Britain at Bay

IX

NEW CONDITIONS

It has been seen how, as a result of the struggle with Napoleon, England, from 1805 onwards, was the only sea power remaining in Europe, and indeed, with the exception of the United States, the only sea power in the world. One of the results was that she had for many years the monopoly of the whole ocean, not merely for the purposes of war, but also for the purposes of trade. The British mercantile marine continued through the greater part of the nineteenth century to increase its preponderance over all others, and this remarkable, and probably quite exceptional, growth was greatly favoured by the Civil War in America, during which the mercantile marine of the United States received from the action of the Confederate cruisers a damage from which it has never recovered.

In the years immediately following 1805, Great Britain in self-defence, or as a means of continuing the war against France, in regard to which her resources for operations on land were limited, had recourse to the operations of blockade, by which the sea was closed, as far as possible, to enemy merchantmen while Great Britain prohibited neutral ships from carrying enemy goods. Napoleon replied by the attempt to exclude British goods from the Continent altogether, and indeed the pressure produced by Great Britain's blockades compelled Napoleon further to extend his domination on the Continent. Thus the other continental States found themselves between the devil and the deep sea. They had to submit to the domination of Napoleon on land and to the complete ascendency of Great Britain on the waters which surrounded their coasts. The British claims to supremacy at sea were unanimously resented by all the continental States, which all suffered from them, but in all cases the national resentment against French invasion or French occupation of territory was greater than the resentment against the invisible pressure exercised by the British navy. In the wars of liberation, though Great Britain was the welcome ally of all the States that were fighting against France, the pressure of British sea power was none the less disagreeable and, in the years of peace which followed, the British monopoly of sea power, of sea-carriage, of manufacturing industry, and of international trade were equally disliked by almost all the nations of Europe. Protective duties were regarded as the means of fostering national industries and of sheltering them against the overpowering competition of British manufactures. The British claim to the dominion of the sea was regarded as unfounded in right, and was in principle as strongly denounced as had been the territorial domination of France. The mistress of the seas was regarded as a tyrant, whom it would be desirable, if it were possible, to depose, and there were many who thought that as the result of a conflict in which the final success had been gained by the co-operation of a number of States acting together, the gains of Great Britain which, as time went on, were seen to be growing into a world-wide empire, had been out of proportion to the services she had rendered to the common cause.

Meantime during the century which has elapsed since the last great war, there has been a complete change in the conditions of intercourse between nations at sea and of maritime warfare. It has come about gradually, almost imperceptibly, so that it could hardly be appreciated before the close of the nineteenth century. But it is vital to Great Britain that her people should understand the nature of the transformation.

The first thing to be observed is that the British monopoly of shipping and of oversea trade has disappeared. Great Britain still has by far the largest mercantile marine and by far the greatest share in the world's sea traffic, but she no longer stands alone. Germany, the United States, France, Norway, Italy, and Japan all have great fleets of merchant ships and do an enormous, some of them a rapidly increasing, seaborne trade. A large number of the principal States import the raw material of manufacture and carry on import and export on a large scale. The railway system connects all the great manufacturing centres, even those which lie far inland, with the great ports to and from which the lines of steamers ply. The industrial life of every nation is more than ever dependent upon its communications with and by the sea, and every nation has become more sensitive than ever to any disturbance of its maritime trade. The preponderance of the British navy is therefore a subject of anxiety in every State which regards as possible a conflict of its own interests with those of Great Britain. This is one of the reasons why continental States have during the last quarter of a century been disposed to increase their fleets and their naval expenditure.

In the Declaration of Paris, renewed and extended by the Declaration of London, the maritime States have agreed that in any future war enemy goods in a neutral ship are to be safe from capture unless the ship is running a blockade, which must be effective. Whether Great Britain was well or ill advised in accepting this rule is a question which it is now useless to discuss, for the decision cannot be recalled, and the rule must be regarded as established beyond controversy. Its effect is greatly to diminish the pressure which a victorious navy can bring to bear upon a hostile State. It deprives Great Britain of one of the most potent weapons which she employed in the last great war. To-day it would be impracticable even for a victorious navy to cut off a continental State from seaborne traffic. The ports of that State might be blockaded and its merchant ships would be liable to capture, but the victorious navy could not interfere with the traffic carried by neutral ships to neutral ports. Accordingly, Great Britain could not now, even in the event of naval victory being hers, exercise upon an enemy the pressure which she formerly exercised through the medium of the neutral States. Any continental State, even if its coasts were effectively blockaded, could still, with increased difficulty, obtain supplies both of raw material and of food by the land routes through the territory of its neutral neighbours. But Great Britain herself, as an insular State, would not, in case of naval defeat, have this advantage. A decisive defeat of the British navy might be followed by an attempt on the part of the enemy to blockade the coasts of Great Britain, though that would no doubt be difficult, for a very large force would be required to maintain an effective blockade of the whole coast-line.

It is conceivable that an enemy might attempt in spite of the Declaration of London to treat as contraband food destined for the civil population and this course ought to be anticipated, but in the military weakness of Great Britain an enemy whose navy had gained the upper hand would almost certainly prefer to undertake the speedier process of bringing the war to an end by landing an army in Great Britain. A landing on a coast so extensive as that of this island can with difficulty be prevented by forces on land, because troops cannot be moved as quickly as ships.

The war in the Far East has shown how strong such an army might be, and how great a military effort would be needed to crush it. The proper way to render an island secure, is by a navy strong enough to obtain in war the control of the surrounding sea, and a navy unable to perform that function cannot be regarded as a guarantee of security.

The immediate effects of naval victory can hardly ever again be so far-reaching as they were a century ago in the epoch of masts and sails. At that time there were no foreign navies, except in European waters, and in the Atlantic waters of the United States. When, therefore, the British navy had crushed its European adversaries, its ships could act without serious opposition upon any sea and any coast in the world. To-day, the radius of action of a victorious fleet is restricted by the necessity of a supply of coal, and therefore by the secure possession of coaling-stations at suitable intervals along any route by which the fleet proposes to move, or by the goodwill of neutrals in permitting it to coal at their depots. To-day, moreover, there are navies established even in distant seas. In the Pacific, for example, are the fleets of Japan and of the United States, and these, in their home waters, will probably be too strong to be opposed by European navies acting at a vast distance from their bases.

It seems likely, therefore, that neither Great Britain nor any other State will in future enjoy that monopoly of sea power which was granted to Great Britain by the circumstances of her victories in the last great war. What I have called the great prize has in fact ceased to exist, and even if an adversary were to challenge the British navy, the reward of his success would not be a naval supremacy of anything like the kind or extent which peculiar conditions made it possible for Great Britain to enjoy during the nineteenth century. It would be a supremacy limited and reduced by the existence of the new navies that have sprung up.

From these considerations a very important conclusion must be drawn. In the first place, enough victory at sea is in case of war as indispensable to Great Britain as ever, for it remains the fundamental condition of her security, yet its results can hardly in future be as great as they were in the past, and in particular it may perhaps not again enable her to exert upon continental States the same effective pressure which it formerly rendered possible.

In order, therefore, to bring pressure upon a continental adversary, Great Britain is more than ever in need of the co-operation of a continental ally. A navy alone cannot produce the effect which it once did upon the course of a land war, and its success will not suffice to give confidence to the ally. Nothing but an army able to take its part in a continental struggle will, in modern conditions, suffice to make Great Britain the effective ally of a continental State, and in the absence of such an army Great Britain will continue to be, as she is to-day, without continental allies.

A second conclusion is that our people, while straining every nerve in peace to ensure to their navy the best chances of victory in war, must carefully avoid the conception of a dominion of the sea, although, in fact, such a dominion actually existed during a great part of the nineteenth century. The new conditions which have grown up during the past thirty years have made this ideal as much a thing of the past as the medifval conception of a Roman Empire in Europe to whose titular head all kings were subordinate.

X

DYNAMICS—THE QUESTION OF MIGHT

If there is a chance of a conflict in which Great Britain is to be engaged, her people must take thought in time how they may have on their side both right and might. It is hard to see how otherwise they can expect the contest to be decided in their favour.

As I have said before, in the quarrel you must be in the right and in the fight you must win. The quarrel is the domain of policy, the fight that of strategy or dynamics. Policy and strategy are in reality inextricably interwoven one with another, for right and might resemble, more than is commonly supposed, two aspects of the same thing. But it is convenient in the attempt to understand any complicated subject to examine its aspects separately.

I propose, therefore, in considering the present situation of Great Britain and her relations to the rest of the world, to treat first of the question of force, to assume that a quarrel may arise, and to ascertain what are the conditions in which Great Britain can expect to win, and then to enter into the question of right, in order to find out what light can be thrown upon the necessary aims and methods of British policy by the conclusions which will have been reached as to the use of force.

The nationalisation of States, which is the fundamental fact of modern history, affects both policy and strategy. If the State is a nation, the population associated as one body, then the force which it can use in case of conflict represents the sum of the energies of the whole population, and this force cannot and will not be used except as the expression of the will of the whole population. The policy of such a State means its collective will, the consciousness of its whole population of a purpose, mission, or duty which it must fulfil, with which it is identified, and which, therefore, it cannot abandon. Only in case this national purpose meets with resistance will a people organised as a State enter into a quarrel, and if such a quarrel has to be fought out the nation's resources will be expended upon it without limitation.

The chief fact in regard to the present condition of Europe appears to be the very great excess in the military strength of Germany over that of any other Power. It is due in part to the large population of the German Empire, and in part to the splendid national organisation which has been given to it. It cannot be asserted either that Germany was not entitled to become united, or that she was not entitled to organise herself as efficiently as possible both for peace and for war. But the result is that Germany has a preponderance as great if not greater than that of Spain in the time of Philip II., or of France either under Louis XIV. or under Napoleon. Every nation, no doubt, has a right to make itself as strong as it can, and to exercise as much influence as it can on the affairs of the world. To do these things is the mission and business of a nation. But the question arises, what are the limits to the power of a single nation? The answer appears to be that the only limits are those set by the power of other nations. This is the theory of the balance of power of which the object is to preserve to Europe its character of a community of independent States rather than that of a single empire in which one State predominates.

Without attributing to Germany any wrong purpose or any design of injustice it must be evident that her very great strength must give her in case of dispute, always possible between independent States, a corresponding advantage against any other Power whose views or whose intentions should not coincide with hers. It is the obvious possibility of such dispute that makes it incumbent upon Great Britain to prepare herself in case of disagreement to enter into a discussion with Germany upon equal terms.

Only upon such preparation can Great Britain base the hope either of averting a quarrel with Germany, or in case a quarrel should arise and cannot be made up by mutual agreement, of settling it by the arbitrament of war upon terms accordant with the British conception of right. Great Britain therefore must give herself a national organisation for war and must make preparation for war the nation's first business until a reasonable security has been attained.

The question is, what weapons are now available for Great Britain in case of a disagreement with Germany leading to conflict? In the old wars, as we have seen, she had three modes of action. She used her navy to obtain control of the sea-ways, and then she used that control partly to destroy the sea-borne trade of her enemies, and partly to send armies across the sea to attack her enemies' armies. By the combination of these three modes of operation she was strong enough to give valuable help to other Powers, and therefore she had allies whose assistance was as useful to her as hers to them. To-day, as we have seen, the same conditions no longer exist. The British navy may indeed hope to obtain control of the sea-ways, but the law of maritime war, as it has been settled by the Declarations of Paris and of London, makes it impracticable for Great Britain to use a naval victory, even if she wins it, in such a way as to be able commercially to throttle a hostile Power, while the British military forces available for employment on the Continent are so small as hardly to count in the balance. The result is that Great Britain's power of action against a possible enemy is greatly reduced, partly in consequence of changes in the laws of war, but perhaps still more in consequence of the fact that while other Powers are organised for war as nations, England in regard to war is still in the condition of the eighteenth century, relying upon a small standing army, a purely professional navy, and a large half-trained force, called Territorial, neither ready for war nor available outside the United Kingdom.

There is a school of politicians who imagine that Great Britain's weakness can be supplemented from other parts of the British Empire. That is an idea which ought not to be received without the most careful examination and in my judgment must, except within narrow limits, be rejected.

In a war between Great Britain and a continental State or combination the assistance which Great Britain could possibly receive from the King's dominions beyond the sea is necessarily limited. Such a war must in the first place be a naval contest, towards which the most that the colonies can contribute consists in such additions to Great Britain's naval strength as they may have given during the preceding period of peace. What taken together they may do in this way would no doubt make an appreciable difference in the balance of forces between the two contending navies; but in the actual struggle the colonies would be little more than spectators, except in so far as their ports would offer a certain number of secure bases for the cruisers upon which Great Britain must rely for the protection of her sea-borne trade. Even if all the colonies possessed first-rate armies, the help which those armies could give would not be equal to that obtainable from a single European ally. For a war against a European adversary Great Britain must rely upon her own resources, and upon such assistance as she might obtain if it were felt by other Powers on the Continent not only that the cause in which she was fighting was vital to them and therefore called for their co-operation, but also that in the struggle Great Britain's assistance would be likely to turn the scale in their favour.

Can we expect that history will repeat itself, and that once more in case of conflict Great Britain will have the assistance of continental allies? That depends chiefly on their faith in her power to help them. One condition of such an alliance undoubtedly exists—the desire of other nations for it. The predominance of Germany on the Continent rests like a nightmare upon more than one of the other States. It is increased by the alliance of Austria, another great military empire—an empire, moreover, not without a fine naval tradition, and, as is proved by the recent announcement of the intention of the Austrian Government to build four "Dreadnoughts," resolved to revive that tradition.

Against the combination of Germany and Austria, Russia, which has hardly begun to recover from the prostration of her defeat by Japan, is helpless; while France, with a population much smaller than that of Germany, can hardly look forward to a renewal single-handed of the struggle which ended for her so disastrously forty years ago. The position of Italy is more doubtful, for the sympathies of her people are not attracted by Austria; they look with anxiety upon the Austrian policy of expansion towards the Aegean and along the shore of the Adriatic. The estrangement from France which followed upon the French occupation of Tunis appears to have passed away, and it seems possible that if there were a chance of success Italy might be glad to emancipate herself from German and Austrian influence. But even if Germany's policy were such that Russia, France, and Italy were each and all of them desirous to oppose it, and to assert a will and a policy of their own distinct from that of the German Government, it is very doubtful whether their strength is sufficient to justify them in an armed conflict, especially as their hypothetical adversaries have a central position with all its advantages. From a military point of view the strength of the central position consists in the power which it gives to its holder to keep one opponent in check with a part of his forces while he throws the bulk of them into a decisive blow against another.

This is the situation of to-day on the Continent of Europe. It cannot be changed unless there is thrown into the scale of the possible opponents of German policy a weight or a force that would restore the equality of the two parties. The British navy, however perfect it may be assumed to be, does not in itself constitute such a force. Nor could the British army on its present footing restore the balance. A small standing army able to give its allies assistance, officially estimated at a strength of 160,000 men, will not suffice to turn the scale in a conflict in which the troops available for each of the great Powers are counted no longer by the hundred thousand but by the million. But if Great Britain were so organised that she could utilise for the purpose of war the whole of her national resources, if she had in addition to the navy indispensable for her security an army equal in efficiency to the best that can be found in Europe and in numbers to that maintained by Italy, which though the fifth Power on the Continent is most nearly her equal in territory and population, the equilibrium could be restored, and either the peace of Europe would be maintained, or in case of fresh conflict there would be a reasonable prospect of the recurrence of what has happened in the past, the maintenance, against a threatened domination, of the independence of the European States.

The position here set forth is grave enough to demand the close attention of the British nation, for it means that England might at any time be called upon to enter into a contest, likely enough to take the form of a struggle for existence, against the greatest military empire in the world, supported by another military empire which is itself in the front rank of great Powers, while the other European States would be looking on comparatively helpless.

But this is by no means a full statement of the case. The other Powers might not find it possible to maintain an attitude of neutrality. It is much more probable that they would have to choose between one side and the other; and that if they do not consider Great Britain strong enough to help them they may find it their interest, and indeed may be compelled, to take the side of Great Britain's adversaries. In that case Great Britain would have to carry on a struggle for existence against the combined forces of the Continent.