The German Creator of the British Naval Panic.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 14, 6 April 1910, Page 2

The German Creator of the British Naval Panic.

U y r T no time in the long official career o I of the Secretary of State for the Fl Imperial German Navy, Admiral von Tirpitz, did the prodigious memory for which he is so famed display itself with a more consummate mastery of the details of every fleet in the world than when he confronted, a few months ago, the excited budget committee of the Reichstag in Berlin. The newspapers of all England were full of von Tirpitz, whose prowess as a builder of all-big-gun battleships had taken the English Prime Minister completely by surprise and occasioned the most exciting series of debates heard in the House of Commons since the accession of Mr. Asquith to power. The difficulty in which Mr. Asquith found himself, thanks to Admiral von Tirpitz, was that he did not know, as he thought he did, the rate at which German battleship con-'ruction was taking place. “We know,’’ to quote the words of Mr. Reginald McKenna, who is the spokesman of

British naval policy in the Commons,

“that the Germans have a law which, when the ships have all been completed under it, will give them a navy more powerful than any in existence. But we do not know the rate at which the provisions of this law are to be carried into execution.” Neither, it seems, did the Reichstag nor its budget committee. The

revelation in the British House of Commons that Germany was building Dreadnoughts in a sort of clandestine way amazed Germany not less than it amazed England. There was a loud invocation of Admiral von Tirpitz. Scarcely a naval expert in the world, whether he be on the staff of the London “Times” or but an occasional contributor to the Rome “Tribuna,” would dissent from the view that Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, most illustrious of living Ministers of Marine, has stamped upon tins epoch of world politics its characteristic “note” of naval power. “He is,” to quota

the London “Mail,” “the real creator of the German fleet.” Facing the members of the Reichstag committee in the uniform of his high rank, the six-foot, longbearded sailor looked very much less than CO although his age now exceeds the three-score limit. Not once did he refeE to a memorandum or an official register as he replied to query after query in the courteous, dignified and low-voiced style habitual to him. It is said of von Tirpitz by the Berlin “Vorwarts,” and most authorities agree, that he can repeat by rote the name of every battleship in ths world, giving its tonnage, its date of construction, its displacement and the details of its armament. He is intimately, acquainted with the resources of every shipbuilding yard on the face of the earth. He stunned the Reichstag committee by the ease and accuracy with, which he rattled off the details of the naval appropriations made in the past five years by all the first-class powers.

There was not a trace of the braggart in the tone of his declaration that Germany would go her own way fn the evolution of her lleets, regardless of disarmament proposals from any quarter. Rightly or wrongly, Admiral von Tirpitz is held responsible in the press of the whole of Europe for tho uncompromisingly forward constructiveness which has lifted the ileet of William 11 from insignificance to a power portentous to the mistress of the seas herself. Reacting on the naval policy of every great power, the energy, of von Tirpitz may thus be said, in tho words of the Paris “Figaro," to have inspired the great battleship competition of the nations for supremacy on the water. This old salt, in truth, has long been the scapegoat of those aspirants for universal disarmament who see in the contemporary craze for Dreadnoughts an unheeded warning of a period of barbaria

conflict yet to come. No one could bo more wedded to the all-big-gun battleship than the ranking officer of the German fleets. In manner, as in appearance, Admiral Von Tirpitz reveals the lowliness of that origin which has always made him so anomalous a personality among the men who 6way the mind of his imperial master, although uut exactly of plebeian birth, von Tirpitz sprang from a humble family in the March of Brandenburg, where his father long held an obscure local dignity. The “von’’ did not appertain to the Tirpitz name until the bearer of it had attracted attention to himself by an almost monomaniaval insistence upon the theory that imperial Germany meant lighting ships. Alfred Tirpitz at sixteen was a raw-boned, awkward rustic who had never seen the sea and whose aged father, in sheer despair of ever making much of such a lout, put him aboard one of the frigates comprising the royal navy’ of Prussia. The boy had received what we would call a high school education, although the critics of the great admiral today are fond of insinuating that he could not speak intelligible German when lie entered the service and has never succeeded in acquiring the language since. There is certainly much that seems uncouth in the Admiral’s mode of conveying his ideas, but his friends in the navy league insist that he has merely tho Iduffness and the heartiness of the old salt. The other explanation, and cue finding favour with all scions of ancient houses, is that he loathes the well bom. It took him four years to win his way' to a lieutenancy at a time when the younger sons of Prussian territorial aristocrats got all the good berths in the service. By’ the time he was twenty dive Tirpitz had formed the methodical habits which made him what, he is to-day—a punctual, regular, systematic being, ever on the alert to keep his next appointment, lie seems to have a craze for detail and exactness. He is down to breakfast every morning l>y seven, according to one account of him in. the Vienna “Nene Freie Presse,” and he expects all official reports for that day to be on his fable l>y th.it hour. Immediately after breakfast, which meal engages him just half-an hour, ho takes refuge in a huge apartment off the din-ing-room, fitted up with models of every’ sort of gun and torpedo that can be utilized aboard a battleship. Here the admiral receives the great capitalists and employers of labour who. from one end cd’ Germany to the other, are eager to participate in the profits of tho new era, of huge squadrons. They' are known to find him a keen driver of bargains. Admiral von Tirpitz exercises an almost absolute sway over the huge sums annually diverted from the imperial treasury into the coffers of the Krupps, the Blohms, the Vosses, the Srhichaus and of In r great captains of industry’ whose incessant activities make the now imperial Germany so marked a contrast with the fatherland of Goethe, Schopenhauer and the other “dreamers.” Intellectually, von Tirpitz is as the poles asunder from the philosophical, poetical and proletarian Germany' from •which the ranks of his severest critics are recruited. Many a fierce denunciation of the Admiral is given in the Socialist “VorwartV’ of Berlin and heartily does von Tirpitz echo his imperial master’s taunt that the party to which this organ devotes itself is but a crew of traitors without a country. In the political philosophy’ of von Tirpitz there never was a Germany until the creation of tho North Sea squadron of sixteen battleships, with Wilhehnhafen as a base. Me has given expression to this theory in the past with so much freedom ‘that Tmropean organs, especially those in London. quote him rather freely as the typical German Jingo. This has made the Admiral cautious of late. He may not have sai<l that the idea of the fatherlam] to the true subject of the Emperor embraces an establishment of thirtyeight battleships of tho largest size, but

4he remark is attributed to him in many foreign dailies ami is found by them to harmonize with his career.

Although he has a wife and grown up Foils. Admiral von Tirpitz is said to be so wedd»<l to the task of equipping him imperial master’s navy with the appropriate Humber of ballleGi.p-. <r»ii«r-«, torpid)

liuats and submarines that his very relaxations are nautical. He dumbfounded two young naval officers at one of his wife’s receptions by demanding sternly what they meant in neglecting their duties to dance attendance upon a frivolous woman. He frowns down all utilisation of battleships for the purely social functions attendant upon visits to a foreign port. He has set his face resolutely against the marriages of young naval officers to rich heiresses. “ You have very soft white hands for a man who aspires to command a swift cruiser,’’ he is reported to have said with his characteristic bluntness to a candidate for promotion. He refused a post of great responsibility to an officer of much distinction on the ground that the applicant was an exceedingly fine waltzer. “A man who dances so divinely,” von Tirpitz is said to have said, “ proves that he has no sea legs. Our sailors must not waltz if they want to reach the bridge. Let them learn the hornpipe.” However authentic such anecdotes may or may not be, they illustrate the popular conception of the character of von Tirpitz, whose rise from poverty to the supreme command, under William 11., of the entire Imperial naval force, is a great humiliation to the Prussian aristocracy. Time and again have the great nobles gone over the head of von, Tirpitz to their sovereign in protest against the Admiral’s hostility to the caste system of promotion in the army. Many incredible tales are told of the blunt debates between von Tirpitz and his sovereign on this sore subject. “ Get along with him as well as you can,” the Emperor is said to have remarked to one aggrieved candidate for promotion. “ That is what I must do.” In justice to the Admiral, however, it must be pointed out that he is the target for all sorts of attack not only in European newspapers generally, but especially in the Socialist and Radical dailie s of the Fatherland. He is denounced as a martinet, as the head of a system of paid spyings upon the navies of foreign Powers, and as a tool of the dynastic ambitions of the Hohenzollerns.

The secret of the unparalleled career of von Tirpitz in creating a great naval power out of a inland empire with but a fraction of coast line is said, in the London “ Daily Mail” to be his amazing capacity for initiative —his ability to impose his ideas upon inferior and superior alike. This initiative explains the force of his genius, but the keynote of his character —the facility- with which he infects others with his ideas—accounts for the German navy as the world beholds it to-day. Had there been no von Tirpitz, in the matured opinion of the London “Post,” the ambitions of William 11. for a position of might at sea would doubtless have persisted, but they must have remained as intangible as his ambition for a vast colonial empire. A certain narrowness of outlook in the mind of von Tirpitz, a propensity to what is called the fixed idea, a contempt for birth and breeding as such, an unconventionality, not to say rudeness, of manner and method—these personal traits are not attractive, but they enable their possessor to master the intricacies of the famous steel, gun and armour works of Krupp at Essen, to manage the State dockyards at Kiel and Wilhelmshafen, and to command a great squadron at battle practice in the North Sea. “ He is, perhaps,” to quote the London “ Mail ” again, “the •world’s only Minister of Naval Affairs who incorporates in himself the rare combination of practical seamanship, eminent executive talent, astute statesmanship and genius for naval construction.” He has held his present post for the unprecedently long period of over twelve years. The tendency of the Admiral to select promising young mon of humble birth al subjects for promotion in the service he controls has won him innumerable devoted adherents in every squadron. Afloat he is rather jovial, and, for a sailor, most abstemious in eating and drinking. The regular features of the large, typically Teutonic countenance, the unshrinking gaze of the steely blue eyes, and the patriarchally forked grey beard impart to von Tirpitz in uniform somewhat tho aspect of Neptune conventionalised. Ho will sit in the smoking-room of n battleship and roar a marine ditty into th.v ears of the staff, all joining in the chorus. For all that, be has the reputation of being pretty stiff. No one in the service afloat or ashore knows precisely when to expect the Admiral on one of his perpetual tours of inspection. The owner of a great establishment at which tho impulse of demands for the fleet had led to a sudden expansion was quite amazed when von Tirpitz bur-t into his

private office one morning. •’You are hiring foreigners to rivet the armour plates,” said the Admiral. “ There are

three in the yards now. Do you know you risk the loss of your contract?” WitU that the old sailor dashed out abruptly.