TOPICS OF THE DAY .
NAVAL POLICY.
WE note with no small satisfaction that Sir Reginald Custance continues to urge the importance of basing our naval policy upon sound principles, or rather on a sound principle. The gallant Admiral insists that the essential function of -the Navy is to destroy the enemy's naval forces, and that, though this function must be performed with prudence and deliberation, such destruction must be our final objective, the point upon which we must keep our eyes and minds fixed. What must also be remembered is that this final objective, unlike wheaten bread, admits of no substitutes.. Sporadic acts of attrition, or the guarding of lines of communication, or what not, may be excellent things in themselves and good pieces of contributory policy, but they are not, and cannot be, alternatives to the destroying of the enemy's naval forces, the forces which give him sea power and which take sea power from us. We have got •to win the command of the sea one and indivisible, and we cannot win it till the enemy's naval forces, his fleet in being, and the auxi- liaries such as the submarines, which depend upon the fleet in being, have been destroyed. To say this is not to say that you must beat your head against a brick wall, or that you are not to have ample time to choose time and place, and to make full and appropriate preparation. It does mean, however, that the mind of the Navy must be fixed upon this object, and that every minor operation must be made to contribute to the great end. If this is not the governing rule, then the evil policy of substitutes is sure to arise. It will occupy the minds of those who control the Fleet and cloud the true vision. Even if the essential principle be acknowledged in.theory, it will be shoved off into so dim a distance that it is really lost sight of. That unfortunately appears to be the position into which our Admiralty has drifted—the position of offering substitutes instead of the real thing, of being content with superficial rather than with radical action.
Sir Reginald Custanco in. his letter to Wednesday's Times puts certain practical considerations which arise from his , main contention with such moderation And Ability that we cannot refrain from quoting his words verbatim :- " The military aim in war is to destroy or to neutralize the action of the enemy's armed ships of all classes, including submarines. This can only be brought about by fighting or by threatening to fight, when the enemy puts to sea. If an enemy's armed ship trier to evade our own as do the submarines, the only sure way-to force an action is to interpose between him and his port of exit- or his destination. My present argument is only concerned with the port of exit. Why can we not intercept the submarines off German ports ? Because the German High Sea Fleet can issue and destroy any small ships engaged in blocking the exits to their ports. They can do this because our massed Fleet cannot cover our light craft. We can neither keep the sea off the enemy's ports owing to the danger from mine and torpedo, nor occupy a base near -those ports, as did Togo, who at the Elliot Islands was only sixty miles from Port Arthur. Lord George Hamilton will see that the massed fleet and the submarine are complementary, the one to the other ; they mutually strengthen each other. If the massed fleet is -destroyed the, action of theaubmarine is weakened, since its exit is impeded by the small surface craft and submarines of the victor, which are then free to press in to gun range in the enemy's waters With mines, nets, and every new device. My argument goes no farther than to show that the destruction of the German Fleet at the battle of Jutland would have been a most important preliminary to the solution of the submarine difficulties. Much inshore fighting would have followed, which is now more difficult, if not impossible."
For ourselves, we should like to say a word in regard to one special.aspect of the policy of direct and destructive naval action. A fortnight ago we ventured to apply a homely metaphor to naval policy and the submarine peril. What, we asked, does the householder do when his house is rendered uninhabitable by hornets or wasps ? In the last resort, however .great the risk and inconvenience, he goes to the wasps' nests and destroys them. That, it seems to us, is what we shall have ultimately to do in the case of the sub- marines, and we had better do it -with reasonable despatch than wait, we will not say till it is too late, but till we have lost half the advantage by our inability to make up our minds to strenuous, and therefore necessarily risky, action. We should have said no more on this point had not, somewhat to our amazement, the newspapers been allowed in their reports of the debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday to deal very freely with Mr. Lam- bert's _speech. We are not going to quote Mr. Lambert's actual words, because we do not think them well-timed, and also because we by no means approve of some of the methods he suggested. Since, however, his words have been given the widest publicity, we can do no harm in insistinglupon the general proposition that the way to free ourselves from hornets is to destroy the hornets' nests. We are well aware of the dangers and difficulties of such action, but these appear to us to resemble the pleas which timid physicians urge against daring acts of surgery.
No doubt the attempt to destroy the hornets' nests, if persisted in, must bring out the German High Sea Fleet. But if that happens, say the advocates of indirect, rather than direct, naval policy, our Fleet .might be forced to fight at a geographical or -local disadvantage. We of course appreciate the point, but we cannot agree that it is con- clusive. If you are determined to force your enemy to a decisive action, your object being not to make him retire but to -destroy, his force, the side which brings on the action is bound to fight at what in the abstract may be termed a disadvantage. That; however, is not necessarily a fatal objection. If it were, we and our French Allies should certainly not be doing what we are doing at the moment in France—attacking the Germans in their entrenched positions. In almost all our operations during the past month we have had to -fight at a local and geographical disadvantage ; but our soldiers have judged it well worth while to do so because they realize that our essential object is to destroy the German armies, and that nothing else but such destruction will win the war on land.
We must end as we began by stating once more that our insistence upon -a vigorous naval -policy of destroying the enemy's sea forces does not imply wild-cat applications. On the contrary, it implies carefully-thought-out schemes, and the utmost prudence in their application. The blow must be delivered with tremendous force, and with the single intent to destroy ; but it must be justly calculated, and given at the right time . and in the .right place, and with the Amplest preparation. Admirably does Sir Reginald. Custance put this in the last sentences of the letter from which we have already quoted :- " The great leaders of the past, whether by land or sea, never adopted slap-dash methods, but worked on carefully prepared plans based on the principle that the military aim .is the destruction of the enemy's armed force. Unfortunately our pleas -appear to have been based an,a different principle."
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