Sea Power and the Future
SEA power still retains its old potency, in spite of the advent of the power of the air. This is the opinion of Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, who examines its signification in terms of a modern world. The word, however, must not be given too narrow an interpretation nor measured merely in terms of naval force. The Navy is only one of its constituents. It rests on the threefold base of Merchant Shipping, Baths and Naval Force.
The question confronting the world, says Admiral Rich- mond, is whether it will be possible for any nation to possess the sea power and to exercise the wide influence preached in the pages of Mahan. Here, however, a word of waiving will not be out of place. Mahan's presentation has fallen in historical value. His view of the decisive economic influence exercised by the British Fleet in the Wars of the French Revolution has not been confirmed by French writers. To France in those far-off days the internal and Continental markets were more important than those oversell, and " the far distant storm- beaten ships on which the Grand Army never looked " seen► to have remained equally invisible to French economic his- torians.
Sea power, however, still remains as potent as ever along its two main lines of effort. It can open and close the sea to the passage of military force, and it can open the sea to one's own trade and close it to that of an enemy. Germany in the late War could do nothing overseas. Five million men crossed the Channel and millions of tons of cargo crossed the Atlantic on the way to France. Germany's colonies fell one by one—in the Cameroons, at Samoa and East Africa, and had the Navy and Army been able to make one swift combined thrust in February, 1915, the Dardanelles must have fallen too. And yet it was not till 1917 that economic pressure in Germany was growing decisive. Sea power was able only to influence the flow of supplies by sea ; it could not touch the oil and grain which fell to Germany when Roumania collapsed. Sea power in this sphere exercised considerable pressure, but it did not do all, for its power to exercise decisive economic pressure depends on the extent to which an enemy is de- pendent on overseas supplies. With Admiral Richmond's chapter on its limitations not all will agree. Too much is made perhaps of the disabilities of the Declaration of London, which after the Order in Council of March 11th, 1915, hardly entered into the picture. The essential task of stopping enemy supplies was performed by a new procedure (usually called the Blockade, but not one in the strictly juristic sense of the word) based on Trade agree- ments with neutrals in which sea power in the form of de- tention of ships and confiscation of cargoes was only one of the instruments—by no means an unimportant one (some ten per cent. of ships entering the North Sea were detained) but not the only one.
And yet the influence of sea power in this respect was probably just as great as in the wars of the past. The real change in naval polity is to be found in extrinsic rather than intrinsic causes and must be ascribed to the fact that no nation nowadays possesses a monopoly of sea power. In the last century when England and France were the only first class naval powers, they were able, when not opposed to one another, to exercise that power all over the world. " The sea is one," said Lord Fisher. But the growth in the last fifty years of the navies of the United States, Japan, Italy, and Germany has broken the old monopoly and dis- turbed the old equilibrium.
A nation with a moderate fleet is able to exercise a relatively powerful degree of control in the areas immediately adjacent to its coasts and principal bases, where supplies are at hand, repairs can be rapidly made and aircraft and small craft for escort, convoy and mine sweeping are readily available in ample numbers. This local control has been reinforced and the problem complicated by the entry of a new factor—Air power. This is the subject of one of the most important chapters of the book. Air power has modified but not dis- placed sea power. It has modified the nature of control in coastal areas, rendered invasion much more difficult and has become an important arm of the fleet, but its power can be exercised effectively only in coastal areas and narrow seas, such as the English Channel and Mediterranean. The oceans still remain subject to sea power which must continue to be the principal instrument for the defence of oceanic trade. Under these conditions, the keynote of sea power would seem to lie in maritime geography, whose paramount in- fluence in the Great War is borne out by the fact that we were never able to dispute effectively Germany's control of the Baltic.
And though air power working in conjunction with sea power has greatly increased the capacity for coastal defence, it has in front of it some difficult riddles to solve. Its strength lies in unrestricted and indiscriminate warfare against all and sundry, that is precisely in that procedure which infuriated the world against submarine warfare and brought the United States into the war on the Allies side. The plane that drops a 1,000 lb. bomb on a neutral liner is going to repeat the history of U 20 ' and the Lusitania'. Commenting on this point Admiral Richmond points out very forcibly that the ban on unrestricted warfare placed on submarines by the Treaty of London should logically be extended to aircraft, which are much more deficient in the element of genteel differentiation. •
Admiral Richmond has much of interest to say on standards of strength. In the case of battleships, he is in favour of a smaller type of ship and would begin with petite en bas rather than parite en haul—that is he would constitute the strength of the weakest power (in this case Germany) as the datum of parity and work up from that. In the case of cruisers, he is of opinion that the strength must be governed not by standards such as were laid down by the Treaty of London but by the broad principle that the number of cruisers for each nation must depend on the work they will have to perform. In the case of destroyers something like 400 were at sea towards the end of the War flying the British flag, and it is difficult to see how 150 would be able to meet our present requirements in war.
A policy of collective security, that is co-operative action in the interests of peace, Admiral Richmond regards as prac- ticable from a technical point of view. The objections to it lie mainly in the sphere of international polity.
A. C. DEWAR.
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