THE NAVAL WAR.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17946, 13 November 1918, Page 6

THE NAVAL WAR.

When Britain entered the war with her navy ready to the last shoe-string of the tiitiest midshipman, Germany’s chance of victory vanished- The Central Powers may have had an advantage in the pre-war mobilisation of their armies and the effects of forty years of preparation, but at one strifke ■ Britain’s .mighty machine of the seas moved into action, silently and smoothly, and conclusively. Never before in history lias a nation’s policy, framed and. firmly -maintained through years of peace, been proved so quickly and so absolutely right-. Britain relied on her fleet. -She mapped out her course in the event of world war or war in Europe with an eye to the great dominating influence of tiro sea-ways, and when the time came to enter tho conflict it became apparent to tho world that Britain had seen aright,, that upon her w»s to bo cast the responsibility

and the honour of-carrying, supporting and assisting the whole fabric of civilisation’s defence. It is not more than bare justice to say that without the British fleet against her, Germany would probably have succeeded in her plans. The glorious record of tho army, which has had to pay the price of bittor fighting, is not dimmed by the navy’s achievement, but it must never be forgotten that the navy’s blockade of the enemy and its protection pi tho sea communications made the army s work possible, and that t-ne British Governments, which kept , the navy readv, and refused to sacrifice: any pare of its efficiency to tho demands- for other defensive services, demands often accoinuanied by threats of invasion and disaster, made possible the victory, which has come. Britain’,! campaign against Germany was twofold. It was cohcerned with the blockade- (if the enemy:; const, cutting him off from the outer world, and the. clearing of bis ships from the 6$ as. To understand how wonderfully' this. was done, it is only necessary to go back to the first three*weeks of the war. Within a few hours of the declaration, the North Sea was an Allied lake, and a British submarine was qutside Germany’s naval bases'. Germany’s merchant fleet vanished in a few days, and her warships overseas wero rendered impotent. The omissions were few, and tliev were rectified with wonderful rapidity. After von Spec’s end at; the Falkland??, German effort'was left , to occasional raiders- They typified her campaign. -Throughout tlio war she tried to break the blockade, and probably the battle of Jutland will p-urn_ out to have been concerned in this policy. Her Mibmari.no attack on. the Allied shipping was really a- counter-blockade, but its success, considering the enormous volume of shipping at sea, was remarkably '.small, if in August,' 1917, the position looked serious- Naturally, the Aides suffered more heavily than theh* enemies who kept to their ports, acknowledging defeat. Actually, of course, the German fleet was defen ted ■ from tho outset, and it never came out of the shadow of defeat.. Jutland and the other sea actions showed that the British Navy was true to iSsi traditions, and the lesser affairs- showed that it- had not lost in enterprise and daring. Thf Dardanelles was made to appear a desperate, gamble, lint, though the fleet 'did not force tho straits, there is much evidence, from the ■nerny tide to suggest that if tho Allied control, not the Allied navies, who never feared losses, had been prepared to pay tho price in ships, Constantinople won hi have [c.'lc-.i. Of that possibility it to not ru'c v-'i'-y to say more, the Dardanelles! after all, was merely ::a episode. The fleets had far mote important duties on the ocean highways and ihe. son-lanes of the North Son and, the -Channel. These du tics I her carried our practically flaw-G.-'sh-. r.i,d in that work Britain’s navy led. dominating everything and lustily;'rig the trust: the world had in it.. Duo could, of course, repeat the story of the actions fought, but the history of the naval war cannot -be written with confidence, and the-description of events and episodes, thrilling as they were, would give a false idea of the campaign at son. It is bettor to wait until the veil ha’s been lifted, for. apart from the actual tally of ships lost, there is no very definite information available, The expansion of the British navy is known to have been enormous during the war period) for'instance, but only the very vaguest information" has been made public, the Admiralty following the policy of maintaining tho utmost secrecy regarding the fleets and their movements. To relate again the stories of the battles of Heligoland Bight, of the Horn Reef, of Coronel, of the Falkland?, would bo merely to select- certain episodes and to ignore the greater .aspects of the naval campaigns. Tho parts played by tho Allied fleets can only be surmised, except so far as the Russian navy is concerned, and they are essential to the story. The details of the war against tho submarines, again, have still to be made public. One must lie content, therefore?, with the broad fact that ‘the Allied fleets secured and retained the Commend of the seas, and that that command gave the certainty of ultimate victory. ’