THE USE OF NAVAL FORCE The Art of the Admiral.
By Commander Russell Grenfell, R.N. (Faber and Faber. 12s. 6d.) CoMMAND1311 GRENFELL entitles his book on naval strategy The Art of the Admiral, but though he writes of the admiral's work in war he addresses himself also to the layman • and therein he is undoubtedly rigl_t. He remarks in his introduction that " it used to be thought at one tithe' that war was the affair of the fighting forces only, and that fighting men were the only ones who were competent to express an opinion upon strategy." Such an opinion may have been held by persons who had made no study of the wars of the past—the expression " Amateur strategists " has figured in controversy ; but every student of the history of war has ever been aware that the form in which the national strength shall be used has been the responsibility of the statesman. It is over forty years since Mahan wrote : " The office 'of the statesman is to determine, and to indiCate to the military authorities, the national interests most vital to be defended, as well as the conquests or destrUction most injurious to the enemy in view of the political exigencies which the military power only subserves." That is profoundly true. The directing minds of the wars fought in their several times were Queen Elizabeth and her Ministers, the Council of State of the Commonwealth, the Privy Council, the two Pins, the Cabinet. They called in to their discussions the seamen and the soldiers, but " amateur strategists " though they would have been if they carried their authority outside the provinces of grand strategy, they were the " grand strategists " of every British war; and the success with which they conducted war was measured to a great extent to the amount of study they had devoted to the subject.
There is, indeed, as Commander Grenfell rightly says, no mystery in the conduct and direction of war capable of being understood only by technical tiersons, and Lord Baltimore in 5744 was not far wrong when he said of the affairs of naval strategy that " perhaps as in other professions the folly of some who could not, and of others who would 'not, explain theiri, have raised a mist before this easy part of knowledge, and made what is plain' and obvious in itself appear difficult and intricate and tmattainable without long personal practice and experi- ence " : while so hard an old seaman as St. Vincent could say of his colleagues at the Admiralty " the fact is that Lord Spencer is now a better officer than any one of the three ever was."
The rules of strategy, as Sir John Fortescue said, are dictated by common sense. Nevertheless, he would be a very vain person who should imagine that he could undertake the direction of warlike affairs merely in the light of what he believed to be his " common sense," declining to learn from the experience of others. No one, or at least a very few, possesses the power, the knowledge and the imagination to evolve out of his own consciousness how best to employ that instrument of policy, a navy. They need the foundations of knowledge of the purpose to which it has been put, of the powers and of its limitations—limitations extending from those imposed by international law to those of the sea-keeping capacity of a modern fleet.
It cannot be said that either the statesmen or the seamen in the years immediately preceding i914 had made any serious study of their problems in the higher spheres of strategy. Certainly attention had been paid to some matters of high importance, but many of the greatest importance had gone unnoticed. The strategy of colonial attacks, which was to occupy both ships and troops in large numbers, had not even been considered before August, 1914; and later on we saw such lapses as the abandonment, intact, of Zeebrugge and Ostend, to serve as submarine and destroyer bases for the enemy ; we saw the Dardanelles campaign conducted in a manner which violated every principle which experience of such operations had established ; and we saw old principles of trade defence rejected, and new methods adopted with singular insuccess.
A book which aims at explaining the broad, general principles of the use of naval force in the sphere of strategy is of value both to the layman and to the naval officer. A mass of new problems have arisen since Corbett wrote his Some Principles of Maritime Strategy as the result of the appearance of the submarine, of air craft and of the growth in power, endurance
and speed of the surface flotilla craft called destroyers, vessels which are, as the writer remarks, in reality small cruisers.
Commander Grenfell begins with a discussion of the " limited object " and the " unlimited object " in war. This would have admitted of a more extended treatment, and some reference to that burning question, which was for so long a perpetual matter of discord, whether Great Britain should make her effort in a common cause at sea or on land. It is important to understand how Britain used her forces, in the higher regions of strategy in the past : still more is it important to discoyer to what extent it is possible today to repeat the methods which then proved successful. The world has changed. Its communications take new forms, the dependence of countries upon foreign supplies has increased, new weapons have affected the ability of a fleet to give what is called " cover "—a matter well explained by the writer. The old fleet of battleships could " cover " the network of shipping against attack by similar fleets : whether in these days it will be able to take position in harbours on interior lines is as yet uncertain : and if it should prove impossible a new strategy would be called for. We saw the Mediter- ranean fleet moved to Alexandria. There it was well placed to command the military route to the Red Sea, but it could not at the same time cover the shipping in the Western basin and centre of the Mediterranean.
Commander Grenfell discusses the " moral " factors in war : their importance is indeed a commonplace, but we need constant reminders of the tendency to see very clearly our own difficulties and dangers and less easily to see that the same thoughts are passing through the minds of the enemy. On the perennial question of the " battleship," the writer is no believer in the intrinsic necessity for the " mastodons " of today ; but he gives no very clear indication of what policy he would support in future building if other nations continue to persist in providing themselves with these costly instruments. Nor does he discuss at any length another highly important modem question—that of the fuel of the fleet : coal, oil, or coal and oil. In the realms of policy and strategy (as distin- guished from that of technique) there is room for much thought ; as there was on the corresponding problem of the past when the materials that provided the motive power of the fleet came from the Baltic.
To cover the whole ground of strategy would clearly be a task beyond the compass of the present book. What Commander Grenfell has done has been to give an explanation, in simple terms, of the employment of naval force, and to indicate what new problems there are to be solved, and upon what principles the old problems were solved by the statesman and the seaman. And this is a most useful task.
HERBERT W. RICHMOND.
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