The History of Sea-Power
" To many members of the British Empire Nairal History still remains a strange compound of prejudice, sentimentality, and archaeological chit-chat. Fleets loom up with grand but discon- certing irrelevance out of the mist of ' our naval heritage,' com- manded by weird figures grasping bowls, whips, brooms, and tumblers of grog. After furious cannonades, devoid of tactical meaning, but accompanied by unique personal feats on the part of the comman- ders, such as failing to observe signals with a blind eye, the fleets separate and are again lost to view. Why they were at sea, how they came together, and what happened as a result is seldom clearly explained. It suffices, however, that once again the British have triumphed against fearful odds, or if in superior numbers to start with have brilliantly frustrated the knavish tricks of their cowardly but treacherous assailants. No wonder that a generation accus- tomed to look at national achievements with a critical eye turns in disgust from such tawdry bombast."
Tars quotation from the preface to Mr. Tunstall's Naval History sets out admirably the position which he has under- taken to correct. But there is no more difficult task for the historian than the correction of entrenched misapprehension. Psychological entrenchment is the devil : for it tempts the historian not to confine himself to cold statement, but to engage in active attack. It tempts him to employ, in the cause of Truth, a bombardment of exaggeration and extrava- gant wit.
That is a. temptation, however, which Mr. Tunstall has most admirably avoided. In the passage from his preface which I have, quoted he sets down plainly the point of view he intends to combat, and thereafter he completely ignores it. There is no indication in his own pages that the melodramatic or jingoistic attitude to the naval history of England even
exists. He does not pause to, gibe at the story of Drake's game of bowls, or of Nelson's blind eye at the Battle of
Copenhagen : he. does not even mention, them. He performs that most difficult task—he writes unhandicapped by his
predecessors. Secondly, he rightly emphasises the unimport- ance of even the most brilliant tactics in, battle, when com-
pared with the necessity of a coherent strategy, and of a wise naval policy in the intervals of peace. He traces, therefore, with great pains the constitutional and administrative history of the Navy, the development of the Navy Board and the Board of AdMiralty. He actually devotes more attention to Pepys than to Nelson, to Henry VII than to Drake. He makes no concession, whether in his descriptions of battle or of politics, to any false sense of national pride. His greater knowledge of British affairs naturally leads him to cast a clearer (but no more flattering) light upon the characters and actions of the British officers than those of the enemy : but no further trace of bias is visible.
The book is a comparatively short one, for its subject, and is therefore highly condensed ; but on the whole it is remark- ably successful. It could hardly be expected that in so difficult a task the success should be absolutely uniform, at least in holding the interest of the reader. One notices here, as so often, that the further events are removed in time, the more clearly and surely are they described. But it is all the more curious in his case, since it' is with the history of the eighteenth century that Mr. TunstaWs name has hitherto been chiefly connected. Possibly this is the very reason. Mr. Tunstall's own greater knowledge of the eighteenth century makes him oblivious of the necessity, in a book written for the general public, of drawing in with a broad brush those main outlines which to -the author are a commonplace of consciousness. The fault is merely relative ; it is only when compared with his own earlier passages that it becomes apparent : and it is indeed remarkable that he should have succeeded in making his subject throughout so clear to the layman as he has, without a single map or diagram.
Mr. Tunstall brings History to a full stop with the beginning of the present century : and indeed the impartial clarity of his style would hardly recommend it for the description of contemporary events. He has left. the Great War alone. But it would have been interesting to learn, at least in general terms,. Mr. Tunstall's views upon the present and the future. The nineteenth century saw the greatest revolution in the construction and tactics of naval warfare that its whole history can show : and yet the strategic results. of the revolution are not yet at all clear, at least to the layman. But it is important that they should be made clear to the layman, in a
country whose naval policy rests so largely in democratic hands. There is, of course, a school of thought which regards naval history as now drawing to its close. In a hundred years, they will tell you, the strategic functions which in the past have been fulfilled on the sea will Come to be fulfilled in the air. Navies will be reduced to the status of a sea-arm of the Air Force. To follow the comparison : it might be said that aero- planes in the last War were in that early stage of development which is represented in naval history by the war-canoes of raiding savages : that they were a tactical weapon, rather than in themselves a strategic force. But if the time conies, as it surely Must, when air strategy develops into a separate art, its ancestor will surely be rather the naval than the military strategy of the past. A recent naval writer has deplored in no measured terms the abolition of the R.N.A.S., and the linking of the Air Force more closely with the land forces than with the Navy. He may have been right in a sense which he did not wholly intend. For it may well be that it is rather from naval than military traditions that the Air Force should most profitably draw sustenance for its own gigantic future. It may be the Navy, rather than the Army, which it is ulti
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