Britain at Bay - Spenser Wilkinson
"Who with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn."
The quality that made them both so valuable was that they knew the best
that was known and thought in regard to the art of war. This is the
quality which a nation must secure in those whom it entrusts with the
design and the conduct of the operations of its fleets and its armies.
There is a method for securing this, not by any means a new one, and not
originally, as is commonly supposed, a German invention. It consists in
providing the army and the navy with a General Staff or Department for
the study, design, and direction of operations. In such a department
Bourcet, Napoleon's master, spent the best years of his life. In such a
department Moltke was trained; over such a department he presided. Its
characteristic is that it has one function, that of the study, design,
and direction of the movements in fighting of a fleet or an army, and
that it has nothing whatever to do with the maintenance of an army, or
with its recruiting, discipline, or peace administration. Its functions
in peace are intellectual and educational, and in war it becomes the
channel of executive power. Bourcet described the head of such a
department as "the soul of an army." The British navy is without such a
department. The army has borrowed the name, but has not maintained the
speciality of function which is essential. In armies other than the
British, the Chief of the General Staff is occupied solely with tactics
and strategy, with the work of intellectual research by which Nelson
and Napoleon prepared their great achievements. His business is to be
designing campaigns, to make up his mind at what point or points, in
case of war, he will assemble his fleets or his armies for the first
move, and what the nature of that move shall be. The second move it is
impossible for him to pre-arrange because it depends upon the result of
the first. He will determine the second move when the time comes. In
order that his work should be as well done as possible, care is taken
that the Chief of the Staff shall have nothing else to do. Not he but
another officer superintends the raising, organising, and disciplining
of the forces. Thus he becomes the embodiment of a theory or system of
operations, and with that theory or system he inspires as far as
possible all the admirals or generals and other officers who will have
to carry out his designs.
In the British system the Chief of the General Staff is the principal
military member of the Board which administers the army. Accordingly,
only a fraction of his time can be given to thinking out the problems of
strategy and tactics. At the Admiralty the principal naval member of the
Board is made responsible not only for the distribution and movements of
ships--a definition which includes the whole domain of strategy and
tactics--but also for the fighting and sea-going efficiency of the
fleet, its organisation and mobilisation, a definition so wide that it
includes the greater part of the administration of the navy, especially
as the same officer is held responsible for advice on all large
questions of naval policy and maritime warfare, as well as for the
control of the naval ordnance department. Thus in each case the very
constitution of the office entrusted with the design of operations
prevents the officer at its head from concentrating himself upon that
vital duty. The result is that the intellectual life both of the army
and of the navy lags far behind that of their German rivals, and
therefore that there is every chance of both of them being beaten, not
for lack of courage or hard work, but by being opposed to an adversary
whose thinking has been better done by reason of the greater
concentration of energy devoted to it.
The first reform needed, at any rate in the navy, is a definition of the
functions of the First Sea Lord which will confine his sphere to the
distribution and movement of ships and the strategical and tactical
training of officers, so as to compel him to become the embodiment or
personification of the best possible theory or system of naval warfare.
That definition adopted and enforced, there is no need to lay down
regulations giving the strategist control over his colleagues who
administer _materiel_ and _personnel_; they will of themselves always be
anxious to hear his views as to the methods of fighting, and will be
only too glad to build ships with a view to their being used in
accordance with his design of victory. But until there is at the
Admiralty department devoted to designing victory and to nothing else,
what possible guarantee can there be that ships will be built, or the
navy administered and organised in accordance with any design likely to
lead to victory?
XIV.
THE NEEDS OF THE NAVY
The doubt which, since the Prime Minister's statement on the
introduction of the Navy Estimates, has disturbed the public mind, is
concerned almost exclusively with the number of modern battleships in
the Royal Navy. The one object which the nation ought to have in view is
victory in the next war, and the question never to be forgotten is, what
is essential to victory? While it is probably true that if the disparity
of numbers be too great a smaller fleet can hardly engage a larger one
with any prospect of success, it is possible to exaggerate the
importance both of numbers and of the size of ships.
The most decisive victories at sea which are on record were those of
Tsusima, of Trafalgar, and of the Nile. At Tsusima the numbers and size
of the Japanese Fleet were not such as, before the battle, to give
foreign observers grounds for expecting a decisive victory by the
Japanese. It was on the superior intellectual and moral qualities of the
Japanese that those who expected them to win based their hopes, and this
view was justified by the event. At the battle of Trafalgar the British
Fleet numbered twenty-seven, the Franco-Spanish Fleet numbered
thirty-three; at the battle of the Nile the numbers were equal--thirteen
on each side. These figures seem to me sufficiently to prove that
superior numbers are not in battle the indispensable condition of
victory. They certainly prove that the numerically inferior fleet may
very well win.
Writers on the art of war distinguish between tactics, the art of
winning a battle, and strategy, the art of designing and conducting the
whole of the operations which constitute a campaign, of bringing about
battles in conditions favourable to one's own side and of making the
best use of such victories as may be won for contributing to the general
purpose of the war, which is dictating peace on one's own terms.
The decision of the questions, how many fleets to send out, what is to
be the strength and composition of each of them, and what the objectives
assigned to their several commanders is a strategical decision. It is a
function of the strategist at the Board of Admiralty, but the question
how to handle any one of these fleets in the presence of the enemy so as
either to avoid or to bring about an action and so as to win the battle,
if a battle be desirable, is a question for the admiral commanding the
particular fleet.
Evidently the master art, because it dominates the whole war, is that
of strategy, and for that reason it must have a seat at the Admiralty
Board.
As is well known, a large number of naval officers have for several
years past been troubled with doubts as to the strategical competence
displayed by the Board or Boards of Admiralty since 1904. The Board of
Admiralty has also been criticised for other reasons, into some of which
it is not necessary to enter, but it is desirable to state precisely the
considerations which tend to show that important decisions made by the
Admiralty have not been based upon sound strategical principles, and
are, indeed, incompatible with them.
When four or five years ago it was decided to transfer the centre of
gravity of the navy, as represented by fleets in commission, from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic coasts of Europe, that was a sound
decision. But when the principal fleet in commission in home waters was
reduced in order to facilitate the creation of a so-called Home Fleet,
made up of a number of ships stationed at different ports, and manned
for the most part by nucleus crews, the Admiralty announced this measure
in a very remarkable circular. The change clearly involved a reduction
of the number of men at sea, and also a reduction in the number of ships
which would be immediately available under war conditions. It was
further evident that the chief result of this measure would be a
reduction of expenditure, yet the circular boldly stated that the object
of the measure was to increase the power and readiness of the navy for
instant war.
In any case, the decision announced revealed an ignorance of one of the
fundamental conditions of naval warfare, which differentiates it
completely from operations on land. A ship in commission carries on
board everything that is necessary for a fight. She can be made ready
for battle in a few minutes on the order to clear for action. No other
mobilisation is necessary for a fleet in commission, and if a war should
break out suddenly, as wars normally always do break out, whichever side
is able at once with its fleets already in commission to strike the
first blow has the incalculable advantage of the initiative.
A fleet divided between several ports and not fully manned is not a
fleet in commission; it is not ready, and its assembly as a fleet
depends on a contingency, which there is no means of guaranteeing, that
the enemy shall not be able to prevent its assembly by moving a fleet
immediately to a point at sea from which it would be able to oppose by
force the union of the constituent parts of the divided and unready
fleet.
Later official descriptions of the Home Fleet explained that it was part
of the Admiralty design that this fleet should offer the first
resistance to an enemy. The most careful examination of these
descriptions leaves no room for doubt that the idea of the Admiralty was
that one of its fleets should, in case of war, form a sort of
advance-guard to the rest of the navy. But it is a fundamental truth
that in naval war an advance-guard is absurd and impossible. In the
operations of armies, an advance-guard is both necessary and useful. Its
function is to delay the enemy's army until such time as the
commander-in-chief shall have assembled his own forces, which may be, to
some extent, scattered on the march. This delay is always possible on
land, because the troops can make use of the ground, that is, of the
positions which it affords favourable for defence, and because by means
of those positions a small force can for a long time hold in check the
advance of a very much larger one. But at sea there are no positions
except those formed by narrow straits, estuaries, and shoals, where land
and sea are more or less mixed up. The open sea is a uniform surface
offering no advantage whatever to either side. There is nothing in naval
warfare resembling the defence of a position on land, and the whole
difference between offence and defence at sea consists in the will of
one side to bring on an action and that of the other side to avoid or
postpone it.
At sea a small force which endeavours by fighting to delay the movement
of a large force exposes itself to destruction without any corresponding
gain of time. Accordingly, at sea, there is no analogy to the action of
an advance-guard, and the mere fact that such an idea should find its
way into the official accounts of the Admiralty's views regarding the
opening move of a possible war must discredit the strategy of the
Admiralty in the judgment of all who have paid any attention to the
nature of naval war.
The second requisite for victory, that is, for winning a battle against
a hostile fleet, is tactical superiority, or, as Nelson put it: "The
skill of our admirals and the activity and spirit of our officers and
seamen." The only way to obtain this is through the perpetual practice
of the admirals commanding fleets. An admiral, in order to make himself
a first-rate tactician, must not merely have deeply studied and pondered
the subject, but must spend as much time as possible in exercising, as a
whole, the fleet which he commands, in order not only by experimental
manoeuvres thoroughly to satisfy himself as to the formation and mode of
attack which will be best suited to any conceivable circumstance in
which he may find himself, but also to inculcate his ideas into his
subordinates; to inspire them with his own knowledge, and to give them
that training in working together which, in all those kinds of
activities which require large numbers of men to work together, whether
on the cricket field, at football, in an army, or in a navy, constitutes
the advantage of a practised over a scratch team.
If the practice is to make the fleet ready for war, it must be carried
out with the fleet in its war composition. All the different elements,
battleships, cruisers, torpedo craft, and the rest, must be fully
represented, otherwise the admiral would be practising in peace with a
different instrument from that with which he would need to operate in
war.
The importance of this perpetual training ought to be self-evident. It
may be well to remind the reader that it has also been historically
proved. The great advantage which the British possessed over the French
navy in the Wars of the Revolution and the Empire was that the British
fleets were always at sea, whereas the French fleets, for years
blockaded in their ports, were deficient in that practice which, in the
naval as in all other professions, makes perfect. One of the complaints
against the present Board of Admiralty is that it has not encouraged the
training and exercise of fleets as complete units.
Another point, in regard to which the recent practice of the Admiralty
is regarded with very grave doubts, not only by many naval officers,
but also by many of those who, without being naval officers, take a
serious interest in the navy, is that of naval construction. For several
years the Admiralty neglected to build torpedo craft of the quality and
in the quantity necessary for the most probable contingencies of war,
while, at the same time, large sums of money were spent in building
armoured cruisers, vessels of a fighting power so great that an admiral
would hesitate to detach them from his fleet, lest he should be
needlessly weakened on the day of battle, yet not strong enough safely
to replace the battleships in the fighting line. The result has been
that the admirals in command of fleets have for some time been anxiously
asking to be better supplied with scouts or vessels of great speed, but
not of such fighting power that they could not be spared at a distance
from the fleet even on the eve of an action. These two defects in the
shipbuilding policy of the Admiralty make it probable that for some
years past the navy has not been constructed in accord with any fully
thought-out design of operations; in other words, that the great object
"victory" has been forgotten by the supreme authority.
The doubt whether victory has been borne in mind is confirmed by what is
known of the design of the original _Dreadnought_. A battleship ought to
be constructed for battle, that is, for the purpose of destroying the
enemy's fleet, for which purpose it will never be used alone, but in
conjunction with a number of ships like itself forming the weapon of an
admiral in command. A battleship requires three qualities, in the
following order of importance:--
First, offensive power. A fleet exists in order to destroy the enemy,
but it has no prospect of performing that function if its power of
destruction is less than its enemy's. The chief weapon to-day, as in the
past, is artillery. Accordingly the first requisite of a fleet, as
regards its material qualities, those produced by the constructor, is
the capacity to pour on to the enemy's fleet a heavier rain of
projectiles than he can return.
The second quality is the power of movement. The advantage of superior
speed in a fleet--for the superior speed of an individual ship is of
little importance--is that so long as it is preserved it enables the
admiral, within limits, to accept or decline battle according to his own
judgment. This is a great strategical advantage. It may in some
conditions enable an inferior fleet to postpone an action which might be
disastrous until it has effected a junction with another fleet belonging
to its own side.
The third quality is that the ships of a fleet should be strong enough
to offer to the enemy's projectiles a sufficient resistance to make it
improbable that they can be sunk before having inflicted their fair
share of damage on the adversary.
There is always a difficulty in combining these qualities in a given
ship, because as a ship weighs the quantity of water which she
displaces, a ship of any given size has its weight given, and the
designer cannot exceed that limit of weight. He must divide it between
guns with their ammunition, engines with their coal, and armour. Every
ton given to armour diminishes the tonnage possible for guns and
engines, and, given a minimum for armour, every extra ton given to
engines and coal reduces the possible weight of guns and ammunition. In
the _Dreadnought_ a very great effort was made to obtain a considerable
extra speed over that of all other battleships. This extra speed was
defended on the ground that it would enable a fleet of _Dreadnoughts_ to
fight a battle at long range, and with a view to such battle the
_Dreadnought_ was provided only with guns of the heaviest calibre and
deprived of those guns of medium calibre with which earlier battleships
were well provided. The theories thus embodied in the new class of ships
were both of them doubtful, and even dangerous. In the first place, it
is in the highest degree injurious to the spirit and courage of the crew
to have a ship which they know will be at a disadvantage if brought into
close proximity with the enemy. Their great object ought to be to get as
near to the enemy as possible. The hypothesis that more damage will be
done by an armament exclusively of the largest guns is in the opinion
of many of the best judges likely to be refuted. There is some reason to
believe that a given tonnage, if devoted to guns of medium calibre,
would yield a very much greater total damage to an enemy's ship than if
devoted to a smaller number of guns of heavy calibre and firing much
less rapidly.
There is, moreover, a widespread belief among naval officers of the
highest repute, among whom may be named the author of the "Influence of
Sea Power upon History," than whom no one has thought more profoundly on
the subject of naval war, that it is bad economy to concentrate in a few
very large ships the power which might be more conveniently and
effectively employed if distributed in a great number of ships of more
moderate size.
Surely, so long as naval opinion is divided about the tactical and
strategical wisdom of a new type of battleship, it is rash to continue
building battleships exclusively of that type, and it would be more
reasonable to make an attempt to have naval opinion sifted and
clarified, and thus to have a secure basis for a shipbuilding programme,
than to hurry on an enormous expenditure upon what may after all prove
to have been a series of doubtful experiments.
All the questions above discussed seem to me to be more important than
that of mere numbers of ships. Numbers are, however, of great
importance in their proper place and for the proper reasons. The policy
adopted and carried out by the British navy, at any rate during the
latter half of the war against the French Empire, was based on a known
superiority of force. The British fleet set out by blockading all the
French fleets, that is, by taking stations near to the great French
harbours and there observing those harbours, so that no French fleet
should escape without being attacked. If this is to be the policy of the
British navy in future it will require a preponderance of force of every
kind over that of the enemy, and that preponderant force will have to be
fully employed from the very first day of the war. In other words, it
must be kept in commission during peace. But, in addition, it is always
desirable to have a reserve of strength to meet the possibility that the
opening of a war or one of its early subsequent stages may bring into
action some additional unexpected adversary. There are thus two reasons
that make for a fleet of great numerical strength. The first, that only
great superiority renders possible the strategy known as blockade, or,
as I have ventured to call it, of "shadowing" the whole of the enemy's
forces. The second, that only great numerical strength renders it
possible to provide a reserve against unexpected contingencies.
XV.
ENGLAND'S MILITARY PROBLEM
After the close of the South African war, two Royal Commissions were
appointed. One of them, known as the War Commission, was in a general
way to inquire into and report upon the lessons of the war. This mission
it could fulfil only very imperfectly, because its members felt
precluded from discussing the policy in which the war had its origin and
incapable of reviewing the military conduct of the operations. This was
very like reviewing the play of "Hamlet" without reference to the
characters and actions either of Hamlet or of the King, for the
mainsprings which determine the course, character, and issue of any war
are the policy out of which it arises and the conduct of the military
operations. The main fact which impressed itself on the members of the
War Commission was that the forces employed on the British side had been
very much larger than had been expected at the beginning of the war, and
the moral which they drew was contained in the one sentence of their
report which has remained in the public mind, to the effect that the
Government ought to make provision for the expansion of the army beyond
the limit of the regular forces of the Crown.
About the same time another Commission, under the chairmanship of the
Duke of Norfolk, was appointed to inquire and report whether any, and,
if any, what changes were required in order to secure that the Militia
and Volunteer forces should be maintained in a condition of military
efficiency and at an adequate strength. The Norfolk Commission
recommended certain changes which it thought would lead to a great
improvement in the efficiency of both forces, while permitting them to
maintain the requisite numerical strength. With regard to the Volunteer
force, the report said:--
"The governing condition is that the Volunteer, whether an officer,
non-commissioned officer, or private, earns his own living, and that if
demands are made upon him which are inconsistent with his doing so he
must cease to be a Volunteer. No regulations can be carried out which
are incompatible with the civil employment of the Volunteers, who are
for the most part in permanent situations. Moreover, whatever may be the
goodwill and patriotism of employers, they cannot allow the Volunteers
they may employ more than a certain period of absence. Their power to
permit their workmen to attend camp or other exercises is controlled by
the competition which exists in their trade. Those who permit Volunteers
in their service to take holidays longer than are customary in their
trade and district, are making in the public interest a sacrifice which
some of them think excessive."
The report further laid stress on the cardinal principle that no
Volunteer, whatever his rank, should be put to expense on account of his
service. Subject to this governing condition and to this cardinal
principle, the Commission made recommendations from which it expected a
marked improvement and the gradual attainment of a standard much in
advance of anything which until then had been reached.
Most of these recommendations have been adopted, with modifications, in
the arrangements which have since been made for the Volunteers under the
new name "The Territorial Force."
The Norfolk Commission felt no great confidence in the instructions
given it by the Government on the subject of the standard of efficiency
and of numerical strength. Accordingly the Commission added to its
report the statement:--
"We cannot assert that, even if the measures
recommended were fully carried out, these forces
would be equal to the task of defeating a modern
continental army in the United Kingdom."
The Commission's chief doubt was whether, under the conditions
inseparable at any rate from the volunteer system, any scheme of
training would give to forces officered largely by men who are not
professional soldiers the cohesion of armies that exact a progressive
two-years' course from their soldiers and rely, except for expanding the
subaltern ranks on mobilisation, upon professional leaders. The
Commission then considered "Measures which may provide a Home Defence
Army equal to the task of defeating an invader." They were unable to
recommend the adoption of the Swiss system, partly because the initial
training was not, in their judgment, sufficient for the purpose, and
partly because they held that the modern method of extending the
training to all classes, while shortening its duration, involves the
employment of instructors of the highest possible qualifications. The
Commission concluded by reporting that a Home Defence Army capable, in
the absence of the whole or the greater portion of the regular forces,
of protecting this country against invasion can be raised and maintained
only on the principle that it is the duty of every citizen of military
age and sound physique to be trained for the national defence and to
take part in it should emergency arise.