TOPICS OF THE DAY
A NAVAL FOOL'S PARADISE.
WE have been living in a fool's paradise. That is the net content, of the statements made by the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening. Let us say at once that we do not desire to censure the Government because of this fact. The subject is far too serious for party recrimination, or for any indulgence in talk of the "I told you so" order. Again, even if the Government bad incurred blame in the matter, the candid and courageous way in which they have faced the situation, and admitted the gravity of the mistake they originally made, must prevent any patriotic man from attacking them. The prime duty now is to let bygones be bygones, and to concentrate upon the needs of the immediate situation. How can we best ensure for the future that complete command of the sea which is absolutely vital to our existence as a nation ? That is the question of the hour.
We can most easily explain what we mean when we say that we have been living in a fool's paradise by quoting the Prime Minister's frank and honourable admission as to the way in which he mistook the actual situation only a year ago, and thereby unintentionally misled the uation. He made then, he tells us, two assumptions, both of which "have not been. verified by subsequent experience,"—i.e., have been proved untrue. The first was that what he described as "the German paper programme" was a programme which might not be realised, and certainly would not be exceeded. "That has turned out not to be true, because it is a fact that during the autumn of this year there was an anticipation with four ships which belonged to the German programme of 1909-10." This anticipation our Government heard of in November, and it was this that, forced them to reconsider their programme for the present year. The second assumption, the Prime Minister went on to say, was equally serious, and concerned the rate of shipbuilding. 'Last year he said with confidence that whereas it would take the Germans thirty months to build one of these ships, we could do it in twenty-four. That assumption has also proved to be untrue. Since then there has been such an enormous development in Germany, not only in the provision of shipyards and slips, but, what is still more serious, in the provision of gun-mountings and armaments, that we can no longer take to ourselves, as we could a year ago, "the consoling and comforting reflection" that we have the advantage in the speed and in the rate at which ships can be constructed. "We have thus," ended Mr. Asquith, "two sets of considerations, both of them, I agree, invalidating the hypothesis which only a year ago I addressed to the House."
Above is the proof that we have been living in a, fool's paradise. What should the nation do now that it has made such a discovery ? There can be only one answer,— the answer which every sensible man gives to a similar question in regard to his private affairs. Look the facts, however disagreeable, full in the face, and instead of drugging ourselves into another dreamland of unrealities, consider what is the worst that can happen. Mr. Balfour in his speech, a speech which was entirely. divested of anything approaching party spirit or exaggeration, per- formed this necessary function for the nation. Basing his observations on information which he bad received on the subject, the origin of which he did not, however, specify, and could not be expected to specify, Mr. Balfour declared that the four German ' Dreadnoughts ' which the Govern- ment admitted were " anticipated " last autumn were actually laid down. At first it may seem as if there were simply a difference of words between the Government and Mr. Balfour,—the difference between " anticipated " and "laid down." In reality, however, the difference is one of substance, for the Government contention is that though ships were anticipated, and considerable preparations made for their construction, the operations were not of the kind which would accelerate them so greatly as actual laying down. Mr. Balfour, on the other hand, when he uses the plillase "laid down" means to imply that the operations towards construction, and therefore towards completion, hav-e gone a good deal further than the Government admit. If Mr. Balfour's view is correct, then the calculation of the Government as to the time at which the four anticipated ships will be completed will be proved wrong. But it it is proved wrong, then it is possible that in July, 1911, Germany may possess seventeen 'Dreadnoughts ' to our fourteen, and oven when the two ships to he laid down next November under the Government's new programme are built and come into commission in 1911, we shall only have sixteen 'Dreadnoughts' to Germany's seventeen. But if the Germans go on at that rate, which is more than -possible, the probability is that they will have at the beginning of April, 1912, twenty-one Dreadnoughts ' to our twenty. Mr. Balfour summed up his contention as follows :— "The hypotheses, then, are these, and I want to make it clear to the Government and to the House :—Eight • Dreadnoughts' have been laid down in 1908 by Germany. If four are laid down in 1900, there will be seventeen on April 1st, 1912; if eight are laid down—as eight have been laid down last year—there will be twenty-one on April 1st, 1912, to our twenty ; and if the Germans imitate the policy of the present Government and lay down not only their eight in the financial year, but begin a new group of four when the Government propose their group of four, on April 1st twelve months hence, they will then have twenty-five."
That is the situation which we have got to face. The First Lord of the Admiralty meets it by declaring in the first place that, though Mr. Balfour's contention may be possible on paper, it is "beyond the constructive power of German shops and yards." To this Mr. Balfour replies that his information is different,—namely, that the pro- gramme he has sketched is not one which is in any sense physically impossible for German shipbuilding resources. A propos of this, he pointed out how very difficult it is to know what the Germans are doing. The Government had been admittedly wrong in regard to Germany up to the present time. Was it wise to assume that their forecast for the future would be any more accurate? With Mr. Balfour's view in this respect we entirely concur, and we hold that it would be madness to assume a second time that Germany will not extend her programme and cannot increase her rapidity of construction. German secrets are very well kept, and it is by no means impossible that Germany, without our Admiralty having discovered it, may at this moment have so groat an accumulation of gun-mountings and other material ready and in hand that the actual construction of a capital ship may be reduced from two years to something much more like one year.
No doubt our ablest experts here will shake their heads over such a statement as this, and we do not, of course, profess to be experts, or to be speaking on expert advice. It is common knowledge, however, that in other branches of technical construction there have been sudden breakings of the record. Brick and. stone buildings which ordinarily take two or three years to construct have, owing to great precision in organisation and to the accumulation of everything needed on the spot, been built in five or six months, and we are by no means convinced that this same sort of miracle may not yet be performed by a State in which organisation and the drilling of the human item are carried to such perfection as in Germany. In any case, it would be madness for us to stake our whole welfare as a nation upon the hypothesis that the Germans will be unable to beat the present world's record in shipbuilding by, say, six months. But are we not going perilously near to this if we frame our policy on Mr. McKenna's assumption that Mr. Balfour's forecast is "beyond the con- structive power of German shops and yards "? No doubt we must make some assumption as to what will be Germany's output; but when we make it, it seems to us that we must not treat our guess as a hard-and-fast rule, but must assume, as we have just said, that the Germans may perform, and indeed are very possibly at this moment performing, what we have hitherto regarded as absolute impossibilities in the way of quick construction. For this reason we hold that Mr. Balfour's view of the possibilities is a much wiser one for the country to act upon than that of the Government, and we sincerely trust that the Cabinet, in view of their past experience of optimistic assumptions and hypotheses, will come to see that here, as in financial matters, it is always safer to accept the pessimistic rather than the optimistic estimate.
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