The War on All Fronts: England's Effort / Letters to an American Friend

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

II

This then is perhaps the first point to notice in the landscape of the war, as we look back on the last three months. For on it everything else, Naval and Military, depends:—on the incredibly heightened output of British workshops, in all branches of war material, which has been attained since the summer of last year. In it, as I have just said, we see an effect of a great cause—i.e., of the "effort" made by Great Britain, since the war broke out, to bring her military strength in men and munitions to a point, sufficient, in combination with the strength of her Allies, for victory over the Central Powers, who after long and deliberate preparation had wantonly broken the European peace. The "effort" was for us a new one, provoked by Germany, and it will have far-reaching civil consequences when the war is over.

In the great Naval victory now known as the Battle of Jutland, on the other hand, we have a fresh demonstration on a greater scale than ever before, of that old, that root fact, without which indeed the success of the Allied effort in other directions would be impossible—i.e., the overwhelming strength of the British Navy, and its mastery of the Sea.

In a few earlier pages of this book, I have described a visit which the British Admiralty allowed me to make in February last to a portion of the Fleet, then resting in a northern harbour. On that occasion, at the Vice-Admiral's luncheon-table, there sat beside me on my right, a tall spare man with the intent face of one to whom life has been a great arid strenuous adventure, accepted in no boyish mood, but rather in the spirit of the scientific explorer, pushing endlessly from one problem to the next, and passionate for all experience that either unveils the world, or tests himself. We talked of the war, and my projected journey. "I envy you!" he said, his face lighting up. "I would give anything to see our Army in the field." My neighbour was Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, who went down with his flagship H.M.S. Defence, in the Battle of Jutland, on the 31st of May last, while passing between the British and German fleets, under a very heavy fire. "It is probable," said Admiral Jellicoe's despatch, "that Sir Robert Arbuthnot, during his engagement with the enemy's light cruisers, and in his desire to complete their destruction, was not aware of the approach of the enemy's heavy ships, owing to the mist, until he found himself in close proximity to the main fleet, and before he could withdraw his ships, they were caught under a heavy fire and disabled." So, between the fleets of Germany and England, amid the mists of the May evening, and the storm and smoke of battle, my courteous neighbour of three months before found, with all his shipmates, that grave in the "unharvested sea" which England never forgets to honour, and from which no sailor shrinks. At the same luncheon-table were two other Admirals and many junior Officers, who took part in the same great action; and looking back upon it, and upon the notes which I embodied in my first Letter, I see more vividly than ever how every act and thought of those brave and practised men, among whom I passed those few—to me—memorable hours, were conditioned by an intense expectation, that trained prevision of what must come, which, in a special degree, both stirs and steadies the mind of the modern sailor.

But one thing perhaps they had not foreseen—that by a combination of mishaps in the first reporting of the battle, the great action, which has really demonstrated, once and for all, the invincible supremacy of Great Britain at sea, which has reduced the German Fleet to months of impotence, put the invasion of these islands finally out of the question, and enabled the British blockade to be drawn round Germany with a yet closer and sterner hand, was made to appear, in the first announcements of it, almost a defeat. The news of our losses—our heavy losses—came first—came almost alone. The Admiralty, with the stern conscience of the British official mind, announced them as they came in—bluntly—with little or no qualification. A shock of alarm went through England! For what had we paid so sore a price? Was the return adequate, and not only to our safety, but to our prestige?

There were a few hours when both Great Britain—outside the handful of men who knew—and her friends throughout the world, hung on the answer. Meanwhile the German lie, which converted a defeat for Germany into a "victory," got at least twenty-four hours' start, and the Imperial Chancellor made quick and sturdy use of it when he extracted a War Loan of £600,000,000 from a deluded and jubilant Reichstag. Then the news came in from one quarter after another of the six-mile battle-line, from one unit after another of the greatest sea-battle Britain had ever fought, and by the 3rd or 4th of June, England, drawing half-ironic breath over her own momentary misgiving, had realised the truth—first—that the German Fleet on the 31st had only escaped total destruction by the narrowest margin, and by the help of mist and darkness; secondly—that its losses were, relatively far greater, and in all probability, absolutely, greater than our own; thirdly—that after the British battle-fleet had severed the German navy from its base, the latter had been just able, under cover of darkness, to break round the British ships, and fly hard to shelter, pursued by our submarines and destroyers through the night, till it arrived at Wilhelmshaven a battered and broken host, incapable at least for months to come of any offensive action against Great Britain or her Allies. Impossible henceforth—for months to come—to send a German squadron sufficiently strong to harass Russia in the Baltic! Impossible to interfere successfully with the passage of Britain's new armies across the seas! Impossible to dream any longer of invading English coasts! The British Fleet holds the North Sea more strongly than it has ever held it; and behind the barbed wire defences of Wilhelmshaven or Heligoland the German Fleet has been nursing its wounds.

Some ten weeks have passed, and as these results have become plain to all the world, the German lie, or what remained of it, has begun to droop, even in the country of its birth. "Do not let us suppose," says Captain Persius—the most honest of German naval critics, in a recent article—"that we have shaken the sea-power of England. That would be foolishness." While Mr. Balfour, the most measured, the most veracious of men, speaking only a few days ago to the representatives of the Dominion Parliaments, who have been visiting England, says quietly—"the growth of our Navy, since the outbreak of war, which has gone on, and which at this moment is still going on, is something of which I do not believe the general public has the slightest conception."

For the general public has, indeed, but vague ideas of what is happening day by day and week by week in the great shipyards of the Clyde, the Tyne, and the Mersey. But there, all the same, the workmen—and workwomen—of Great Britain—(for women are taking an ever-increasing share in the lighter tasks of naval engineering)—are adding incessantly to the sea-power of this country, acquiescing in a Government control, a loosening of trade custom, a dilution and simplification of skilled labour, which could not have been dreamt of before the war. At the same time they are meeting the appeal of Ministers to give up or postpone the holidays they have so richly earned, for the sake of their sons and brothers in the trenches, with a dogged "aye, aye!" in which there is a note of profound understanding, of invincible and personal determination, but rarely heard in the early days of the war.