BOOKS.
THE BATTLE OF TSII-SHIklAl.
CAPTAIN SEMENOPP, the author of this remarkable book, bad exceptionally good opportunities for clearly observing the battle of the Sea of Japan. He was in the flagship 'Mayas Suvoroff,' but was in her as a passenger to Vladivostok, not as a combatant officer, and hence had ample facilities for making observations and notes throughout the battle until he was wounded too seriously to continue his record of the incidents of the fight. Again, having served with the Pert Arthur fleet in the sortie of August 10th, he was able to bring a more trained and critical judgment to bear on the events of the day than any other eyewitness of the action from the Russian side. Moreover, Captain Semenoff, whether consciously or not, is a most vivid and realistic writer, and his work has been rendered into excellent English by his able translator, Captain Lindsay. Indeed, we knew of only one other equally vivid description of the feelings and emotions of a period of great stress, and that is in the realms of contemporary fiction,—in Mr. Conrad's Typhoon. There is about the whole book an atmosphere of grey despair, the feeling of defeat, and all that it implies to a good officer. To quote Captain Semenoff's own words .‘ The awful fatal word which I had not even dared to think rang in my brain and seemed to be written in letters- of fire= e The stewardess, Mm. Rogers. The hero before mentioned has sot, it is believed, been identified. t Th. Sofas of Tao-olliona. By Captain Vladimir Semenoff,„ Tranalte.T Captain A. B. Lindsay, 2nd King Edward'. Own Gurkha Rifles. With • Prefers by Sir George Sydenham Clarke, ff.C.N.G., F.R.S. Louden Jolla Murray. [35. 6d. net.] the smoke and on the pale confused faces of the crew. Bogdanoff was standing by me. I caught his eye and we understood one another. He commenced to talk of it, but suddenly stopped and said in an unnaturally calm voice: We seem to be heeling over to port.' ' Yes—some 8 degrees,' I answered, and pulling out my watch and note-book, jotted down '3.25 p.m.—a heavy list to port, and a bad fire in the upper battery.' I often afterwards thought : why is it that we hide things from one another and from ourselves? Why did not Bogdanoff express his thoughts aloud and why was it that I did not dare to write in my own note-book the cheerless word ' defeat' ? Perhaps with us there still existed some dim hope of a miracle, of some kind of surprise that would change everything? I do not know."
In his description of the dressing-stations during the battle he makes a most illuminating observation which serves to explain his own curious detached and critical attitude towards the events of the fight that is such a noticeable feature of the book :— "Later on in the hospital, when carried there on a stretcher, I understood why it is that during a fight one hears neither groans nor shouts. AU that comes afterwards. Apparently our feelings have strict limits for receiving external impressions, being even deeply impressed by some absurd sentence. A thing can be so painful that you feel nothing, so terrible that you fear nothing."
The whole of his gloomy narrative is thrown into sharper relief by curious contrasts, such as his description of passing several times by the ship's ikon which hung in the upper battery. Though a dressing-station just in front of it had been wrecked by one of the first shells, he records that the candles before the ikon were always burning, and the case remained unbroken, giving, as he says, a strange feeling of quiet and peace in the midst of all this death and destruction.
But besides these and other incidents of great psycho- logical and literary interest there are many passages that demand the close attention of all in any way connected with or interested in the welfare of the Navy, and especially the present Board of Admiralty. One of the passages most par- ticularly worthy of notice by supporters of the " practically ready" Navy and the system of keeping whole fleets "in Commission in Reserve" is that in which Captain Semenoff, having described the arrangements for manoeuvring during the battle, says:— " Once again and for the last time we were forcibly reminded of the old truism that a ' fleet' is created by long years of practice at sea in time of peace (cruising, not remaining in port), and that a collection of ships of various types hastily collected which have only learned to sail together on the way to the scene of operations is no fleet, but a chance concourse of vessels."
But, above all, there is the one principle of war that is inculcated by this battle, and, indeed, by the whole Russo-Japanese War, and that is Nelson's principle that it is better to have only one of your own ships left and the whole of your enemy sunk than twenty-one left to the enemy's twenty. In other words, fight your battles with the object of destroying the enemy, not with the object of getting through to some destination, such as was Vladivostok in this battle, with as many ships intact as possible, and do not mind a big " butcher's bill" if you can utterly cripple or destroy your enemy. The Russians all through neglected this first principle of naval war, and, going into battle with apparently no very fixed idea except that of getting out of it again as soon as possible, lost ; while the Japanese, going in with the full determination to destroy the enemy at what- ever cost, won.
Before we leave Captain Semenoff's book we must direct our readers' attention to the particularly interesting preface contributed to it by Sir George Clarke, secretary to the Imperial Defence Committee. This preface, though occupying only a few pages, and by its nature entirely devoid of the sensational and romantic interest of an eyewitness's narrative of a great sea battle, is from the point of view of the naval statesman by far the most important portion of the book. Sir George Clarke, taking the facts as recounted, invites us to read the naval lessons that are to be drawn from them. It is hardly necessary to say that Sir George Clarke, though a soldier, is universally admitted to be an authority of the first order in regard to wider naval problems, and his comments on Captain Semenoff's book will, we feel sure, be treated with the greatest respect by all who have any knowledge of naval affairs. Sir George Clarke begins by noting that the " paucity of war experience since the introduction of the Steam-driven armoured ship invests the battle of Tau-shima
with supreme importance." He goes on to point out that though it is necessary to state and draw deductions from the experience of the Russo-Japanese War, we must be very careful not to fall into the error of drawing conclusions of vast importance from too small premisses. As an illustration of what he means, he instance& how both the Americans and ourselves suffered from the shallow reasoning derived from the peculiar operations of the Civil War. Still more specifically, he notes how the action off Lissa between the Italians and Austrians led to the "cult of the ram." Again, "a few isolated successes obtained by torpedoes in exceptional circumstances have given rise to exaggerated claims on the part of this weapon." The vital need for caution and for profound study of all such experience as is forthcoming is therefore evident. This is his preface to the remark that as the battle of Tsu-shima is by far the greatest and most important naval fight since Trafalgar, the navy which is able to draw the most accurate conclusions, technical as well as tactical, from its experiences, and to apply them in terms of policy and of training, will secure marked advantage in the future.
We cannot attempt here to state the whole of Sir George Clarke's conclusions; nor does he indeed profess to come to final conclusions so much as to ask certain questions and to indicate a line of study which may lead to the answers. For example, he asks : What part did superior speed play in carrying destruction to the Russian Fleet P What guns established the initial superiority of fire, and wrought the havoc, moral and material, which ensured victory P What purpose did armour serve, and how did its distribution conform to the needs of the battle P "It is upon the answers to such questions as those that our naval policy must depend." Here is a passage from the preface which deals with some of these problems :—
"The general impression conveyed by Captain Semenoff, and confirmed from other sources, is that the Russian ships were over- whelmed by the volume of the Japanese fire, and that frequency of hitting rather than weight of shells should be the main object. If this conclusion is correct, the principle which guided the British Navy in the days of Nelson—to close to effective range and then deliver the most rapid fire possible—has been strikingly reaffirmed. Effective ranges have been increased but this principle remains unchanged and is probably unchangeable. The trouble which arose from the outbreak of fire on board the ' Suvoroff ' and from the wreckage of the bridges and spar-deck, the men killed in the conning tower, the penetration of the armoured deck near the bow, the down draught of smoke, the estimate of range (' a little more than 20 cablea ') at a critical moment—all these points, which present themselves in the narra- tive, claim attention and careful comparison with other accounts. Captain Semenoff's impressions of the manoeuvring of the fleets may well be somewhat vague ; but it is worth collating with other observations. Lastly, the graphic touches of the author show with painful distinctness the terrible strain imposed upon human endurance. Few who read his -account of the heroic signalmen 'standing silently and outwardly calm, unwilling to go below the armoured deck, wishing only for orders, and feeling ' them- selves indispensable to the fight,' will be inclined to accept the recent theory that partly-trained and half-disciplined men are fit to find a place on board ship in modern naval war. Upon a correct understanding of the lessons of Teu-shirea the expenditure of millions of public money and the efficiency of the Navy in the near future must mainly depend. If this simple narrative can, in however small a degree, help us to attain such an understanding, its publication will be abundantly justified."
With the finger-post thus raised to draw the attention of readers, we must take leave of a deeply interesting book. We cannot endorse too strongly Sir George Clarke's contention that the battle of Ten-shima must be studied with the utmost earnestness and in the utmost detail by our naval authorities, for upon the deduction therefrom of a sound and effective naval policy the safety and welfare of our Navy, and so of our country, may depend. In the records of this battle, and of the other actions in the Russo-Japanese War, lies hidden a secret of immeasurable importance. It will not be easy to discover this secret in all its significance ; but it can be discovered, and if it is we who are successful we shall have achieved something which it is no exaggeration to say is worth far more than would be the gift of some fairy protector willing to endow the nation with an extra hundred millions to spend on naval construction. The essential point is to discover the right kind of ship to build, and the right kind of gun with which to arm her. If we do not achieve that knowledge, we may squander millions and millions on the Navy, yet be at the mercy of some other Power who has better read the riddle than ourselves.
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