Once again this is but a typical narrative—the story of an odd day's work by a tiny unit, and, ranged behind it, pressing for equal rights of mention, stand a multitude of others. Here, reluctantly, these must remain untold, but it was happy for the world that, in bonds such as these, the future leaders both of Britain and America should have been growing up together. "There is one outstanding blessing," said Mr. Daniels, the Secretary of the United States navy, speaking at Springfield, Massachusetts, "which came to the world out of the tragedy of war, and that is the perfect coöperation, sympathy, and companionship between the British navy and the American. They are together now, and must forever be together in the resolve to protect what their valour won, and preserve alike for themselves and all the world complete freedom of the seas."
CHAPTER XII
THE HARVEST OF SEA POWER
The bombardment of Durazzo, mentioned in the last chapter, took place on October 2, 1918, and was the last offensive operation, on a large scale, undertaken by the Allied navies. During the fortnight preceding it, there had fallen to the Entente armies, in every theatre of war, such a series of victories as had never been witnessed in the recorded history of mankind. To the sea-borne and sea-fed armies in the Balkan Peninsula, Bulgaria had been the first of Germany's allies to make unconditional surrender; before the sea-borne and sea-fed armies in Syria—brought thither from Great Britain, from India, from Australia, and New Zealand—the last of Turkey's military power had melted like snow in summer; while, upon the Western Front, from the Flanders coast to the forest of the Woeuvre, the sea-borne and sea-fed British and American armies with their sea-equipped French comrades were surging forward, under Marshal Foch, in an irresistible tide.
The end was now apparent, though, at the last, it was to come with startling suddenness. Little by little, for fifty-two months, scarcely realized by the majority of their peoples, hardly realized even by the outside world, the Central Empires had been dying of sea-hunger. Deprived, like prisoners in a closed chamber, of the oxygen necessary for life—the economic oxygen that could alone be drawn from the free oceans of the world, they had come to a point where the only choice lay between surrender and extinction. Defeated at Jutland so decisively that, as their leaders well knew, those sea-windows could never be opened by the efforts of their surface ships, their campaign under water had failed with equal completeness. Beneath the Dover Barrage, the North Sea minefields, and the Straits of Otranto lay their dead submarines. Trapped by Q ships, rammed by destroyers, sunk by armed merchantmen, they had lost scores of others—more than two hundred in all had been put out of action by the Allied navies—while the spirit of admiralty that they had challenged, and the fringe of whose code they had been unable to grasp, had so ordered the ways of the world's free peoples that, even on land, they were reeling before them.
With that picture we might well close, since our thesis was but to show that, from Alfred the Great to Nelson, our dead admirals lived in their children. But the material harvest was still to be gathered, though the spiritual was already secure; and, in the reception by Vice-Admiral Gough-Calthorpe of the first Turkish Emissaries, in the landing at Ostend of Sir Roger Keyes, and in the figure of the First Sea Lord, Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, standing by Marshal Foch to receive the German delegates, there could be no mistaking, even by the blindest landsman, of all that an inspired sea-power had wrought. "But our navy is undefeated," complained one of the German officers, listening to the terms of the armistice. "It had only to come out, sir," replied Admiral Wemyss; and worse than defeat lay in that reproach.
Fourteen clauses contained the naval conditions to be fulfilled under the terms of the armistice; and the total effect of these was to make it impossible for the war at sea to be renewed. All naval and mercantile marine prisoners were at once to be restored without reciprocity; all submarines in certain specified ports, capable of putting to sea, were to be handed over; six battle-cruisers, ten battleships, eight light cruisers, two mine-layers, and fifty destroyers were to be similarly yielded; and all other surface warships were to be paid off and completely disarmed. All mine-fields laid by Germany outside German territorial waters were to be indicated, and the Allies were to have the right of sweeping them up. Freedom of access to the Baltic, both to the Allied navies and their mercantile marines, was to be granted; but the blockade was to be continued, though the provisioning of Germany, if this should prove necessary, was contemplated. All naval aircraft were to be concentrated and immobilized at certain specified German bases. All merchant ships, tugs, lighters, cranes, and all marine stores in the Belgian ports were to be abandoned. The Black Sea ports were to be evacuated; and all the seized Russian warships were to be handed over to the Allies. All Allied merchant ships in German hands were to be restored in specified ports without reciprocity. There was to be no destruction of ships or material prior to evacuation, surrender, or restoration. The German Government was further to notify all neutral nations that any restrictions imposed by it on their trading vessels, whether in return for concessions made or not, were immediately cancelled; and, after the signature, there were to be no transfers of German merchant shipping to any neutral flag. The naval terms presented to Austria-Hungary had been of a similar nature.
That was on November 11th, and already, in the east, the last act of the drama had begun. On November 9th, there drew in shore, opposite V beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula, a large transport and an old cruiser laden with British troops. Behind them, in the Straits, there plied industriously a great fleet of drifters and mine-sweepers, no longer under fire, and clearing a way through the minefields for the fleet that was to occupy the Sea of Marmora. Before them, a gray bulk, lay the River Clyde, beached as before and alone with her memories, and, on the hill above, stood a little group of Turkish artillerymen waiting to yield up the guns of Cape Helles. From these two transports, there presently put to shore, one on the Asiatic side, and one on V beach, two flat-bottomed barges each carrying 500 men. Such, without pomp, and almost in silence, was the second landing on Gallipoli Peninsula.