Can Germany Invade England?
CHAPTER I
GREAT BRITAIN'S STRATEGICAL POSITION AND SOURCES OF DEFENSIVE STRENGTH
"This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!""Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself."
Sir Walter Raleigh."Without a well-appointed and commanding Navy, the British Army and the lofty spirit of Britons would be confined to their own shores at home, and become powerless and unknown abroad ; their commerce would fall into decay and pass into other hands, and we should be once more reproached as the Britain toto ab or be exclusa, instead of as now respected in every part of the world."—Life of Admiral Lord Howe.
Set in the heart of stormy seas, often difficult to navigate, often enshrouded in mist, the United Kingdom lies athwart the principal water-routes of the world, not only those which connect Europe with Canada, the United States, and the West Indies, but equally those which bring to the Northern European States the products of Africa, South America, India, China, Australia, and Japan; and, so long as she commands the English Channel and the North Sea, it will be in her power to seal up the navies and mercantile fleets of any of her neighbours—Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Northern Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and those of Northern France.
And if Great Britain's geographical position is unique, her resources for defence surpass those of her most powerful competitors. Small in extent, she is yet one of the strongest countries in the world: strong in the industry and ingenuity of her inhabitants; in her immense coal and ironfields; in her numerous navigable rivers; in her many fine harbours; in her great fishing industry, which, whilst giving employment to thousands and food to millions of her people, provides skilled and hardy sailors for her national and mercantile marine; strong in her splendid dockyards, in which, thanks to Free Trade, she builds more quickly and cheaply than all other States, with the natural consequence that she builds not only for herself but for the world. In her private dockyards, foreign men-of-war are always on the stocks, ships which on the breaking out of hostilities would go, at once, to swell the British Navy; in her public dockyards, Dreadnoughts and cruisers, destroyers and submarines, are ever under construction or repair; and well-stocked arsenals, in positions carefully selected and fortified against attack from the sea, stand ready to equip and victual new marine monsters, or renew the equipment and supplies of old ones. And because Free-Trade Britain has become the rendezvous of the world's shipping, the distributing centre of the world's wealth, she is strong in the self-interest of all other countries, for which among them can desire the dislocation or even temporary interruption of this inflow and outflow of the world's trade? Certainly not Germany, the volume of whose yearly exchanges with her amounts to over a hundred millions sterling.
Still, since history presents many instances of Governments acting in opposition to the true interests of their subjects, and others, hardly less numerous, of individuals or classes working on the passions and fears of the bulk of the people to bring about a war by which they hope to profit, it is incumbent on Great Britain not to trust too confidently to the enlightened self-interest of other nations, and, therefore, necessary that she should possess and maintain, in the highest possible state of efficiency, the Navy by which she can take full advantage of her incomparable natural position, necessary, too, that that Navy should be scientifically distributed, i.e. in accord with the principles of strategy.
In the next chapter it will be shown that Great Britain does possess such a Navy, and that it is judiciously distributed. In order, however, that the lay reader may be able to follow the facts and figures that will be laid before him, and to understand the conclusions drawn from them, he should know in what the principles of strategy consist, and be acquainted with a concrete example of their application to naval warfare.
No better definition of strategy can be given than that contained in a single sentence of a letter written by Napoleon to his brother Joseph: "There is a great difference between operations conducted on a well-considered system from an organised centre, and proceeding at haphazard without such centre, and risking the loss of one's communications."
In these few words the great master of the science and art of war described both the true strategy and the false; and the long, fierce struggle between the English and the Dutch in the seventeenth century affords a perfect demonstration of both. So long as England conducted that war *' on a well-considered system from an organised centre " in the English Channel, thus severing Holland's communications with the outer world, including her own colonies, she paralysed the action of the Dutch Fleet, and maintained her own supremacy on the sea[1] but when, against the warnings of her Admirals, she laid up her battleships and "proceeded at haphazard, without such a centre," thus "risking the loss of her communications," to disperse her frigates to prey upon the enemy's merchant shipping,[2] she lost that supremacy with consequences disastrous and disgraceful to herself. A Dutch fleet under de Ruyter appeared in the Nore, advanced unopposed up the Thames to Gravesend, forced the boom which protected the Medway, and captured sixteen British vessels, including the famous Royal Charles, the pick of the English Fleet, and towed her to Holland.[3]
Holland owed her temporary triumph entirely to Great Britain's blunders, her final and permanent discomfiture to the latter country's natural strategic superiority; nothing therefore but a repetition of the same blunders on a magnified scale, under conditions which render them practically unthinkable, can assure to Germany so much as the chance of emerging victorious from a struggle with this country, for is not her strategical position worse than Holland's, her coast-line shorter, her harbourage more limited, her communications with the outer world longer and more open to attack ; and is not the disparity between her fleet and ours to-day far greater than the disparity between the Dutch and the English Fleets two hundred and fifty years ago?
- ↑ "The opinion of Sir Francis Drake, Mr. Hawkyns, Mr. Frobisher and others, that be men of greatest judgment [and] experience, is that [the] surest way to meet the Spanish Fleet is upon their own [coast] or in any harbour of their own, and there to defeat them."—Lord Howard of Effingham to Sir Francis Walsingham, June 14, 1588.
- ↑ "This form of strategy is termed 'commerce destroying'—a great misnomer; for it is precisely the result which is not secured by the methods adopted. . . . It is a cheap method of making war, and, to all but those who probe to the root of matters, specious; hence adherents to its doctrines are always to be found."—Gold Medal Prize Essay for 1908, " The Command of the Sea: What is it?" by Major A. B. N. Churchill, Journal Royal United Service Institution, April 1909.
Admiral Mahan also condemns "commerce destroying" in his great work, Influence of Sea Power on History. And General Bronsart von Schellendorff, in his Duties of the General Staff of the German Army, p. 552, writes: " A fleet which endeavoured to carry out its duties by destroying the enemy's commerce without considering the general situation would violate the most important principle of strategy—that the main force should be kept concentrated to deal with the most dangerous opponent."
- ↑ The Story of the British Navy, by E, Keble Chatterton, pp. 213, 214.