BRITISH NAVAL IDEALS.

Northern Advocate, 7 May 1914, Page 9

BRITISH NAVAL IDEALS.

COMPARED WITH FRENCH

The current issue of the French naval paper Le Yacht contains a remarkable and interesting article on the British Navy as it appears to French eyes. The article is apropos the recent visit of the Home Fleet to France. It is not quite clear whether British Dreadnoughts gave the French Navy occasion to "think furiously," the article being mainly illustrative of the incompatibility of ideals in the tw 0 navies.: This is a point worthy of attenton on the part of those who are apt to* rely upon the notion that in case of war French ships would be fighting side by side vith British. Le Yacht's article is of a most friendly nature; but it certain1/ holds out no indications of succesful co-operatiin between British and French ships. The thing which first struck' the French Navy was the "youthfulness" of British naval officers. Attention is drawn .to the fact that a British rear-admiral is rather younger than a French senior lieutenant, and that in the matter of age the British commander and a French ■ sub-lieutenant are about equal. The construction of* English ships is drawn attention to as a general sacri r fice of; everything to the brutally practical, much comfort being deliberately sacrificed in order'to obtain the minimum of vulnerability and exposed target. Whereas in France attention is paid to symmetry, the British designer cares for nothing except solidarity. The size of engine and boiler rooms is commented on as a danger—the sacrifice of protection to the prevailing note of practical simplicity. British gun turrets appear to have impressed the French immensely owing to their "brutal simplicity," whereby the maximum rate of fire is obtained. British coaling arrangements for taking in the maximum of coal in the minimum of time strike the French as, "barbarous"— this with reference to an.-idea.that the I casualty list in coaling competitions jis always heavy. In.cinclusion, em- [ phasis is laid on the fact that the dom|in ant note of British design in the Eritish Navy is the "offensive." To this everything is ascrificed. Britain strikes" the French crtic as bothering | very-little about wounds and damages in the crew or to the,ship. Nothing is ."safeguarded" as in the French Navy.* The,whole British Navy idea of defence is to hit the enemy so.hard that he is unable-to hit back. It.is satisfactory to find that to foreign eyes British personnel is still animated tby the ideals of Drake and Nelson, that the main business of war is ti "kill the enemy," and that to adopt the defensive is the'surest way to court disaster.