Part 10

The second requisite for victory, that is, for winning a battle against a hostile fleet, is tactical superiority, or, as Nelson put it: "The skill of our admirals and the activity and spirit of our officers and seamen." The only way to obtain this is through the perpetual practice of the admirals commanding fleets. An admiral, in order to make himself a first-rate tactician, must not merely have deeply studied and pondered the subject, but must spend as much time as possible in exercising, as a whole, the fleet which he commands, in order not only by experimental manoeuvres thoroughly to satisfy himself as to the formation and mode of attack which will be best suited to any conceivable circumstance in which he may find himself, but also to inculcate his ideas into his subordinates; to inspire them with his own knowledge, and to give them that training in working together which, in all those kinds of activities which require large numbers of men to work together, whether on the cricket field, at football, in an army, or in a navy, constitutes the advantage of a practised over a scratch team.

If the practice is to make the fleet ready for war, it must be carried out with the fleet in its war composition. All the different elements, battleships, cruisers, torpedo craft, and the rest, must be fully represented, otherwise the admiral would be practising in peace with a different instrument from that with which he would need to operate in war.

The importance of this perpetual training ought to be self-evident. It may be well to remind the reader that it has also been historically proved. The great advantage which the British possessed over the French navy in the Wars of the Revolution and the Empire was that the British fleets were always at sea, whereas the French fleets, for years blockaded in their ports, were deficient in that practice which, in the naval as in all other professions, makes perfect. One of the complaints against the present Board of Admiralty is that it has not encouraged the training and exercise of fleets as complete units.

Another point, in regard to which the recent practice of the Admiralty is regarded with very grave doubts, not only by many naval officers, but also by many of those who, without being naval officers, take a serious interest in the navy, is that of naval construction. For several years the Admiralty neglected to build torpedo craft of the quality and in the quantity necessary for the most probable contingencies of war, while, at the same time, large sums of money were spent in building armoured cruisers, vessels of a fighting power so great that an admiral would hesitate to detach them from his fleet, lest he should be needlessly weakened on the day of battle, yet not strong enough safely to replace the battleships in the fighting line. The result has been that the admirals in command of fleets have for some time been anxiously asking to be better supplied with scouts or vessels of great speed, but not of such fighting power that they could not be spared at a distance from the fleet even on the eve of an action. These two defects in the shipbuilding policy of the Admiralty make it probable that for some years past the navy has not been constructed in accord with any fully thought-out design of operations; in other words, that the great object "victory" has been forgotten by the supreme authority.

The doubt whether victory has been borne in mind is confirmed by what is known of the design of the original Dreadnought. A battleship ought to be constructed for battle, that is, for the purpose of destroying the enemy's fleet, for which purpose it will never be used alone, but in conjunction with a number of ships like itself forming the weapon of an admiral in command. A battleship requires three qualities, in the following order of importance:--

First, offensive power. A fleet exists in order to destroy the enemy, but it has no prospect of performing that function if its power of destruction is less than its enemy's. The chief weapon to-day, as in the past, is artillery. Accordingly the first requisite of a fleet, as regards its material qualities, those produced by the constructor, is the capacity to pour on to the enemy's fleet a heavier rain of projectiles than he can return.

The second quality is the power of movement. The advantage of superior speed in a fleet--for the superior speed of an individual ship is of little importance--is that so long as it is preserved it enables the admiral, within limits, to accept or decline battle according to his own judgment. This is a great strategical advantage. It may in some conditions enable an inferior fleet to postpone an action which might be disastrous until it has effected a junction with another fleet belonging to its own side.

The third quality is that the ships of a fleet should be strong enough to offer to the enemy's projectiles a sufficient resistance to make it improbable that they can be sunk before having inflicted their fair share of damage on the adversary.

There is always a difficulty in combining these qualities in a given ship, because as a ship weighs the quantity of water which she displaces, a ship of any given size has its weight given, and the designer cannot exceed that limit of weight. He must divide it between guns with their ammunition, engines with their coal, and armour. Every ton given to armour diminishes the tonnage possible for guns and engines, and, given a minimum for armour, every extra ton given to engines and coal reduces the possible weight of guns and ammunition. In the Dreadnought a very great effort was made to obtain a considerable extra speed over that of all other battleships. This extra speed was defended on the ground that it would enable a fleet of Dreadnoughts to fight a battle at long range, and with a view to such battle the Dreadnought was provided only with guns of the heaviest calibre and deprived of those guns of medium calibre with which earlier battleships were well provided. The theories thus embodied in the new class of ships were both of them doubtful, and even dangerous. In the first place, it is in the highest degree injurious to the spirit and courage of the crew to have a ship which they know will be at a disadvantage if brought into close proximity with the enemy. Their great object ought to be to get as near to the enemy as possible. The hypothesis that more damage will be done by an armament exclusively of the largest guns is in the opinion of many of the best judges likely to be refuted. There is some reason to believe that a given tonnage, if devoted to guns of medium calibre, would yield a very much greater total damage to an enemy's ship than if devoted to a smaller number of guns of heavy calibre and firing much less rapidly.

There is, moreover, a widespread belief among naval officers of the highest repute, among whom may be named the author of the "Influence of Sea Power upon History," than whom no one has thought more profoundly on the subject of naval war, that it is bad economy to concentrate in a few very large ships the power which might be more conveniently and effectively employed if distributed in a great number of ships of more moderate size.

Surely, so long as naval opinion is divided about the tactical and strategical wisdom of a new type of battleship, it is rash to continue building battleships exclusively of that type, and it would be more reasonable to make an attempt to have naval opinion sifted and clarified, and thus to have a secure basis for a shipbuilding programme, than to hurry on an enormous expenditure upon what may after all prove to have been a series of doubtful experiments.

All the questions above discussed seem to me to be more important than that of mere numbers of ships. Numbers are, however, of great importance in their proper place and for the proper reasons. The policy adopted and carried out by the British navy, at any rate during the latter half of the war against the French Empire, was based on a known superiority of force. The British fleet set out by blockading all the French fleets, that is, by taking stations near to the great French harbours and there observing those harbours, so that no French fleet should escape without being attacked. If this is to be the policy of the British navy in future it will require a preponderance of force of every kind over that of the enemy, and that preponderant force will have to be fully employed from the very first day of the war. In other words, it must be kept in commission during peace. But, in addition, it is always desirable to have a reserve of strength to meet the possibility that the opening of a war or one of its early subsequent stages may bring into action some additional unexpected adversary. There are thus two reasons that make for a fleet of great numerical strength. The first, that only great superiority renders possible the strategy known as blockade, or, as I have ventured to call it, of "shadowing" the whole of the enemy's forces. The second, that only great numerical strength renders it possible to provide a reserve against unexpected contingencies.

XV.

ENGLAND'S MILITARY PROBLEM

After the close of the South African war, two Royal Commissions were appointed. One of them, known as the War Commission, was in a general way to inquire into and report upon the lessons of the war. This mission it could fulfil only very imperfectly, because its members felt precluded from discussing the policy in which the war had its origin and incapable of reviewing the military conduct of the operations. This was very like reviewing the play of "Hamlet" without reference to the characters and actions either of Hamlet or of the King, for the mainsprings which determine the course, character, and issue of any war are the policy out of which it arises and the conduct of the military operations. The main fact which impressed itself on the members of the War Commission was that the forces employed on the British side had been very much larger than had been expected at the beginning of the war, and the moral which they drew was contained in the one sentence of their report which has remained in the public mind, to the effect that the Government ought to make provision for the expansion of the army beyond the limit of the regular forces of the Crown.

About the same time another Commission, under the chairmanship of the Duke of Norfolk, was appointed to inquire and report whether any, and, if any, what changes were required in order to secure that the Militia and Volunteer forces should be maintained in a condition of military efficiency and at an adequate strength. The Norfolk Commission recommended certain changes which it thought would lead to a great improvement in the efficiency of both forces, while permitting them to maintain the requisite numerical strength. With regard to the Volunteer force, the report said:--

"The governing condition is that the Volunteer, whether an officer, non-commissioned officer, or private, earns his own living, and that if demands are made upon him which are inconsistent with his doing so he must cease to be a Volunteer. No regulations can be carried out which are incompatible with the civil employment of the Volunteers, who are for the most part in permanent situations. Moreover, whatever may be the goodwill and patriotism of employers, they cannot allow the Volunteers they may employ more than a certain period of absence. Their power to permit their workmen to attend camp or other exercises is controlled by the competition which exists in their trade. Those who permit Volunteers in their service to take holidays longer than are customary in their trade and district, are making in the public interest a sacrifice which some of them think excessive."

The report further laid stress on the cardinal principle that no Volunteer, whatever his rank, should be put to expense on account of his service. Subject to this governing condition and to this cardinal principle, the Commission made recommendations from which it expected a marked improvement and the gradual attainment of a standard much in advance of anything which until then had been reached.

Most of these recommendations have been adopted, with modifications, in the arrangements which have since been made for the Volunteers under the new name "The Territorial Force."

The Norfolk Commission felt no great confidence in the instructions given it by the Government on the subject of the standard of efficiency and of numerical strength. Accordingly the Commission added to its report the statement:--

"We cannot assert that, even if the measures recommended were fully carried out, these forces would be equal to the task of defeating a modern continental army in the United Kingdom."

The Commission's chief doubt was whether, under the conditions inseparable at any rate from the volunteer system, any scheme of training would give to forces officered largely by men who are not professional soldiers the cohesion of armies that exact a progressive two-years' course from their soldiers and rely, except for expanding the subaltern ranks on mobilisation, upon professional leaders. The Commission then considered "Measures which may provide a Home Defence Army equal to the task of defeating an invader." They were unable to recommend the adoption of the Swiss system, partly because the initial training was not, in their judgment, sufficient for the purpose, and partly because they held that the modern method of extending the training to all classes, while shortening its duration, involves the employment of instructors of the highest possible qualifications. The Commission concluded by reporting that a Home Defence Army capable, in the absence of the whole or the greater portion of the regular forces, of protecting this country against invasion can be raised and maintained only on the principle that it is the duty of every citizen of military age and sound physique to be trained for the national defence and to take part in it should emergency arise.

The Norfolk Commission gave expression to two different views without attempting to reconcile them. On the one hand it laid down the main lines along which the improvement of the militia and volunteers was to be sought, and on the other hand it pointed out the advantages of the principle that it is the citizen's duty to be trained as a soldier and to fight in case of need. To go beyond this and to attempt either to reconcile the two currents of thought or to decide between them, was impossible for a Commission appointed to deal with only a fraction of the problem of national defence. The two sets of views, however, continue to exist side by side, and the nation yet has to do what the Norfolk Commission by its nature was debarred from doing. The Government, represented in this matter by Mr. Haldane, is still in the position of relying upon an improved militia and volunteer force. The National Service League, on the other hand, advocates the principle of the citizen's duty, though it couples with it a specific programme borrowed from the Swiss system, the adoption of which was deprecated in the Commission's Report. The public is somewhat puzzled by the appearance of opposition between what are thought of as two schools, and indeed Mr. Haldane in his speech introducing the Army Estimates on March 4, 1909, described the territorial force as a safeguard against universal service.

The time has perhaps come when the attempt should be made to find a point of view from which the two schools of thought can be seen in due perspective, and from which, therefore, a definite solution of the military problem may be reached.

By what principle must our choice between the two systems be determined? By the purpose in hand. The sole ultimate use of an army is to win the nation's battles, and if one system promises to fulfil that purpose while the other system does not, we cannot hesitate.

Great Britain requires an army as one of the instruments of success in a modern British war, and we have therefore to ascertain, in general, the nature of a modern war, and in particular the character of such wars as Great Britain may have to wage.

The distinguishing feature of the conflict between two modern great States is that it is a struggle for existence, or, at any rate, a wrestle to a fall. The mark of the modern State is that it is identified with the population which it comprises, and to such a State the name "nation" properly belongs. The French Revolution nationalised the State and in consequence nationalised war, and every modern continental State has so organized itself with a view to war that its army is equivalent to the nation in arms.

The peculiar character of a British war is due to the insular character of the British State. A conflict with a great continental Power must begin with a naval struggle, which will be carried on with the utmost energy until one side or the other has established its predominance on the sea. If in this struggle the British navy is successful, the effect which can be produced on a continental State by the victorious navy will not be sufficient to cause the enemy to accept peace upon British conditions. For that purpose, it will be necessary to invade the enemy's territory and to put upon him the constraint of military defeat, and Great Britain therefore requires an army strong enough either to effect this operation or to encourage continental allies to join with it in making the attempt.