NAVAL WARFARE AND THE BLACK SEA

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 15, 17 July 1918, Page 6

NAVAL WARFARE AND THE BLACK SEA

The sealing up of enemy seas, so as to make it impossible (or inadvisable) for enemy surface craft to come forth, is of course one of the great facts of the war. With the North Sea blockade—which, the German fleet has not attempted to break since Jutland—and with the closing of the Adriatic the public is familiar; but there is a new development behind the statement of the French Minister for Marine that the Allies are "also mounting guard in the Eastern Mediterranean." Until recent events occurred in South Russia, the Dardanelles never covered an enemy sea force of any great striking power. The Goeben and the Breslau, " purchased " by Turkey from Germany after they gave the British Admiral tho slip, have hitherto been the only substantial naval units in Turkish waters; and in the last couple of years they have accomplished nothing save the sally that punished some British, monitors and destroyers, and which lost the ' Breslau, sunk either by mine or gunfire. On that exchange the advantage was against the enemy. But with the reported surrender of a number of undamaged Russian warships in the Black Sea, a new contingent danger is created, for the conversion of the Russian, ships into German-manned units would provide a sea-force not easily stoppered, even though contained by so narrow a bottle-neck as the Turkish Straits. In these, days when every ton of shipping counts for so much, the menace in the Eastern Mediterranean, briefly alluded to by the French. Minister, is a factor of some weight. No GermanTurkish fleet may ever again file through the Straits, but as long as the possibility remains it involves a degree of dispersion of Allied sea-power.