" CONSULTATION IN PARLIAMENT FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF THE NAVIE."
" The kings navy exceeds all others in the world for three things, vie : beauty, strength, and safety. For beauty, they are so many royal palaces ; for strength (no part of the world having such iron and timber as England hath) so many moving castles and barbicans; and for safety, they are the most defensive walls of the realm. Amongst the ships of other nations, they are like lions amongst silly beasts, or falcons amongst fearful' fowls. In the reign of Queen Elisabeth (I being then acquainted with this business) there were 33 besides pinnaces; which so yarded and regarded the navigation of the merchants, as they had safe vent for their commodities, and trade and traftick flourished. A worthy subject for parliaments to take into consideration, and to provide remedy as often as need shall
require,"
-UNDER this heading and with these gallant words that fierce old lawyer, Lord Chief Justice Coke, points out in his "Institutes" how necessary it is for Par- liament to take into consideration the state of the Navy and make the necessary provision therefor. Students of strategy and critics of war generally may think the Chief Justice leans a little too much to the defensive, and that ho was too much under the impression that it is the business of the King's Navy to escort merchant vessels rather than to fly at the throat of the enemy. Undoubtedly, however, the great Elizabethan lawyer had the root of the matter in him and recognized, what every Eng- lishman of true heart, whether a man of peace like Cobden, a philosopher like Bacon, a statesman like Cromwell, or a poet like Tennyson, realizes. "The fleet of Britain is her all in all." He knew that if once England loses, in Bacon's words, the right to be called the Lady of the Sea, we are of all men most miserable. As Cromwell told his Parliament, it is no use for us to think that we are safe because we have " a great ditch " around us. Unless we can command all that floats upon the ditch, that ditch will prove, not a power of defence, but a safe and easy road by which our enemies can travel to attack us. Islands are of all places the easiest to invade, as our story shows us. It is only when the islanders command the seas that surround them, and not only those but all seas, for the sea is one and indi- visible, that they are safe. Though he did not express it very accurately, that is clearly what Lord Coke felt, and felt with such a glow of passion. As we read, indeed, we half forgive him for having hounded Sir Walter Raleigh to his doom with so brutal " a hunt of obloquy." Those who are apt to be frightened or disgusted by an outburst of eloquence in regard to our ships—we admit that our own taste is somewhat against fine language on a theme so vital and so august—may be consoled by seeing that in the age of Elizabeth men were not afraid to praise the Navy. If law students still pore, as one at least did thirty years ago, over " Coke upon Littleton," let them as they try to unravel the skein of those elephantine annotations, and incline to curse a mind so pedantic and so perverse, remember that the man who is plaguing them sounded the noble "flourish " of trumpets in regard to the " beauty, strength, and safety " of the nation's ships which stands at the head of this article.
If we turn from the past to the present and the future we may see how well and truly the theory of sea power is developing overseas. The Spectator during the last fifteen years, sometimes, we fear, to the horror and amaze- ment of our naval readers, has advocated local and colonial navies, and this in spite of our full recognition of the fact that naval power to be effective must be cen- tralized and not localized, and that home waters, whether for England or the Colonies, are by no means necessarily the place in which our homes are defended. We felt, however, that the essential thing was to interest and so to instruct the Britons oversea in the truths and realities of sea power. Next we realized that they could not attain to that interest unless they had navies which they could call their own, and feel were their own because they had provided them. The notion of hiring sea, power and of paying our Admiralty so much a year to protect them was, we knew, a barren idea from which no real help could ever come. We were content to trust to the people of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa discovering for themselves the secret of naval power, and when they had discovered it acting upon it. That secret is, of course, that to command the sea you must beat the fleets of the enemy, and that when you have done that your shores and your commerce are secure, even though you may never behold the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers which have won you your safety, and though the battles in which your fate was decided were fought at the very opposite end of the globe. Admiral Mahan, in a well- known passage, tells us that the grand army of Napoleon never looked upon the storm-tossed vessels of the British fleet, yet it was those vessels which in the last resort robbed the army of the crown of universal empire—the crown it had otherwise achieved. In the same way it may well be that the people of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa will never look upon the vessels which nevertheless will keep their shores free from the foot of the invader and allow their merchants to come and go in peace and security. A remarkable proof that one of the oversea Dominions has already learnt the lesson fully is to be found in a state- ment issued this week by the Admiralty in regard to Now Zealand's gift of a battle cruiser for home waters. This statement, which we do not hesitate to call one of the most momentous that has over been made' in our history, runs as follows :— " The Admiralty have recently boon in communication with the Government of the Dominion of New Zealand upon the employ- ment of the battle cruiser which is now building at the charge of the Dominion for presentation to the Royal Navy. It had been intended that this vessel should be stationed in the Far East, but the Government of Now Zealand have, in response to Admiralty inquiries and suggestions, expressed their wish that the Admiralty
should employ this vessel wherever her services can be most useful. His Majesty's Government have gratefully accepted this intima- tion. As the British squadron on the China Station has recently boon reinforced by the • Defence,' the Admiralty have decided that the battle cruiser ' New Zealand' can best at present be employed in home waters. She will accordingly, as soon as she is completed, visit the Dominion of New Zealand, probably in the early part of next year, after which she will join the First Cruiser Squadron in the First Fleet, which her arrival will complete to its full strength of five ships."
As we have said, this passage shows that New Zealand now thoroughly realizes that if she wants effectively to guard her coasts the ships she contributes to the Royal Navy must not hug her own shores, but must be placed alongside the home ships at the point where danger threatens our command of the sea, the point where the Armageddon of the ocean, if it is ever fought, must be decided. And here let us remember, for it is of vital importance, that the ships of Britain are now concentrated in home waters, not because of danger of invasion to these islands or because we want to gather our fleets round us for shore protection, but for a perfectly different reason. Our fighting ships are kept in home waters merely because of the accident that the Power whose growing Navy threatens to wrest from us the command of the sea, happens to be situated near these islands. We keep our ships in the North Sea because these are the waters in which float the ships of the Power from which alone there is danger. That those waters happen to be near our coasts is a piece of chance, nothing more. If we cnn imagine Germany geographically changing places with Italy and having her ports, bases, and sea front not on the North Sea, but on the Mediterranean, then the British fleet would have to be kept, not in home waters, but in the Mediterranean.
The only way by which our nation can secure itself absolutely is by obtaining the command of the sea. The only way to obtain the command of the sea is to have our ships ready to fight and overcome the ships of any Power which threatens to take from us the command of the sea.
Our ships, therefore, must be kept close to the point where the ships of a Power able to dispute with us the command of the sea are to be found.
But in our case the ships of the only Power that threatens to deprive us of the command of the sea are in the North klea.
There, then, must our skips be placed and also the skips of those whose fate is bound up with ours.
Previous page
