do not doubt that all this is clear to the General Staff and Sir Douglas Haig, and has long since entered into their calculations.
The Germans have not turned Ostend and Zeebrugge into such mighty fortresses without very good reason. That reason is excellently expressed in the Vossisehe Zeilung, which says : " A base in Flanders would enable England to anni- hilate with her air squadrons the whole of our industrial basin, and to drive Germany completely from the seas. German industry would be at her mercy. Wo most 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." The motive which operates with her should have the same value for us. The Germans recognize the Belgian coast, as Sir John Jellicoe said, to be a crucial part of their line. Wo know all that has been said, and can be said, about the extreme danger to ships of engaging land batteries. It is said that they engage them on unequal terms. Nevertheless Sir John Jellicoe has frequently sent ships to bombard the Belgian coast. We have not heard, however, that our losses have been heavy, or even serious, in these bombardments. We have read of the excellent results, but at the same time we have never read of the bombardments recently lasting very long. The batteries of armies often suffer great loss, and that is not thought to be an impediment to using guns continu- ally in exactly similar circumstances. Of course it must bs admitted that a ship has a value very different from that of a battery, and that only the Navy in the last test stands between the Allies and defeat. But we submit that without committing the insanity of piling up ships on a foreign beach, or running recklessly into minefields, or entering into a pitched battle with Heligoland—no one suggests such escapades— there is room for a more intense aggression at sea. There seems to us to be a simple answer to such an article as that by Mr. Archibald Hurd which was published in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday. His thesis that the degree of offensiveness now practised by the Navy is the highest that is consonant with prudence, and that Nelson himself would have done nothing more, in the circumstances, is argued as ably as it possibly could be, and yet it seems to us to pay insufficient attention to our gradually accumulating margin of naval strength due to the growth of the Alliance, and to the possibilities of provocation apart from rushing on a fate prepared for us on the German shores.
Mr. Hurd justly ridicules the plan proposed by Mr. Churchill of pooling the Allied Navies and having a " Blue Water Fleet " to maintain the general command of the sea, and a " Hazard Fleet " for special adventure. He says :— " Does any one with the most rudimentary knowledge of naval, military, aria political conditions believe that any such project is within the realms of possibility—in other weeds, that our Allies would lend themselves to such a scheme t In the second place. the suggestion appears entirely to ignore the disadvantages which flow from want of unity in training and command. You may
possibly build up an army with divisions representing different nationalities, but 'ou cannot apply the same measures to naval forces. The technique of naval war is much more recondite than that of land war. It takes years to train officers and men of ships of war to set together, as experience has shown. There is no naval officer of repute in any of the allied countries who would counte- nance the suggestion that a fleet to achieve victory can bo im- provised by lumping together a number of vessels."
We heartily agree with Mr. Kurd's strictures if Mr. Churchill's proposal is that the Allied Fleets should be united in action in such a way that there would have to be inter- national commands. If that is the meaning of pooling the Fleets, the plan is a parody of what we mean by a more aggressive policy. But we cannot admit that the demand for a higher degree of offence is disposed of because a burlesque has been laughed away. Although we welcome Mr. Churchill's conversion to a forward policy, we earnestly hope that the Admiralty and the War Cabinet will most severely exclude him from their councils on strategy. He has let the nation in before, and he must not be allowed to do it again. Mr. Lloyd George owes this degree of caution to the nation.
Mr. Hurd cannot deny rudimentary knowledge to many naval officers who do believe in the practicability of a more offensive policy, and who do not find any impediment in the variety of the Allied Fleets if they be properly used. In what might be called luring-on movements, for example, there would be no need whatever for ill-assorted forces such as fought at the battle of Navarino. Suppose that such a bombarding squadron—a British squadron—as has often operated on the Belgian coast began, by means of the various operations which ships can perform or cover, to make a very painful impression on the German flank and coast communications just when the German line was being very hard pressed in front. If the Germans were determined to relieve the combined pressure, they could do it only in one way—by sending out a large enough force to make it impossible for our ships to stay there. Submarines alone would not suffice for the German need. If that German force fell into difficulties, either we should make an end of it, or more ships would be sent out to help it. In the first case, we should enjoy the fruits of our combined operations, with the loss of a few German ships to the good ; in the second case, we should bring on a considerable, if not a general, action, which is exactly what all our seamen " pant for," in Cromwell's phrase.
We do not pretend to write with technical knowledge, but the writings of many distinguished seamen have proved that they agree with us ; and when we are told, as in Mr. Hurd's article, that further offence is impossible, it is open to any one who thinks it a duty to do so to argue the case the other way. The rearrangement of the Board of Admiralty creates something resembling a General Staff for naval policy. We expect to see results from the new concentration of thought, and we shall be greatly disappointed if we do not.
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