INCIDENTS AND PRESENT DAY ASPECTS OF NAVAL STRATEGY
By Captain Frank H. Schofield, U.S. Navy
In the winter of 1915 while in command of the cruiser Chester, I was sent to the West Coast of Africa to lend moral support to the Liberian Government on the occasion of a widespread native revolt. While steaming down the coast one pleasant day, looking for a corrugated iron roof to show through the palm trees and tell me I was off the port of my destination, I was surprised to encounter a long line of native dugout canoes reaching from the shore seaward for miles—each canoe containing two natives and two rifles. Nearby were other canoes peacefully fishing or proceeding to and from the fishing grounds. The shore end of the line was opposite a native village that was at war with its neighbors. The canoes, including those that were fishing, were manned by men of that village tribe. Their enemies were on both sides of them but the jungle was too impenetrable to admit of their joining forces except by way of the sea. One of the enemy tribes was very dependent on fish for food and the one on the other side had to get part of its rice by friendly barter up the coast. Neither of these tribes were very good seamen and knew none too much about canoe building. One of them had recently migrated from the interior to the coast. So when the war broke out the seagoing tribe stretched its line of canoes seaward and whenever a venturesome enemy fisherman put to sea, they took him, and whenever an equally venturesome rice trader came out, they took him, too. Then some days later the canoes of these unfortunates would drift on their home shores, fearfully decorated with the headless trunks of their late occupants. So when the Chester came to the canoe line it was lolling lazily in the sun with little to do, and security reigned on the fishing grounds and in the village on the shore while the tribe got ready to deliver the coup de grace to their enemies.
It struck me at the time with amazing force that there before me lay all the aims and accomplishments of sea strategy and tactics and sea power in war.
To fight and to overcome in order:
To control the use of the sea for one's self.
To deny it to one's enemies.
To bring the pressure of want on the enemy people.
To mobilize land forces while the sea forces held the enemy in check.
And finally by combined land and sea action to bring the enemy to terms.
No books on naval strategy had ever reached that savage tribe, but the stern fight for existence made the truth unfold before them. They survived. Their enemies became their vassals.
Naval strategy is not something separate and distinct from national life, but it is a part of a whole that we may call national strategy, a whole that is associated with our everyday existence, both in peace and in war, a whole that guards and gives security to our future, through security from invasion, security in travel and trade, security against a lowered standard of living, and in the freedom to deal on equal terms with all the world.
The fundamental idea of naval strategy is that nothing is of any importance either in peace or in war except as it influences events on land. All the fleets in the world may meet in battle and destroy each other and the result will be nothing if that battle does not change what was happening or was to happen on land. In other words, the Navy is important solely because it does influence events on land. Naval strategy always has an objective related to land operations, be they the operations of peace or of war. Whatever the effect of naval strategy may be it is the effect on those who live on or operate upon the land that counts. Naval strategy deals with sea methods but finds its reward in land successes. Too often the casual thinker says it is the business of fleets to fight each other and then assumes he has said it all. Back of every sea battle there is a definite object and that object bears a direct relationship to land warfare. Take the battle of the Jutland. Why should either side fight? Germany desired access to the sea that she might do two things—starve England out, and open the road for supplies to her own ports. Both were land objectives. So, too, England thought of the land—her distant possessions, her armies in France and the Near East, her vast populations dependent on food that came to them from over seas. The battle was a sea method—its object a final success on land. The Germans required a smashing victory to gain their object. They failed to get it. In terms of the savage tribe and its navy of canoes, the allied navies wouldn't let the Germans fish or go for rice on the sea, and so they had at last to yield.
The spirit of the age is competition at home and abroad. Modern industrialism and modern trade conditions are driving governments irresistibly toward a keener competition than ever before. Propaganda, commercial rate-wars, tariffs, concessions, spheres of interest, mandates, protectorates, and annexations are phases of international competition. Back of all these phases lies peace strategy—both naval and military, because war is the ultimate form of competition.
I shall make no effort to demonstrate to you the necessity for an American navy second to none. That idea is accepted in principle by everyone, but has not yet been realized. There is always opposition to it both at home and abroad; at home for reasons of economy, abroad because a weak American navy is more consistent with the national aims of some of the great powers. You are all familiar with the yearly efforts of the Navy to get appropriations for new ships. That is a part of its peace strategy to build a navy second to none. But the navy has taken other steps than that to help toward its aim of equality with the greatest.
During the Armistice and subsequent peace negotiations in Paris the question arose as to what should be done with the German Fleet. The American Naval Advisory Staff was firm throughout the negotiations for the destruction of that fleet. All other delegations were equally firm for a distribution of that fleet. Americans in very high authority spoke slightingly of the naval idea that the German ships should be sunk instead of parceled out, but there was a sound reason for the American naval stand. The plan of the European negotiators was for the German Fleet to be added to European navies, and except for a few light craft, none of it to the American Navy. In other words, German and Austrian battleships, submarines and cruisers, were still to float in navies that might some day point hostile guns at America. American naval officers could not see the logic of that arrangement, nor could they see the need for loading an already overburdened world with the support of the great German Navy. Sound American naval strategy demanded that we should not be weakened relatively by victory. There was but one way to accomplish that end—sink the German Fleet. The Germans did us that great service before the negotiators had come to a final decision, and at a time when it seemed as if the generosity of our representatives would weaken our navy immeasurably. Had the plan of the Allies been carried out Great Britain would have come out of the Peace Conference with about fifty-one dreadnaughts, the United States with her own and no more, seventeen. To defeat that plan was equivalent to building probably a dozen capital ships for our navy. Our naval representatives were pushing the principles of peace strategy for a definite end, the preservation of our relative naval strength, a step toward a navy second to none.
The question of relative strengths came up again when it became known that there was to be a Conference for the Limitation of Armaments. Obviously here was an opportunity to gain or to lose much in relative strength. Great Britain looked across the sea and saw that the completion of our building program would wrest the mastery of the sea from her hands. Had I been a British naval strategist, my aim at the Conference would have been:
1st. To do away with the American battleship and battle cruiser building programs, because therein lay America's naval superiority.
2nd. To preserve British superiority in cruisers because with capital ships limited in numbers, the cruiser became a very important item of naval strength, and cruiser superiority meant naval superiority.
These would have been the essentials of my strategy as a British officer.
Had I been a Japanese naval strategist, I would have done all that I could do to keep America from fortifying further her naval positions in the Philippines and Guam, and of operating her naval forces there. I would have tried to consolidate and strengthen Japan's hold in the Far East through making it difficult for America to interfere. I would have seen that American weakness in the Far East was Japan's strength, and would have fought it out on this line.
These are strictly the views of a materialist; they do not deal in the loftier motives of idealism. I am firmly convinced that they represent the views of some of those who negotiated with America around the council table.
America on the other hand was willing to make sacrifices to promote a better feeling in the world—to make the greatest gesture for good will ever made by a nation.
The General Board was called upon to prepare recommendations. It worked nearly six months continuously on this and collateral problems that were before the Conference. In all of its studies and its recommendations it sought to guard our naval position because it believed that this was part and parcel of our national well-being. Equality in naval strength with Great Britain and a certain superiority over the naval strength of Japan were fundamentals of our proposal. The second-to-none ratio was adopted, but we were left with our older instead of the new ships. We had hoped that there would be a limitation of tonnage in all essential classes of fighting ships. That hope was wrecked on "submarine" rocks, and the door left open for competition in very expensive types of ships—submarines, destroyers and cruisers. We regarded the failure to limit all classes of fighting ships as a misfortune, because our chief naval competitors are more free to carry out their naval programs than we shall ever be. In the years to come you are going to hear much about cruisers and submarines if the construction of these types is not limited. Today Japan is spending more money on cruisers and submarines than all the other powers party to the treaty. Its officials explain that labor and economic conditions make this action necessary, but the naval officer looks to results; and he sees a great strengthening of the Japanese Navy, and the dropping behind of America in relative strength.
You've seen something in the press about the necessity for us to modernize our battleships. Here is the reason for that demand.
When the Washington Conference assembled there were two general bases of limitation of armament possible: the British fleet, built and building, and the American fleet, built and building. As the British had built no capital ships during the war to replace older ships, they were under the necessity during the war of keeping their ships, already built, up-to-date in order to have them ready for instant action. Their turret guns had a greater range than our older guns. They built large extensions to the under-water hulls of their ships as defense against torpedoes; and they increased their protection against aircraft bombs, and against gunfire, by thickening their deck armor. We did none of this work on our older ships because we were building all these improvements into our new ships, eighteen in number, and we expected that these ships would soon replace the old ones. So here was a problem in peace strategy, to make our older vessels as good as those abroad. There is but one way to solve that problem. Increase the range of our guns and increase the protection of our ships against torpedoes and aircraft.
It is very reasonable to ask why our guns were not given long enough range in the first place. The answer is that when the earlier ships were built no one thought of battle ranges beyond ten miles. But the use of airplanes has made it possible for us to open battle at twenty miles range, if the guns can be elevated enough to fire that far. It is impossible to see from any ship how shots are falling, if they fall more than ten miles away. You have to get high up in the air to see beyond that range. Then, after you are up where you can see, you must be able to talk back to the firing ship and tell it how to aim—higher or lower, right or left, and how much. The airplane, high in the air, equipped with radio, can see where the shots fall and can direct the ship's fire with accuracy. Two years ago in the plotting room of the battleship Texas, well below the water line of that vessel, I sent messages to a spotting plane 6,000 feet up and ten miles away and had replies back and written on a blackboard before my eyes, in an average of seven seconds of time. This result required careful, simple code work and strict training, both within and without the ship. It showed that a new naval battle area was opening up, the area between ten and seventeen miles from the firing fleet, the area where aircraft would control the fire. That is why we want to increase the angle of elevation of our turret guns. Today, if our battle fleet met the British treaty fleet in action, eighteen British ships could begin firing at and hitting our fleet at ranges where less than one-third of our ships could reply effectively until the range had been reduced several miles. We should ordinarily expect this closing of the range to take not less than half an hour. For half an hour the enemy would have a three to one advantage and if he chose might continue that advantage indefinitely. The Forts of Liege and Namur, the German squadron at Falkland Islands, and the British squadron at Coronel went down before the fire of guns that outranged them. A navy second to none must be able to fire the first shot as well as the last one.
The war caused large numbers of destroyers and submarines to be built. The treaty for limitation of naval armament did not reduce the number of these, so now capital ships find themselves, the world over, confronted by the greatest torpedo menace that has ever existed. There may be as many as sixty torpedoes available even now for firing at each capital ship. Unless these ships are specially protected, three or four torpedoes might put them out of action. Some way has to be found to protect those ships better against torpedoes. The British blister or enlarged outer hull already mentioned seems to be well adapted to the purpose. There is little doubt today that older British ships are twice as well protected against torpedoes as ours of the same date, not because they were better designed in the first place but because of the modernization in this respect that they underwent during and after the war. Fighting ability at sea depends very largely on the ability to take punishment and still stay afloat. Our navy is not second to none if it can't take the blows as well as any.
The menace from aircraft bombs makes it necessary for our oldest ships to have their decks better protected. All of these items will cost us about thirty million dollars just to bring our eighteen capital ships up to an equality of strength with British capital ships.
Germany had but scant opportunity to use her cruisers as raiders during the World War because Great Britain, close by, blocked her every exit to the open sea. But suppose that Germany had been somewhere on the sea, with wide-spaced ports like our own, there would have been many Emden raids instead of two or three—and for each one there would have been needed a superior force to send in pursuit to destroy that cruiser raider. If ever again the United States has to fight a naval war you may expect enemy cruisers to attack our supply ships, our merchant ships, and our transports in every ocean, but especially in that ocean where lies the key to success. So we have to think of how we can meet that menace.
Great Britain has over sixty modern cruisers, everyone of which is faster than any vessel we have, except destroyers. Japan has nearly thirty modern cruisers, built or building, that are also faster than any of our vessels. In a few more months we shall have ten new fast vessels to offset these ninety foreign vessels. How would you like it if, during war, in reply to a demand for the protection of our commerce, the Navy Department had to admit that we had but a total of ten cruisers to oppose those ninety and that these were needed to help guard the fleet at sea? Or suppose you were the captain of an American cruiser sent to drive enemy cruisers away from our merchant ships, and each time you sighted an enemy cruiser he showed you a clean pair of heels? You surely would wish for fast and powerful cruisers to do your duty well. It takes years to build them. No navy is "second to none" if its cruisers cannot follow up the victory of its fleet and drive the enemy ships from the sea. The armored ship is never in large enough numbers to undertake this task; the cruiser has to do it—both before and after battle, through the long months of economic pressure on the enemy country and on our own.
The fast merchant ship is always a potential cruiser. A single power in the Atlantic owns fifty-eight fast merchant ships to our nine—a further emphasis on our poverty in cruisers. Peace strategy for us demands cruiser strength equal to that of the British Empire—and one and two-thirds that of Japan. Any less provision is a sacrifice of the principles of the Treaty, and the acceptance of a secondary naval position in the world. Twenty new modern cruisers are required to bring our navy up to treaty ratios. The difference between four and one-fourth per cent and three per cent on the British debt to us if applied for three years to building American cruisers would supply this deficiency. Incidentally that same little concession to the British, amounting to sixty million dollars a year, will be just enough to build them two super-dreadnaughts per year when they begin their replacement program.
The Washington Conference registered a very emphatic disapproval of the use of submarines in commerce destruction, but the submarine, still in its restricted sphere, is a very important instrument of naval warfare. Of course its principal weapons are the torpedo and the mine. But it has an employment quite independent of the use of those weapons and that is scouting—long distance scouting. A submarine is the only type of moderate speed vessel that may proceed unsupported to hostile waters and remain there to observe enemy movements. A surface vessel would be discovered quickly by the enemy and driven off or sunk, but the submarine can see and not be seen. Recent developments in radio now make it possible for submarines to send radio reports over extremely long distances.
One of the enemies of submarines has been the easily visible wakes of torpedoes when running through the water. They not only betray the presence of the submarine but they indicate the position of the submarine when the torpedo was fired. The torpedo is coming that will leave no trace.
The listening devices have now been so far perfected that submarines may hear vessels long before they are seen and may determine their direction and general character. I remember sitting one day during the war at the listening device and picking up the sound of a distant vessel and then determining its direction. I gave the head piece to the regular operator and asked him what he made out. He confirmed the direction I had determined and then said: "That sounds to me like an American destroyer." I went on deck and scanned the horizon but saw no vessel. Fifteen minutes later we sighted the smoke of a vessel in the indicated direction which proved to be the American destroyer Aylwin.
All navies are going to keep on building submarines, and most of those submarines are going to be the big long radius type. The navy that falls behind treaty ratios in efficient submarines falls behind in an essential element of sea power. Japan is building nearly half a hundred submarines while practically no new submarines have been authorized for the American Navy in the last five years. During that time the mine-laying submarine has been developed and used with great success. It is sure to be an important factor in any future naval war. We are not less than twenty-four submarines below the treaty ratio of submarines built and building.
No survey of the naval weapons of today and of their influence on naval strategy would be complete if the newest of these weapons—aircraft—were omitted. The recent efforts in our navy have been toward getting naval aircraft to sea with the fleet, and toward developing types suitable for the important functions of scouting, bombing, torpedo attack, and fire control. The air forces that will base on shore will add greatly to the defense of the coast. The air forces that go to sea may have many opportunities for surprise attack on enemy fleets and shore positions, and may contribute greatly toward success, but developments to date do not at all warrant the expectation that naval aircraft will displace the fighting ships that sail on the surface of the sea. In this opinion the navy is a unit, aviators as well as those who are not aviators.
The developments of aviation lessen the value of naval bases that are not well removed from foreign territory. If British Columbia, for example, should ever be at war with the United States, the Navy Yard at Puget Sound, Washington, would be within easy range of air attack. In the same way either Bermuda or Jamaica are within possible flight distance of the important naval bases of New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston and the Canal Zone. It will be one of the strategic tasks of the future to prevent hostile aircraft from assembling in positions from which they may attack us.
The threat of air attack decided the location of a great American mine base during the World War. We were going to lay a mine barrage across the south end of the Adriatic Sea. The most convenient locality for the mine base was at Corfu, within a few miles of the barrage; but the fact that Corfu was within easy range of air attacks led us to pick Bizerta on the North African Coast, over five hundred miles away. That base had had more than forty thousand dollars spent on it when the Armistice came. It wouldn't have done to accumulate shiploads of mines in a base where a lucky raid by an enemy might have wiped out the base and delayed the project for months.
Article XIX of the treaty for Limitation of Armament forbids us to strengthen further the defenses or the naval base facilities in Guam, the Aleutian Islands, and the Philippines. Fortifications and naval bases are essential elements of naval strategy. They enable fleets to go, and to go quickly. Fortifications add strength to the Navy—actual strength in actual ships. In naval strategy it is not just ships that count, so much as ships that are in the right place at the right time. Few men realize how greatly suitably spaced, defended advance positions add to the actual naval force present in a given area of operations. One or two illustrations may not be amiss.
We have three important outlying naval positions in the Pacific. One of them is probably secure against attack-—Pearl Harbor. The others in Guam and the Philippines are not fully secure at present. Suppose that Pearl Harbor was to be the base of all our naval operations in the Western Pacific, 4,500 miles away, that no other defended position was available to us in attempting to defend our interests in the Western Pacific. Suppose we had ten cruisers of 10,000 miles cruising radius to operate in war in that region. Each of these would burn up nine-tenths of its fuel going to and returning from station and could stay on station a maximum of three days out of forty. That is, the ten cruisers would not be enough to keep a single cruiser constantly on station if it had to come back to Pearl Harbor each time for fuel.
Take these same ten cruisers and base them in Guam, 3,000 miles nearer their station, and, estimating equal efficiency of operation, each one of them would spend fifteen days out of forty on station,—a change in individual ship efficiency due solely to advancing the most advanced fortified and prepared base from Oahu westward to Guam. Fortifications and foresight in this case would mean a demonstrated increase in the efficiency of each cruiser of 400 per cent. It is not good business to have rest billets fifteen days' march behind the fighting line.
I remember having heard Admiral Oliver, of our service, say more than ten years ago, that for the price of a single battleship expended in defenses and facilities at Guam, we might gain the equivalent of several battleships for all operations in the Western Pacific. This is strictly true. It was recognized by the Japanese in negotiations preceding the treaty for the Limitation of Naval Armament, when they consented to a ratio of 5:3 in capital ships and made that dependent on our acceptance of Article XIX of the treaty, limiting our fortifications and naval bases in the Far East to the status quo. Battleships cannot maintain their efficiency, even in secure harbors, without occasional use of shore repair-and-docking facilities.
The power that has fortified advanced bases can act quickly,—a highly important thing to do. War usually comes swiftly. At its beginning neither side is fully prepared, so that bold steps may be taken successfully then, which later would have no chance at all of success. Admiral Togo knew this when he attacked the Russian ships at Port Arthur the day war was declared. The opportunity was his because fortified bases were near at hand. When months elapse between the declaration of war and the arrival of defending forces in the theater of war, they will find there that their advance will be slow, painful, and costly, where foresight and preparation might, by bringing them swiftly into action, have made success an early certainty. Further, when the naval advance is delayed, fleets are likely to be placed in that most embarrassing of all positions—the necessity of having to fight land forces in order to gain a base for themselves.
Many of you crossed the Atlantic in transports escorted by naval vessels. At the far end of the voyage you found a friendly secure harbor. If ever you cross the ocean with the navy to gain a hostile port, you will understand very vividly what it means not to have secure advance positions.
If anyone asks why fortified outlying naval bases expedite naval action, the answer lies in the extent of the support a great naval expedition requires. As an example, if we were to operate our present naval fighting vessels in a war in the Western Pacific, we would require the service of every oil tanker flying the American flag, an enormous tonnage. Storage tank facilities are useless to us if we erect them where their safety is in question. But make the advance positions secure by fortifications and by garrison, and much of the delay incident to assembling a great merchant fleet of tankers as a preliminary to a naval advance would be wiped out, because we would accumulate oil at those positions in time of peace. The permanent and secure defense of suitable fuel reserves in advance positions will put more speed into the ships of the fleet advancing to war than any other act of which I know.
The great strength of the British fleet is not alone in its size but in the fact that wherever it goes a friendly, fortified harbor waits there to receive it and supply its needs. America has just two such harbors outside our continental territory, the Canal Zone and Pearl Harbor, and the latter is so small that it cannot hold a quarter of the war-time strength of the fleet. The state of our outlying bases in the Pacific has been such that prompt naval action in support of our outlying territory has been an impossibility. Article XIX of the treaty perpetuates this condition; Japan on the other hand is always in position to act swiftly. What we have given up in this respect is the right to correct a strategic weakness. If by so doing we have brought about an unselfish friendship, where enmity or fear reigned before, then the sacrifice is rewarded. We alone made that sacrifice. So, too, in capital ships—we alone made the sacrifice.
I doubt if any of you ever thought of fortifications as scouts. Imagine for a moment a great fleet out across the Pacific to war. Imagine that all American island possessions have fallen into the hands of the enemy. That fleet then proceeds in the dark. The whole Western Pacific is beyond the closed door and the commander of the fleet cannot know what is happening there. The air is full of noise and rumors, but no one can tell him which are true. What does that commander want to know? Where is the enemy fleet? What harbor may he steer for, there to guard his fleet while refueling? What, in general, is the enemy doing? The investigations of some of his more advanced vessels may light his way a little distance, but he can have no certainty of information at points that are distant from his fleet. But if the essential advanced positions are guarded by fortifications that hold the enemy back, each day he may get the positive information that the harbors they guard are still at his disposal; that the enemy is, or is not, operating in their vicinity. It is hard for us to sense fully the responsibility of an American Fleet commander, taking his war fleet across the ocean to battle. On him alone rests the responsibility for national success or failure in war. If he fails, the fleet fails and is lost, and the war ends in defeat. For no army may go across the sea that is without a supporting navy. We may defend ourselves at home successfully, but every outlying possession, every distant interest, will yield in war unless the Navy aided by secure positions may fight far from its home bases. Do you wonder that knowing this, we never lose sight of the task that may lie ahead of us, or that while we give our every thought to guarding peace we do it by arranging, so far as we may for success in war?
The strategic developments at the Washington Conference, by limiting the position and the strength of naval bases, have accentuated the importance of building ships capable of the widest ocean movements. When Germany was building her navy she saw clearly that it had to be specially adapted for North Sea fighting. So Admiral Von Tirpitz designed ships of small steaming endurance and put the excess construction weights into protection and battery. Great Britain on the other hand had to look both to the North Sea and to the wide ocean, so her ships were more truly sea-going ships than were the German ships. The three great naval powers that are now left will all turn their attention to blue water navies. Japan has already abandoned her program of small cruisers and small submarines and substituted for it a program of the largest types—capable of visiting our Pacific Coast and returning to Japan without refueling. This is sound strategy, but not good news for us.
Let us turn aside, for a moment, to consider the present Dardanelles situation, for there questions of national policies and national strategy, including fortifications and naval strategy, exist in a very intimately related form.
The vicinity of the Dardanelles has always been one of international tension, incident to the centering there of ethnological conflicts and of highly important land and sea trade routes. All of Europe and much of Asia has been and is still concerned in decisions at the Dardanelles. The Straits are a great public highway provided by nature leading to a sea that washes the shores of Turkey, Russia, Roumania, Bulgaria, and some lesser states, and that receives the waters of five great navigable rivers. This sea, in consequence, does not belong to a single power, as it once did when Turkey owned all its shores, but belongs to all the world as a part, of the highway of trade. Any and every attempt to block or to impede the access of sea-borne commerce to the Black Sea is subversive of world organization and contrary to world interests, as it would set up international pressures and tensions that would lead inevitably to renewed wars. This is more true now than ever before, because the organization of the world is getting to the point now where free inter-communications is a necessity, and where arbitrary interruptions to commerce are calamities.
We can understand more clearly the naval strategy questions at issue in the Near East, if we remember that Russia, potentially one of the greatest of world powers, exports in normal times one-half of all her products via the Black Sea, that she has no other sea outlet comparable in importance with that through the Dardanelles, and that this sea outlet has been, until the present, fortified and guarded against her. The importance of this outlet to Russia will increase greatly with the growth of Russian population and especially with the improvement of Russia's means of internal transportation, so that no solution of the problem that imposes an artificial barrier between Russia and the sea can contain within it the elements of stability. The temporary interests of those now in power in Russia may seem to them best served by a closed door, but this cannot be the permanent advantage of Russia or of other Black Sea powers. These considerations have led to a general acceptance in the past, by the powers and by Turkey, of the principle of freedom of passage through the Straits for the merchant vessels of all nations, but not to a similar freedom of passage for men-of-war. There have been times when men-of-war might pass freely, while at other times, as during all of the recent years, the passage of fighting vessels of real strength has been prohibited by international treaty. These variations in policy were dependent almost wholly upon naval strategy.
When there are no naval powers bordering on the Black Sea, it is to the interest of other powers, and especially to those powers that have political or economic ambitions in the Black Sea, to have the navigation of the Dardanelles open to their vessels of war. They are then able to use force, or the show of force, to further their interests there. But when there is a fleet of importance based within the Black Sea and belonging to a Black Sea power, it is to the interest of potential enemies to shut that fleet within the Black Sea and deny to it the free navigation of the Dardanelles. These powers are then willing to see the Straits closed to their own ships as well, in order to gain the advantage that freedom from the menace of the Black Sea fleets gives them. The Russian Black Sea fleet could not participate in the Russo-Japanese War because the Straits were closed. This was a well nigh intolerable position for Russia to be placed in, a position which she believed was one of the causes of her defeat. If the Straits are left open, unfortified, and freedom of navigation for vessels of war is assured at all times, the control that fortifications formerly exercised is then shifted to control by ships of war, and, in time of war, the vessels that enter or leave the Black Sea will do so by the consent of the superior naval power in that vicinity. The destruction of the fortifications of the Dardanelles, the opening of the Straits to complete freedom of navigation, will at present inevitably shift the potential control of the Straits from Turkey to Great Britain. At present this freedom of passage is in harmony with British aims, because they desire to penetrate the Black Sea region; but should the time come when Russia rises again to be a great naval power, the policy of Great Britain will change to that which it formerly was, and she will demand that the Straits be closed that Russia may not threaten her route to India and the Far East via the Suez Canal. The decisions at Constantinople are likely to ebb and flow with the fluctuations in power of the interested states.
You see from time to time mention in the press of ideas and inventions that are not made use of by the Navy. It is right that our every shortcoming should be exposed. The public is the great inspector of Government activities. It should know what we do and should speak its mind. The mails bring hundreds of suggestions each day in time of war and in time of peace the stream flows on. The navy takes special pains to ensure that no really good idea gets away. There are numerous talented officers who give special attention to outside suggestions. I will cite but two instances.
Some years ago an American inventor came forward with a high explosive shell that was designed to do far greater injury to an armored ship than the standard types of armor piercing shell. He received a good deal of legislative aid. Exhaustive experiments were made at government expense. The naval report on the shell was adverse. The responsible officers who refused to use the invention were set down as blind to progress, reactionary, and all that, but this attack did not change their decision; the American Navy continued to be supplied with the best type of armor piercing shell. Not so in a certain foreign navy where the inventor's ideas were adopted. The battle of Jutland witnessed the great trial and final failure of the inventor's theory. A great fleet failed in its mission partly through ineffective ammunition. Not only was the ammunition ineffective, but its replacement encroached on facilities already over-taxed, involving an anxious period of delay in a great war. The names of the alleged reactionary American naval officers were well known in the Press at the time, but years later when the soundness of their judgment was confirmed, no one outside the navy thought of or commended them for the service they had rendered.
One day in the early part of the war, Mr. Ralph C. Brown of Salem, Mass., presented himself at the Navy Department—the Bureau of Ordnance—with a new electrical idea for firing submerged guns. The gun was not practicable, but the principle by which it was to be fired, if applied to a mine, was practicable; for it would make a mine that would act even if a ship never touched it but simply came within a certain vertical distance of it. The officer who listened to him. Commander S.P. Fullinwider, U.S.N., let his imagination travel across to the North Sea and visualize a mine barrage from Scotland to Norway that would shut the enemy submarines from the ocean. That mine and that vision became the great reality of the North Sea mine barrage. Don't think that the transition to reality was easy. Months of intense effort on the part of the inventor and of the best technical brains available were necessary to produce the mine that finally was planted in that barrage. A fleet of ships had to be bought and remodeled. Thousands of men trained—an American naval station built in Scotland. You know the result.
I was in London at the time the barrage was begun. It was a favorite remark of certain officers at the British Admiralty that the American barrage was a bluff—that it really would not be effective. Our first five thousand mines were laid over near the Norwegian coast. A day or two afterward three German submarines stood out of the Skager Rak and through the mine field. Next morning wireless reports told of one damaged submarine returning to Kiel, of one that had disappeared after a great explosion, and of a third that was on her way out to sea. After that I did not hear so much about the barrage being a bluff.
We owe a great deal to thinkers and doers outside the service, but when the service opinion is adverse to any specific proposal, I think the public can serve their interests best by the presumption that a life-time devotion to the technical questions of national defense, joined to a responsibility that stays with us through all our life time, qualifies the service to speak with authority on all professional questions.
One of the finest ways of clarifying strategic ideas is by having always in mind a clear conception of what we are really trying to accomplish. When America undertook the great mine barrage across the North Sea, the object to be accomplished was to bar the exit of all German submarines from the North Sea, north about. American naval officers never lost sight of that mission. Their persistent insistence upon it led to some very warm friendly differences with the British. We wanted an unbroken barrage from Norway to Scotland and from the surface of the sea to a depth of three hundred feet—the limit of safe navigation for submarines. The British wanted that barrage to have two surface channels, each forty miles wide for the use of the Grand Fleet and for convoys. One of those channels was to be next to the Norwegian Coast and one next to the Coast of Scotland. There were to be deep mines in those channels, but the surface was to be safe for the passage of vessels. Their plan looked like a half measure to us, and we felt that it would not be long before the enemy knew where the channels were and used them, especially at night. We went ahead laying the barrage in parts where both plans were alike; and by the tenacity of the Americans, and the open-mindedness of the British, the American plan prevailed early enough to cause no delay in its execution.
Still having in mind the necessity for slamming the door in the face of the German and Austrian submarines, we planned to close the exit from the Adriatic Sea from which enemy submarines were operating. It so happened that there was but one place in that area where a thoroughly effective mine barrage could be laid. The War Plans Section of Admiral Sims' staff knew that this particular place was not acceptable to some of the Allies. The problem was, how to ensure that the accepted plan would place the barrage in that particular place. The Planning Section first drew up a set of specifications for mine barrages in general. These were based on unimpeachable principles. The specifications were submitted formally to the Allied Naval Council, together with the general proposition of an Adriatic barrage. Both were accepted without debate. The whole question, together with the adopted papers, was then referred to a Board of Admirals at Malta, who adopted a plan exactly like that originally proposed by Admiral Sims' staff. The coincidence arose from the fact that the specifications would not admit of any other plan. There is strategy in negotiation as well as in execution. An incident at this Malta conference of admirals is worth mentioning. The Italian admiral said of the proposed barrage—"This is a big undertaking, but our mine force can, because of its excellent training, lay 250 mines a day." Admiral Strauss, the American admiral, replied, ''The mine force under my command lays five thousand, five hundred mines in four hours." The Italian admiral reached for his cocked hat, rose and laying his hat and hand on his breast bowed profoundly and sat down. The business of the day proceeded.
A clear vision of the essential requirements of the time led to a decision regarding our transports during the war. There was fear of an attempt by the Germans to raid the transports at sea with battle cruisers. What should be done in case of an attempted raid? More troops were then a vital necessity in France. There were two plans submitted. One plan provided that transports at sea should seek the nearest harbor for refuge. The other called for no interruption in the movement across the Atlantic, but only such changes of course by the convoys at sea as necessary to lead them through the safest zones. The latter plan was adopted, but the hazard of it was reduced by escorting transports with battleships. Sound strategy required the continuous flow of troops, no matter what extra effort was involved, and this could never be realized if we interrupted that flow every time there was a rumor of a raid. I am reminded of what a grizzled old tug captain—a boatswain of the Navy, said when asked why he had not turned on the "cease firing" signal lights when he saw target practice shells striking the water on both sides of him. "I've been towing targets for years," he said, "and I don't think there would be much night target practice if I turned on the 'cease firing' signal every time a target shell seemed to have been aimed at my tug instead of the target." The strategy of war is something that has to proceed to a conclusion, and it always involves the element of chance. The strategy of peace should be to weigh, to build and to guard against mischance.
There is strategy in small affairs as well as great. Captain Philip Williams, now commanding the battleship Tennessee, during the war commanded the cruiser Chester, that was engaged in protecting huge convoys of freighters between Gibraltar and Plymouth, England. These were very slow vessels, and always one or more were disposed to straggle. Reiterated orders seemed to have no effect, so one day the Chester ran down to a straggler about two miles astern that said she could not keep up. Captain Williams dropped a smoke box astern of her, where she could not see him do it, then ran alongside and shouted, "submarine" through the megaphone and returned immediately to the convoy full speed. He told me the straggling vessel nearly beat him back to the convoy, and that never again that voyage did she fall astern or fail to be most attentive to orders. Her skipper believes to this day that the little smoke showing astern of him, on the surface of the water, was a submarine which he outdistanced on that famous occasion.
In the days of wooden ships, one of ours on the China Station received orders to proceed to a certain Chinese port, to demand redress from the local Governor for the harsh treatment of some American missionaries. A small indemnity was to be collected, and a salute to the American flag required. The ship arrived at the port, and the Captain delivered (with due ceremony) the demands of our Government. He told the Governor that he would expect a prompt and favorable reply. Next morning, having received no reply, the Captain sent his aide to the Governor to say that he had now carried out the first part of his orders, and that should the Governor fail to comply with his demands before twelve o'clock noon of that day, he would be under the painful necessity of executing the second part of his orders.
The aide had no more than returned to the ship after delivering his message when the American flag was run up on shore near the Governor's palace and saluted with twenty-one guns. Immediately afterward, the Governor's barge, with its crew pulling the well-known official goose-step stroke, came alongside with the Governor and the indemnity. Needless to say, the Governor was well received, and his visit was the first of a pleasant exchange of courtesies that occupied the succeeding days. When the visit was over and the ship was sailing away, the Captain's aide ventured to inquire what the second part of the Captain's orders had been. The old man with a broad and satisfied grin pulled the orders out of his pocket and read: "Failing to obtain satisfaction within twenty-four hours of your arrival, you will quit the port and take no further action in the premises." Naval strategy is not confined to the management of fleets or the selection of naval bases.
I do not want to bring this paper to a close without exploding a popular theory regarding the navy. It has become trite to say that the nation's first line of defense is the navy, but it is not true. It is dangerously false. Diplomacy, statesmanship, is the first line of national defense. The bloodless victories won by statesmanship sometimes equal in historical importance the great decisions of war. They are won because of foresight and acumen in appraising the powers of the weapons in reserve, and in providing for their efficient use in the future. The statesman understands that, even in time of profound peace, the readiness of his country for war is the most potent support he has in accomplishing his aims by diplomacy. He realizes further that he advances his own aims best by a skilful and constant strengthening, in a military and naval sense, of the strategic situation of his country. He must be statesman and strategist too. It is only when statesmanship fails, that the navy moves into the front line. When victory comes the navy and army fall back, and the statesman carries on.
At the time work was stopped on our new capital ships, it was estimated that it would have cost three hundred fifteen million dollars to complete them. A survey of our treaty navy, as compared with foreign navies, leads to the unavoidable conclusion that if foreign programs in cruisers and submarines are carried to completion, America will be unable to attain her treaty ratios in fighting ships for less than three hundred millions of dollars. We have to choose between such an expenditure, and a naval position of marked inferiority. I am sure the navy would be glad to see the problem at least partly solved by a reduction in foreign cruiser and submarine tonnage.
After the treaty for Limitation of Armaments was signed, it fell to the General Board to prepare a naval policy for the United States to fit the new conditions brought about by the treaty. The General Board had the problem under exclusive consideration for three months, holding more extensive hearings on this subject than it has ever held before on any problem. When its work was completed, the policy was written on a single, large sheet of paper and comprehended every phase of naval activity. I think I cannot do better than to make some brief quotations from that policy.
It is naval policy "to create, maintain and operate a navy second to none, in conformity with the ratios for capital ships established by the treaty for Limitation of Naval Armaments."
It is naval policy "to make strength of the navy for battle of primary importance."
It is naval policy "to cultivate friendly and sympathetic relations with the whole world by foreign cruises."
It is naval policy "to support in every possible way American interests, especially the expansion and development of American foreign commerce."
It is naval policy "to co-operate fully and loyally with all departments of the Government."
It is naval policy "to make every effort for economy in expenditures while holding efficiency paramount."
It is naval policy "to have always in mind that a system of outlying naval and commercial bases, suitably distributed, developed and defended, is one of the most important elements of national strength."
These are all strategic steps toward the goal of national welfare. After the Secretary of the Navy had given the policy prolonged study, he approved it and added in his own handwriting at the bottom of the sheet, a publicity policy, which reads as follows:
To give to the public all information not incompatible with military secrecy.
That publicity policy is one of the reasons why I have been able to talk so frankly to you here. I would not be fully frank if I failed to add to these remarks my fear that America is being swept by an emotional generosity and trust in international affairs, that is not consistent with our ultimate well being. I believe that idealism, pitted against commercialism and self-seeking, is bound to lose; and that the correct strategy of the present is for us to be on our guard.