WHY WE CAN'T DIG

Evening Star, Issue 16559, 19 October 1917, Page 5

WHY WE CAN'T DIG

THE GERMAN FLEET OUT\ A LOT OF "SILLY. TALK. Ever, since the ; war commenced our street-corner theorist have boen talking about what should be done to the German High Fleot. Every week brings a suggestion that Britain should bombard the Kiel Canal, or forco tho German fleet into the open. But apparently it never strikes these arm-chair criticis that the British naval and military experts know more tb.atv-tb.cy. ■• We append tho major ■ part of an informative article from the pen of Mr Porcival A. Haslam, an acknowledged British naval expert: It used to be a. favorito saying among naval writers before the war that " the frontiers of the British fleet are the coasts of tho enemy." It is one 1 of those vague and rather-high-sounding sentiments tjiat do not mean very much, or show much foundation in tho facts of history when you come to examine them sloscly; but it is just the sort of phrase that is popular among those who are for over complaining of what they call the misuse of our naval power. To most people it is quite a natural and simple thing to talk about " tho command of tho sea," for they mean by that that one side is able to do more or less as it likes on the high seas, while the other is only able to get its ships there surreptitiously, occasionally, and with the imminent and constant danegr of destruction. It will, therefore, have come as a surprise to many a-number of retired admirals, who "are dissatisfied with the policy of the British Navy, should, after flinging mud at the- Lords of tho Admiralty, have suddenly fallen out among themselves as to what they really mean by "COMMAND OF THE SEA." Ono is content to state that Britain has the command of the sea if sho can send her ships anywhere she likes in reasonable confidence of their safe arrival. Another replies that we do not command the sea if there is one chance in a thousand of a ship being sunk; while a third—not a retired admiral this time, but a professor of military history at Oxford—bluntly tells ns that we cannot claim to command tells us that we cannot claim the command of the sea so long as tho etiomv have an armed ship loft! If that were true, it would also be true that we had never commanded tho sea in the whole course of our history, and we certainly should not have any chanco of .commanding it in the course of the present war. Tft is about as reasonable an argument as it would be to say that England is not a law-abiding country so long as a single purse-snntcher exists in it.

The idea at the back of these statements is that the Navy is not doing the right thing so long as it permits the enemy to exist, no matter what the-enemy may do for his own preservation. The real purpose of the fleet, they sav, is not to "command the sea" andforbid the use of the sea to the enemy, but to destroy the enemy. It is, of course, a perfectly sound argument, and for this reason: If the enemy is destroyed he can have nothing to send to sea, and is therefore incapable either of using it himself or of preventing you from using it. In other words, the part is included in the whole, the whole in this case being the annihilation of the enemy's navy. GERMAN FLEET MADE HARMLESS. Now, there is no doubt about two things. The first is that the British Navy is burning to get at close quarters with the enemy, and the second is that with the end of this war the German fleet must be either obliterated or else so restricted that it can never again become' a menace to civilisation and the peace of the world. But there is another point which we, in our island security, are ape at times to overlook.

On one famous occasion, two years before the war, Mr Churchill vastly offended the German jingoes bv calling their navy a " luxury fleet." "R hat he meant was that the fleet was not essential to the defence of Germany or of German interests; and from that point of view—and that point alone—the mighty British Army of to-day might be called a " luxury army ' .•nV s to say ' the British Empire would still bo safe from attack and violation if the seemingly impossible should happen and we were to suffer defeat on the Continent; but if the navy were to be worsted the allied cause and the British Empire would topple like a pack of cards. And now we have to consider what is an unnecessary" risk. We'"tan start out from the position that we want to destroy the German fleet; but it does not follow mat it is a necessary condition without which we cannot win the war. A little over a hundred years ago the Navy was anxious to destroy the fleets of practical purposes we can command the sea just as well with the German battleships moored alongside their quavs and dockyard walls as we could if theV were lyon at the bottom of the sea. It'is still possible that the enemy will come out and that the U boat is apparently being got under we may regard such a "contingency as distinctly probable, since it leaves the no alternative even as a fororn hope. A fight in the open would settle many vexed questions once and for all but,-if the Germans refuse to give us ™L° P &° rt ? nit J".' ° Ug l lfc wo t0 mak * their coasts the frontiers of our'fleet and proceed to dig them out?

HELIGOLAND THICKLY MINED th ? ? altio , OUt of consideration for the time oemg, tlie German coast consists of two sides of a triangle lying behind the island of Heligoland, S and bounded on the south-west gy the island of Bprfcnm and on the north-east by (approximately) the isknd of Sylt From Borkum to Heligoland is an™ hX^M^fV 0 ? ylt ' another » ™d behind ,Ins short and easily defended line C™V Var r?° r , ts ° f Emden ' Wilhelshaven! Bremen, Cuxhaven. and Brunsbnttpl #£? is North Sea outlet of he Si Canal The whole Bight of' Heligoland is thickly mined and the chances are that the passages through the minefields are known only .to the Germans. The first movement in any " dig K i nff -oufc attpmnf on our part would be mini end in h th PUIP ° ae , We - should Presumably send m the usual mine-sweepers. The Germans would promptly send out the £ destroyers to get rid of them, and as sweepers are not built to fight, we shoufd send m our destroyers to protect them The Germans would then send light erasers to deal with out destroyers, whereupon . of coursce in g0 our light'crners. Tins game of beggar-my-neighbor would go on until the Germans sent out their battleships-not, be it remembered, out into the open, but only f ar enough through the minefields for their guns to be able to dnyo off the force detailed to protect our mme-sweepers. hj, e Ti do to counter the G crman battleships? Do we send in our own to steam to and fro along the edge of the enemys minefield, and within 50 miles of his submarine bases?

PLAN NOT FEASIBLE. It does not sound very feasible, and I do not imagine there lives a naval officer sufficiently hare-brained to plav such I game with the force upon which civili sa . tion is depending for the defeat of Germany. It is true- that on more than one occasion a powerful German cruiser force has raced across the North Sea, fired a few shells into Scarborough, Lowestoft or Yarmouth, and returned without suffering anv loss trom our .submarines or but .this tip-and-run \ sort of excursion is a vastly different business from settling down down to remove from tho enemv's coast a minefield some hundreds of suare miles in extent, subject to the constant attack of ships of all descriptions, and, in all probability, -with the enemy's submarines layine fresh mines as fast as tho old ones are trawled up. Suppose tho seemingly impossible happened, and that in due course —and after paying the due price—the minefields were removed. The next thins is to got at the German fleet and dentrov it, and the German fleet, naturally enough" does not want to be destroyed. It therefore remains within the shelter of the coastal fortifications. When you speak of a German naval baßo I hope you never into your mind's eye a picture of 4 place dumped down on. toe «dgo of ihe tea. To reach Chatham from th» s*» you • ste*» vyj iha Thzaun eMsnar; m far as

tho Norn, and from -there you have to make your way up the tortuous Medway for some miles before sighting the dockyard./ That is the German principle, with the added fact that th'e whole coast is defended by concealed guns of the most powerful type, and-with subterranean and submarines torpedo stations from which dirigible torpedoes can be launched against any ship in tho fairway. CHANNEL DOMINATED BY GUNS. Brunsbuttel and the Kiel Canal exit, for instance, lie about 30,000 vaids <J7 miles) beyond Cuxhaven up the Elbe. The guns of Cuxhaven have a, reach of 25.000 yards seaward, and tho navigable channel from that place up the river is nowhere more than 1,000 yards in width, with every inch of it dominated by heavy guns. One j has only to recall tho" Dardanelles fiasco 1 to imagine within a little what a naval j attempt to force the lower reaches, of the Elbe would be like. The Dardanelles was defendod on the German system—with heavy Krupp guns in concealed positions and' with invisible stations ashore from which torpedoes can be fired and guided toward their quarry, while drifting mines thrown into the * current can at anv moment face the attacking ships with", perhaps, the' greatest perrTof all. The Allies lost six battleships, sunk in the Dardanelles operations;, but tins is what happened on one day (March 18,' 1915) when the fleet tried to force its wav through, the details being taken from Mr Walter Roch's memorandum in the first report of the Dardanelles Commission : Irresistible, British battleship of 15,000 tons, sunk. Ocean, British battleship of 12,950 tons, sunk. Bouvet, French battleship of 11,843 tons, sunk, with nearly the whole of her crew. Inflexible, British battle-cruiser of 17,250 tons, badly damaged. Gaulois, French battleship of 11,088 tons, badly damaged, and had to be run ashore. Suffren, French battleship of 12,526 tons, badly damaged, and had to bo dockod. GAME NOT WORTH THE CANDLE.

If there is anything to be achieved by digging out the' German Hitch"Sea Fleet, the task miht be attempted. If tlte U boats were so near beating us that the destruction of their bases remained the only remedy, then it would be perfectly right and proper for the Grand Fleet to expend itself, if need bo, in an attempt to destroy those bases. Only a few' weeks ago it was urged that this was the actual position at sea, but now we know better. We are aware that we can get the better of the submarine without throwing away the Grand Fleet, whose business is not to fight submarines, but to hold the sea against the best the Germans can send to challenge us. Do not let us worry, therefore, about the strategy of the Grand Fleet, or pay too much* attention to the views of admirals, long since pensioned, who never in their lives were given the opportunity of commanding a fleet.