MORAL EFFECT
The attack on Zeebrügge and the two successive attacks on Ostend, carefully planned and boldly and resolutely carried out, achieved a very high measure of success. It was natural enough, on the first receipt of the news, that we should all have been carried away by our wonder and admiration at the astonishing heroism that made it possible to carry through so intricate a series of operations, when every soul engaged was seemingly aware of the desperate character of the enterprise, when no one could have expected to return alive, when the enemy’s means seemed ample, not only for the killing of everyone engaged, but for the immediate frustration of every object that they had in view, and so made most of the astounding gallantry and daring of all concerned. For over four years now we have had a constant recurrence of such feats of courage, and repetition does not lessen their power to intoxicate us with an overwhelming admiration of those who are the heroes of these great adventures. But we should be misconceiving the significance of these events if we were to measure their importance either by the ordered daring of those engaged, or by their successful execution, or by their immediate military results, great and far-reaching as these were.
The thing was more important as affording conclusive evidence that the British Navy, as inspired and directed from headquarters, had now abandoned the purely defensive rôle assigned to it by ten years of pre-war, and three and a half years of war, administration. It meant that the Fleet had escaped from those counsels of timorous—because unimaginative and ignorant—caution, which had checked its ardour and limited its activities since August, 1914. The effect may be incalculable. The doctrine that every operation which involved the risk of losing men or ships must necessarily be too hazardous to undertake, was thus shown to be no longer the loadstone of Whitehall’s policy. The Navy was at last set free to act on an older and a better tradition.
It is indeed on this tradition that on almost every occasion the Navy has, in fact, acted when it got a chance. When Swift and Broke tackled three times their number of enemy last year, and Botha and Morris six times their number this year, the gallant captains of these gallant vessels did not wait to ask if the position of their ships was “critical” or otherwise; but, with an insight into the true defensive value of attack—which, seemingly, it is the privilege only of the most valorous to possess—went straight for their enemies, fought overwhelming odds at close quarters, and came out as victorious as a rightly reasoned calculation would have shown to be probable.
Similarly, on May 31, 1916, Sir David Beatty, when his force of battle-cruisers, by the loss of Indefatigable and Queen Mary, had been reduced below that of the enemy, persisted in his attack upon Von Hipper and, by demoralizing the enemy’s fire, provided most effectively for the safety of his own ships. Losses did not make him retreat then, nor, when Scheer came upon the scene with the whole High Seas Fleet, did he withdraw from the action—his speed would have made this easy—though the odds were heavy against him. He kept, on the contrary, the whole German Fleet in play, drawing them dexterously to the north, where contact with the Grand Fleet would be inevitable. And, when the contact was made, his last effort to break up the German line was to close from the 14,000 yards, a range he had prudently maintained during the previous two hours, to 8,000, where his guns would be more certainly effective, realizing perfectly that no loss of ships in his own squadron would signify, if only the entire destruction of the German Fleet were made possible by such a sacrifice. It would not be difficult to give scores of incidents in which individual admirals and captains have shown the old spirit under new conditions.
But, save only for the crazy attack on the Dardanelles forts—and this is hardly a precedent we should rejoice to see followed—we have looked in vain for any sign of naval initiative from Whitehall. The explanation lies in the fact that we had no staff for planning operations, nor the right men in power for judging whether any proposed undertaking was based on a right calculation of the value of the available means of offence and defence. The events, therefore of the night of the 22nd and the early hours of the 23rd were of quite extraordinary importance, for they marked an undertaking needing long and elaborate preparation, and one which could not have been brought to a successful issue had it not enjoyed from its first inception the enthusiastic support of the Admiralty. But this is not all. Not only was this an Admiralty-supported undertaking, it was one that, unlike the Gallipoli adventure, was carried through on right staff principles. There was a definite, well-thought-out plan—careful preparation for every step in the right selection of men and means for its execution.
I think it is right to put this forward as the most important aspect of a significant, stirring, and successful enterprise. It is the most important because the news meant so very much more than that Zeebrügge was blocked, that Ostend was crippled, and that an expedition—at first sight perilous beyond conception—had been carried through with losses altogether disproportionate, either to its dangers or to the results achieved. The news meant that a new direction either had been, or certainly can, and therefore must, now be given to our naval policy. In the spring of 1917 sceptics were asking if the Army could win the war before the Navy lost it. Why, they said, if our land forces can force a way through what we were told were impregnable fortifications, should the greatest sea force in the world be impotent against an enemy who slinks behind his forts with his surface craft, while devastating our sea communications with his submarines? Is naval ingenuity, they asked, so crippled that we can neither protect our trade against the submarine at sea, nor block the enemy’s ports so that the submarine can never get to sea? The critics replied that all was well with the Navy, but that all was sadly wrong with its official chiefs. The reorganization of the Admiralty was immediately followed by the adoption of the convoy principle—and submarine losses were reduced to half. This long-advocated measure, the recently inaugurated barrage at Dover, and now the events of the morning of April 23, have justified the critics and the changes in method and men which they urged. Zeebrügge had been in the enemy’s hands since September, 1914, and it took us three and a half years, not to discover a man capable of attacking it, but in developing an Admiralty capable of picking the man and giving him the right support before the attack could be made. If a similar spirit had actuated a properly constituted Admiralty all these years, what might not the Navy have accomplished?
In the previous year the emancipation of the Navy had gone forward apace. And not the least significant of the stages in the process were first the appointment of Admiral Sir Roger Keyes to be head of the Planning Division at the Admiralty, next his removal from the Admiralty to Dover, next the inauguration of the Channel barrage, and finally his surprising and masterly stroke at the Flemish ports. The enumeration of these stages is worth making, for they mark the genesis of the plan we have seen achieved. It was, if I am correctly informed, quite understood when Admiral Keyes went to Dover that his mission was temporary. If he was sent to do the things which he has done, and now that he has done them is taken back to Whitehall, then it might seem as if we might look forward to an aggressive policy at sea more worthy of the superb force which we possess, and more consonant with its glorious heritage than anything which we have witnessed in the past. And if Sir Roger cannot be spared from his new command, so auspiciously inaugurated, then we must trust that some other of equal brains and spirit has already taken or will take his place. Zeebrügge and Ostend, then, will figure in naval history, not only as the names of achievements unique and splendid in themselves, but more famous as the harbingers of still greater things to come.
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Page [163]: Closing quotation mark added at the end of “voice pipes in the beginning.’”
Page [262]: Opening quotation mark removed at “Mr. Churchill’s speech”.