"Britain Must Face Facts"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23281, 25 February 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

"Britain Must Face Facts"

THE events of the last year, and especially the last few months, have brought the 3- British people some realisation of the dangers of their situation. But S it.' is apparent, both from official I speeches and from many of thej> ; remedies unofficially proffered, that the situation is still being seen through a fog. I Our strong point as a people has heen our adaptability to circum6tances as they arise.; our weakness, % that the predicaments into, which §: "we get could usually have been .ore- | stalled through forethought. Scientific Methods This requires not only the habit of | looking ahead, but the faculty of sseing, and "registering" facts, 100 much | dishful th'.nking marks, and mars, our . attitude to foreign policy and the military conditions which underlie it. We Heed to approach these problems not | With the idea of suiting our conclusions |§ to our interests, but in the spirit and || "With the method of the scientist, whose it predominant interest is to discover the 1 Nth. pi; What are the facts which we ought pi to "register" in our minds when deterjj fining the way of tackling the probf| Urn? Three are fundamental. The first is that the population of Britain is dependent for food, its industries for 4 material, and its forces for motive s| power, on supplies from abroad. Hence p| ® navy that can assure the use of the §§ routes is vital to oijr existence. If .Tlie second fact is that Britain — || V? reason of its degree of industrialisaH ition—is the. most sensitive of any coun|f lr .v to air attack and its capital—by H Tfason of size,/geography, and combinaH Hon \vith the chief port—the most

vulnerable of any. Hence adequate protection against air attack is also vital. The third fact is that to fulfil these requirements of air and sea, defence must claim so much of the manufacturing and financial resources available , as to limit the expansion of the Army. Obviously, the Army -could not be built up to tho size attained in the last war —all the less because a modern army needs an even, higher ratio of weapon-power to man-power. Next, we must note some facts of the past that bear on the present and future. Of the three enemy navies in 1914-1918 only one, the German, was strong enough to be a serious factor. Moreover, the German navy was geographically bottled up in the North Sea, the Austrian bottled up in the Adriatic, the Turkish bottled up in the Sea of Marmora. Except on rare occasions, submarines alone were able to Klip out and interfere with our sea traffic. When Germany opened her undersea offensive of 1917 she had 111 seagoing submarines; only about one-third of them were operating at any one time. Close to Starvation Although some 3000 destroyers and auxiliary patrol craft were employed to combat them, they took so high a toll that in one month alone, April, nearly a million tons of shipping were sunk, one ship out of every four which left our ports never came home, and Britain was brought perilously close to starvation. . . To-day the J3erlin-Konie-Tokio triangle comprises three powerful navies, each of them strong in submarines as well as in destroyers and new kinds of torpedo craft which can be used against merchant shipping.

Past Neglect of Empire's Defences Responsible for Grave Situation

REASONS FOR COLOSSAL REARMAMENT

By Captain B. H. LIDDELL HART

Special correspondent of The Times and outstanding authority on military strategy

If the German navy is still enclosed in the North Sea we have to reckon with the possibility that its commerce raiders may have the use of Spanish naval bases which lie disturbingly close to our main ocean routes and th® approaches to our ports. So may the Italian navy, whose own bases lie astride the Mediterranean, abutting; on our own and tlio French communications thero. And the Japanese na\y is so placed as not only to dominate the Far East, but to be a serious distraction to our strength in European waters. Protecting Convoys The three navies have some 270 submarines built or building—proof that they do not share our complacent tendency to believe that the sting of this weapon lias been drawn. To protect our convoys it is doubtful whether we could make available even 100 escort vessels, compared with 400 in 1917. And our shipping has dei clined—from 2800 sea-going vessels at i the start of the last war to less than 1800 that a similar proportion of losses would be more dangerous to our supply, i The facts of our air defence have a , still more unfavourable reflection. They also tell a worse story of neglect to keep pace with the rise of danger. Although in the last war the bombi ing force which Germany formed for raiding England was very small, the largest raid being made by barely 40 i machines, we maintained no less than 500 guns and 400 aircraft to guard against the danger, about two-thirds of these being used to cover London. Germany's Bombers JSow Germany has a bombing force of probably 1800 machines, a large part of which is capable of being used against us. During the whole war only 74 tons of bombs were dropped on England by hostile airplanes—hardly a tenth of what might now be dropped in a single day. Now turn to the record of our Government's preparations to meet this menace. The Nazis gained power in Germany six years ago, and it soon became clear that they were intent on creating a great air force. But they started almost from zero, whereas we had a first-line strength of some 880 machines, and the French over 1600. It should have been possible to keep ahead. .By 1936 the Germans had drawn level with our total which, in spite of a belated expansion programme, was only about 1100. Even so, ours and the French together was probably more than double the German, and equal l*to the German and Italian combined.

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Very different, for the worse, was the balance presented last September, when we had to face'the possibility of war. The German first-line strength had risen to well over .'3OOO machines—double what we had in England. Our expansion programme, framed on an obviously inadequate basis, had also fallen badly behind schedule. The German output of machines was reported to be 600 a month, and ours, less than half—yet in 1918 our output reached 3500 a month! Worse still, however, was the state of unreadiness of the force wo nominally had. It was relatively weaker than before rearmament began. None of our bombing squadrons appears to have been operatively complete. Only a fraction of our bombers could have been employed. Only a fraction of their crews was fully trained. Only a fraction of our fighter squadrons was equipped with up-to-date machines; these were armed with fixed machine-guns, as in the last war, whereas a number of the German fighter squadrons were armed with cannon guns and might thereby engage our bombers at long range, while themselves out of range. „ No less depressing was the state of our defence from the ground. It was

not until late in 1935 that one Territorial anti-aircraft division was formed, for the protection of London and the South of England. Another year and more elapsed before a second was added for the North and Midlands. Toward the end of 1937 only about 60 guns and 200 searchlights were available for the first, while the state of the second was worse. And tlTe guns were -ill of the old 3-inch pattern, a last war type renovated. The production of the new types has suffered not only by the difficulty of the firms in getting machinery, but sometimes even more by inordinate delay in getting specifications and contracts through the Government machine. Few Modern Guns When the emergency came in Sep-' tember the total guns available, old and new, were less than we had had to meet the insignificant air menace of a generation earlier. There were little more than a hundred for the London area—reference to the Army List could have shown anyone, even before they were set out in the parks, that there would be only 120 even if the complement were complete.

As for tlie modern 3.7-incli guns, they did not appear to be more than a small fraction, perhaps a fifth, of the total —in contrast to the impression of rapid output given to Parliament in the spring. But even the apparent total of guns, small as it was, far exceeded the sum of reality. For many of the guns were issued from the Ordnance depots in an unusable state. If an attack had come, a large proportion—perhaps almost half of them — would not have been capable of engaging the enemy. . What has been related is but a fraction of the tale of defects and deficiencies, most of which were avoidable with any reasonable degree of forethought or efficiency. Many of them were pointed out —it is not a case of being wise after the event, but of official myopia. Moreover, the treatment of the problem also suffered because it was viewed in bits instead of as a -whole. When it became clear that we had lost our chance to ke'ep ahead of Germany in armaments, it would still have been possible to minimise the risks of our delay in producing aircraft and guns by hastening the simpler measures of protection which come under the head of air raid precautions. Adequacy here was much easier and cheaper to attain.

Yet September made manifest the backwardness of organisation and the failure to prepare underground shelter for a population which, through the delays in rearmament, was left to depend on cover in place of defences. The derelict treiVches in the parks have remained as memorials of the war that was lost without a shot.

Here are facts, of vital significance.' They cannot be hidden from trained observers abroad, and it would be folly to hide them from our own people. For the chance of redeeming the position depends on full and quick recognition of these facts and their meaning. Our Ministers may be acquainted with them. Acquaintance is not enough. They must realise their implication, as nn imputation on the way they have hitherto fulfilled the trust placed in them—as trustees for the British Commonwealth. The facts must also be brought home to our people, so that they may not merely support, but push, the measures that are needed. Misleading Fallacies' Progress is hindered by the persistence of fallacies. Some of the remedies which are being urged are not related to the facts of modern war, or to the facts of our actual situation, or to the time factor. One of the most misleading fallacies is embedded in the catchphrase that "attack is the best defence." It is only true when the conditions fit it. Yet it is being used—at a time when war is an imminent possibility—as an argument for disregarding the need of shelters and other civil precautions while trying to build a bombing force for the future that can match Germany's at the moment. More fantastic still, it is argued that the way to counter the air menace i 3 to build an army big enough to defeat the opposing army and thus occupy the hostile air bases. A simple comparison of the strength of the existing armies, and a simple calculation of the comparative populations, ought to be enough to dispel such a fallacy. It is more than time we realised that Munich has changed the strategic balance of Europe, to the grave disadvantage of France and Britain. There is no ground for thinking that they can "win" a war by arms. But it is still within their capacity, thanks to others' economic weakness and the inherent strength of defence in modern war, to show an aggressor that he cannot win it. The possibility depends on a sense of time and on a sense of reality. Our defence policy must be adjusted to the facta of the present situation.

These are by no means all adverse. There is reason to suspect serious flaws in the war machines of the "Axis," especially in their driving axles. And these are the more dangerous, to them, because of the way they are hidden.. The problem of these Powers is to stand the strain of a long war. Our problem is to prevent a war being short —to safeguard ourselves against a knock-out blow. It calls for rapid step? toward minimising the vulnerability ol Britain and its population art engaged on the inevitably slower pro cess of developing our forces. Such striking forces as we have maj act offensively, but only so far as con ditions permit. The mi 1 itary-minclo-c" advocates of "attack as the best de fence" are too apt to forget the ele mentary principle that operations should proceed from a secure base. Wo should be wise to apply it noi only in our home defence policy but ii our foreign policy. To> remember tha 1 for us a secUre 1 base includes tin security of the sea-routes should be a reminder of the importance to us ol Spain. ' ' v Another condition of a secure base is an effort to create national unity. It is foolish complacency to talk of the nation being united behind the present Government when any scientific obscr- • vation shows that it is almost evenly divided —and deeply divided where it is not apathetic. Faith Needed To close the breach we require a. clear policy, based on principles which are likely to command common, agreement, and inspire faith. We car find it in the BrfeSsh ideals of justice and freedom. A mere appeal to materia! interest or self-preservation will nevej produce a dynamic effort. Our possible adversaries have an enthusiasm that we lack. To withstand them, we need to face them with a positive faith, not a negative fatalism. Estimated expenditure for Britain's three Defence Departments in the next financial year totals £523,000,000, and ' the defence expenditure, including expenditure on civil defence, • about £580,000,000. 4 This compares with an expenditure for the three Defence Departments in 1937 of about £262,000,000, and in the current financial year of about £388,000,000. The total expenditure on defence in the first three years of the five years ending March, 1942, will amount to more than £1,173,000,000, and the expenditure in the third year will exceed that of the second year by about £175,000,000. It will exceed the portion of the current year's defence expenditure met from revenue by as-much £307,000,000.