WHAT THE NAVY DOES

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 63, 11 September 1915, Page 9

WHAT THE NAVY DOES

EFFECTIVE SUBMARINE WORK GERMANY'S DD7FICULTY. In the course of the next few weeks the Baltic is likely to become the scene of interesting naval events (wrote Archibald Hurd in the London Telegraph of 26th July). \ The Germans have taken Libau and Windau, and they are preparing for an assault on Riga, a much more difficult proposition. The German navy, is expected by the military authorities to co-operate, and, indeed, its 'assistance is essential if the enemy's ambitious military plans are to be carried out and Riga is to become a base of supplies. In the early days of the war it was asserted in many quarters that the Great General Staff of the army would speedily exert its influence to force the High Sea Fleet to take the seas. Those who indulged 'in this anticipation under-esti-mated the influence of Grand-Admiral vort Tirpitz, who was at the very zenith of his popularity^ ' with the civil population when the war broke out. If the Naval Secretary had been a weak and unpopular man the prophecy might have been fulfilled. * Grand-Admiral yon Tirpitz has had to confess to his military confreres that be is unable to stop us using the' seas of the world because the odds against the High Sea Fleet, — moral as well as material and strategical — are so overwhelming. Consequently, whatever the soldiers may have been thinking of the | poverty of the return for an expenditure not far short of £300,000,000, which the German navy has involved, the prophecy as to German intervention at sea' has not | been fulfilled. ' Nearly a year has passed, i But the conditions are very different in the Baltic. There Germany possesses a stronger fleet than Russia and convenient bases. Grand Admiral yon Tirpitz, in view of his failures — not forgetting the submarine policy, a fiasco, so far as we are concerned, but a tragedy to the Germans — can hardly exert against the movement for the bold offensive in the Baltic the game influence to-day that he didj eleven or twelve months ago, when the bone of contention was North Sea policy. WEAPON OF THE WEAKER POWER. The prospect of activity by the enemy in the Baltic directs attention to considerations' which are frequently overlooked. Time and again I have heard it remarked that it is curious that British submarines have been able to do so little in the North Sea. The answer to that »line of criticism is : "You cannot hit a target that does not exist." The weaker Powers must withdraw their trade from those waters which are under the control of superior 1 naval forces, and hence there are no merchant navies for the stronger Powers to attack.- The battleships, cruisers, and destroyers of the stronger fleet keep the seas clear of the enemy's squadrons, and thereby remove the objects of attack for the submarines. But the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers of the weaker fleet remain in port, whereas their submarines find plenty to do in watching and waiting for the enemy's ships. At the present moment what is the position? A "Naval Officer," writing in the Army and Navy Gazette, puts the matter very lucidly : "In the Baltic . - ... it is not the German submarines that have scored, but those of the British Fleet, which are working in conjunction with the Russian flotilla. Similarly, in the Adriatic neither the French submarines nor, to any large extent, the Italian boats have succeeded in securing any victims.. I| is those <4

the weaker Austro-Hungarian Fleet which have been able to sink a French and two Italian cruisers s and to injure a British vessel, though not seriously. In the operations around the Gallipoli" Peninsula, too, the submarine coups have- been mostly brought off by Germany." SUBMARINES IN THE NORTH SEA. In only two seas,. apart from the Black Sea, of which we know little, are the Allies weak in naval power; the one is the Baltic and the other the Sea of Marmora. In those areas British submarines have scored a series of successes, and. they will achieve other successes, which will .have one notable result on. the German mind. * We talk of the Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, " containing " the High Sea Fleet, and are apt to forget that in this work British submarines have co-operated splendidly for nearly a year by the menace which they offer to the enemy. According to the Admiralty; return, issued on the eve of the war, we nad ninety-eight submarines built and building, and Germany thirty-eight, or a few more. Our capacity for constructing these craft is at . least twice as great as the . enemy's. We have not suffered considerable losses, while goodness only knows how many of Germany's submarines have been sunk. At any rate, this at least is certain : our ascendency in under-water craft is today very much greater than it was a year ago. < The Germans have fully realised for some time the hornets' nest which will be' about them if their men-of- , war, with or without transports, issue forth in the North Sea;' and now they have learnt, by the loss of the battleship , Pommern, that they are not even immune from the peril of British submarines ia the Baltic. EFFECT OF MILITARY PRESSURE. Grand Admiral yon Tirpitz can make out a good case for the inactivity of the German^ navy in the North Sea in the circumstances now existing, but I imagine he will find it difficult .to resist the pressure of the military element in favour of an offensive pokey in the Baltic. He will be reminded that the command of those waters is essential to the military plans, and that' he must give safe conduct to transports. He has made one effort to invade .Russia by sea and has failed with loss; he will certainly be forced to make -others. - The enemy is learning that the -submarine is not an exclusive German possession, and that it is dangerously blind, in some circumstances, as the fate of the American ship Leelanan reminds us. At an£ rate, when there is a target, other Powers can use under-water craf • quite as effectively as those "clever" Germans. They must by this time have received the report that the Turco-Ger-man cruiser Breslau lias been injured in the Black Sea. The injury has been done, apparently, by a torpedo fired from a submarine, presumably Russian, but possibly British. The facilities for repair are contemptible. Wherever a German, man-of-war shows any activity disaster is met •with." In the circumstances the enemy cannot be very happy. He has read his Mahan. He knows that whereas military power makes a dramatic appeal by its succession of stirring incidents and its daily communiques, the decisive influence on land as weil as on sea is exercised by naval power, silent in its operation, and usually lacking in dramatic appeal. He knows, moreover, that, owing to the constriction of the world through the advent of steam, naval force can be utilised in creating and utilising military force to ail extent, in the present industrial conditions, which was unthought of in the last great war. v . „-, \j .'„ Consequently, in spite of the widespread advertisement of the forward movement against Russia, official Germany to-day — sans sea command and all that it connotes, sans ocean commerce, sans every element of Weltpolitik which was its peculiar pride a year ago — would be revealed, if we could look into its heart, as a very depressed, despondent, and well-nigh hopeless Germany. Berlin is struggling to keep up appearances in the eves of,/ the civil population. Germany is living on hope deferred, but not abandoned — that is the virtue of her vast paper \ currency — and when hope deferred becomes hope abandoned the game will be up.