we should perish if ever the command of the sea were to pass into the hands of a hostile Power. It was, therefore, a cause of deep thankfulness that at the outbreak of the greatest war that the world has ever seen, wherein our most vital interests are at stake and our resources are strained to the utmost, Great Britain stood in a position of unexampled naval superiority. Her people had, indeed, never lost their instinct for the things of the sea. There had been fluctuations and periods of decline, but the desire had been unquenchable and the purpose paramount to maintain our sea command; and, thanks mainly to this and to the wise direction of a few of England's most far-seeing sons, when the hour sounded we were ready. The Fleet was incomparably more powerful than in any distant or recent period of our history. It was organised, distributed, administered and ready for the strategic needs of the time; its officers and men had raised themselves and been trained to a pitch of professional efficiency which twenty years before had hardly been dreamed of. In every branch, in material and in personnel, the Navy has displayed elasticity of organisation, the power of expansion, and a remarkable genius for absorbing the elements of the mercantile marine and the fisheries into the service of the State.

The rise of the German Navy was a new influence which seemed to disturb the equilibrium of the world, and inevitably came to be regarded in many quarters as a challenge to our naval supremacy. The Germans did not at first admit the imputation. It will be remembered that on Feb. 14, 1908, the Emperor wrote a remarkable letter from Berlin to Lord Tweedmouth, then First Lord of the Admiralty, in which it was conjectured that his Majesty sought to influence the Navy Estimates of that year. 'It is absolutely nonsensical and untrue,' he said, 'that the German Navy Bill is to provide a navy meant as a "challenge to British naval supremacy"; the German Fleet is built against nobody at all.' Prince Bülow, however, in the new edition of his 'Deutsche Politik,' asserts that by the building of the German Fleet British mastery of the sea was for the first time in many centuries seriously imperilled. He had misjudged the

* Letter printed in the Morning Post,' Oct. 30, 1914.

real situation. The German Army was ready for war, and the national finances may have been organised in view of hostilities, but the German Navy was in no position of advantage.

Mr Balfour, in a speech he delivered at the Guildhall on Nov. 9, 1916, attributed to the High Seas Fleet the intention, at the beginning of the war, of challenging us to a fleet engagement. There was no evidence of preparedness for such a conflict. For many months the German Fleet was, indeed, condemned to inaction in its ports. Its cruisers on foreign stations inflicted some loss on our commerce; but they were few in number, and were destroyed one by one. As to the liners, which were to be converted into auxiliary cruisers at sea, their performances were of no effect on the campaign. That gallant and chivalrous officer, Count von Spee, was given a squadron which, as he foresaw, must sooner or later be destroyed. If we had kept our ships together, he said in a letter dated Nov. 2, 1914, the Germans would have had the worst of it (so würden wir wohl den kürzeren gezogen haben).* It cannot be said that the German Fleet was well distributed for war. It was by one of those accidents of naval warfare upon which the German Admiralstab could not have counted, that the Goeben' and 'Breslau' escaped destruction in the Mediterranean, and secured safety in the Golden Horn. The German light cruisers were insufficient in number for the Fleet, and for the foreign stations and commerce destruction. The destroyers have played but a minor part in the war. The submarines which have become so serious a menace to our commerce had yet to be built.

The sea power which, in our hands, Prince Bülow thought was seriously imperilled, is entirely different in its nature from land power. Its business is to hold our world communications at sea, and to deny the like communications to the enemy. This has been achieved. The German High Seas Fleet, held fast at the Straits of Dover and the northern passage to the Ocean, cannot seriously influence the war outside the North Sea. In spite of

*Frankfurter Zeitung,' April 19, 1915.

Vol. 227.-No. 450,

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occasional raids, it is true to say that we control the Dover Straits and the English Channel, the North Passage on either side of the Shetland Islands, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab-elMandeb, and the Strait of Malacca-in a word, all the great strategic gateways of the world; and we could organise the Falkland Isles as a base if we wished, or had need, in order to control enemy passage through the Straits of Magellan. It cannot be too fully recognised that the Grand Fleet, in its North Sea anchorages, governs the naval situation throughout the Globe. Incalculable are the advantages we thus enjoy. Not one of our Dominions or Colonies has been attacked or could have been attacked, while the enemy's foreign possessions have crumbled away.

The reticent strategy of the enemy in the North Sea is the signal note of the naval warfare. He has made no serious attempt to dispute our command of that sea. His sudden strokes in the bombardment of Scarborough and other places, his fugitive fight at the Dogger Bank, his selected hour in the Jutland Battle, which converted his action into a sally and a flight, and the action of his submarines, have left the strategic situation unchanged. Yet the truth is palpable that in the North Sea position lies the very heart of the naval struggle. The animus pugnandi has been lacking to destroy the Grand Fleet. The material means have not justified the enterprise. Grand Admiral von Tirpitz said to an interviewer that there would be folly in risking complete disaster, that the hope was to seize some advantage, such apparently as might result from a division of the British Fleet, whereby a part, and not the whole of it, might be engaged. Such was the genesis of the Jutland Battle.

Our command of the North Sea gives us, first, the immunity of the British Isles from attack. That a raid might be attempted for some local purpose is conceivable, but it is a conviction based upon both history and practical considerations that an invasion in force, with the object of subjugating the country, is impossible in the face of our undefeated Fleet. The transport of a great army, provided with all the heavy equipment and armament which a modern army requires, the necessary safety of its landing, the maintenance of

its communications and its supplies, together form an undertaking so grave and a risk so tremendous as to force the conclusion that no general staff will direct and no commander will undertake it. In these days of wireless telegraphy, of mines and submarines, of swift destroyers and heavily armed battle-cruisers travelling at very high speed, a situation has been created that would make infinitely more difficult that which has been found impossible during over 800 years of our island story.* We are free to contemplate the incalculable benefits which, in immunity from invasion, we derive from the possession of a paramount Navy-the continuance of our national life itself, the peace and security of home, and, in the domain specifically of the war, the means of maintaining our power of recuperation and of waging it with the naval and military forces, and the vast supplies and munitions which have their origin in this country or come to it from abroad. By naval means, in the guarding of insularity, we have been enabled, through nearly two and a half years of war, to develope our military strength to an unparalleled degree.

Next, as to the blockade of Germany. What is the nature of that operation in present conditions? Obviously we cannot do in this war what we did in the old wars. When Cornwallis blockaded Brest in 1803-5, his station was usually off the Black Rocks, with an inshore squadron at the entrance to the Goulet, which, in case of attack, could fall back on his stronger force. Nelson could employ a looser method at Toulon, his object being, as he said, to induce the French to come out. Sir John Jellicoe's system resembled Nelson's rather than Cornwallis's. He could not, if he would, have lain off the German ports. The destroyer, the submarine,

The following authorities may be consulted on the question of invasion: Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P., 'Imperial Defence,' 1905 (a speech in the House of Commons, reprinted); Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, M.P., a speech in the House, August 1909; Hamley's 'Operations of War,' Pt vi, ed. 1907, by Lieut.-Gen. Sir L. E. Kiggell, then Assistant Director of Staff Duties at H.Q. (now Chief of the Army General Staff); J. R. Thursfield, Nelson and other Naval Studies,' 1909, preface, and Naval Warfare,' 1913, ch. vi; Col. H. B. Hanna, Can Germany invade England?' 1912; Lieut.-Gen. A. von Janson, Der Ueberfall über See als Feldzugseinleitung,' 1909; Leyland, Invasion and Imperial Defence,' 'Nineteenth Century,'. December 1907; and Naval Annual,' 1907, ch. xi.

and the submarine mine-layer made that impossible. The Admiral's post was in certain northern anchorages, whence he made periodical sweeps through the North Sea.

But, if the enemy is blockaded from a great distance, he thereby enjoys a measure of freedom of action in the North Sea; and, in fact, he has issued forth to bombard places on our East Coast, and on occasions has cruised for some distance along the Danish coast, and even raided the Downs. Sorties of this kind, based on the analogy of fortresses beleaguered, have been a guiding feature of German strategy, as disclosed in the preamble of the Navy Law of 1898, under which an Ausfallsflotte, or sallying fleet, was to be created. It is the strategy of the weaker force; and, though the principle of risk to the stronger fleet was proclaimed in the Navy Law of 1900, there was a recurrence to the earlier ideas when the risk proved of no avail to deter. We must observe that the freedom of movement which is left to the enemy in the North Sea gives him the opportunity of choosing his own moment for his operations, and his own conditions of light and atmosphere to suit his objects.

Nevertheless, for the purpose of military command, our control of the North Sea is firmer and more complete than our control of the sea has been in any previous war. De Grasse and Guichen in 1781, Nielly in 1794, VillaretJoyeuse in 1795, Morard de Galle in 1796, Brueys in 1798, Bruix in 1799, Ganteaume and Linois in 1801, Missiessy and Villeneuve in 1805, and other Admirals, escaped from the French ports in the wars of those times. The German Fleet has very rarely come far out into the North Sea without being engaged, or having one or more of its ships attacked by our submarines. It has not diminished our command. Without fighting a decisive battle, we have enjoyed many of the fruits of one.

Fleet actions are, indeed, not of the essence of the Navy's work. This may seem to many people a strange thing to say. Have we not been told many a time that the business of the Fleet is to seek out and destroy the enemy wherever he is to be found? But it must be realised that the Navy can fight only when the enemy is willing to risk engagement. It can seek out and destroy him only when he is found in a position in which he can be attacked. Its doctrine and its object have not