The German Fleet / Being The Companion Volume to "The Fleets At War" and "From Heligoland To Keeling Island

by Archibald Hurd

Throughout the years of naval expansion the German authorities have been struggling to eliminate as far as possible the disadvantages of conscription in its application to naval conditions. The War Department is responsible for putting in force the conscription law, and periodically the navy sends in its requisition, stating the number of recruits who will be needed, and where and when they are to join. The men selected are passed direct into the fleet without preliminary training each October. Under the British system boys are entered at about sixteen years of age, and receive a short training first in one of the shore or stationary sea establishments, and are subsequently drafted into one of the ships of the Training Squadron, thence joining the sea-going fleet. A certain number of youths are also entered at an average age of about seventeen and a half years, and these recruits dispense with the preliminary course, but are also drafted to the Training Squadron before joining the fleet. Nearly all the men of the fleet sign on for twelve years' active service, and the best of these are permitted to re-engage for another ten years in order to earn pensions. A relatively small number of men, not boys, join the British Navy for a term of only five years, with the obligation to remain in the Reserve for seven years. Five years, consequently, is the minimum in the British Navy, and applies to only a relatively small number of men; but three years is the maximum period of German conscripts, and during this time the officers and warrant officers have to do their best to transform the raw material provided by the State into skilled seamen.

It is easy to imagine the difficulties which assail the administration in Germany in these circumstances. Every year one-third of the naval conscripts complete their period of active service and are passed into the Reserve, and their places are taken by an equivalent batch of raw recruits. The result is that in the winter months the officers and petty officers of the fleet are occupied in licking into shape these embryo sailors, and from October until May the fighting ships of the Empire become practically training vessels.

If this were a complete representation of the conditions in the German Fleet its efficiency would be of a low order. The Navy is, however, stiffened by a proportion of conscripts who re-engage voluntarily, and by a certain number of volunteers who enter as boys. These lads engage at ages ranging from fifteen to eighteen years. They agree to undergo an apprenticeship of two years followed by seven years of active fleet service. Volunteers are not trained ashore or in fixed naval establishments as in the United Kingdom, but are drafted to sea-going training ships, which cruise in home waters during the summer months and pass into the Mediterranean during the winter. By these two expedients the German naval authorities have been able to secure about 25 per cent. of the German personnel on what passes in Germany for a long-service system. The boy volunteers and the conscripts who re-engage constitute the class from which petty officers are drawn, and these men are the backbone of the naval organization ashore and afloat, and it is to their efforts that the high standard of efficiency which Germany's Navy has attained may in a large measure be traced.

Year by year, in order to provide crews for the larger number of ships passed into the fleet, the Marine Office has been compelled to increase the number of conscripts required for sea service, and thus the task of training the Navy has been increased in advance of the expansion of the material, because men must begin training before their ships are ready for sea. The officers and petty officers have had not only to train raw recruits embarked to take the place of conscripts at the end of their three years' term, but to find means also of training additional recruits entered as net additions to the naval strength. When it is added that in 1894 the number of officers and men in the Navy was less than 21,000, whereas it is now nearly 80,000, and under the Navy Act of 1912 is to be raised to 107,000, some conception may be formed of the character of the problem which has presented itself, not only to the central administration ashore, but to the officers afloat, intent upon attaining the highest standard of efficiency at sea. Admission of these difficulties was made by Admiral von Tirpitz in the explanatory Memorandum which accompanied the last Navy Bill presented to the Reichstag and which directed attention to "two serious defects" in the organization of the fleet:

"The one defect consists in the fact that in the autumn of every year the time-expired men—i.e. almost one-third of the crew in all ships of the battle fleet, are discharged and replaced mainly by recruits from the inland population. Owing to this, the readiness of the battle fleet for war is considerably impaired for a prolonged period."

When it is recalled that the maritime population of Germany amounts only to 80,000, and that compulsory service in the active fleet lasts for only three years, it will be realized that most of the recruits taken for the German Navy must necessarily be landsmen. The personnel in 1914 numbered roughly over 70,000, after deducting from the total the executive officers, engineers, cadets, and accountants. If approximately 17,000 of these are regarded as long-service men there remain roughly 54,000 conscripts, one-third of whom pass annually into the Reserve, and are replaced by raw hands. Under the new Navy Law it was intended to strengthen the personnel in the next few years by 6,400 annually. While the average period of service in the British Navy, including the relatively small number of five years' men entered for short service, is about ten years, the average in the German Fleet does not amount to as much as half this period.

It is possible to attach too much importance to the fact that the German Navy is recruited "mainly by recruits from the inland population." The inherited sea habit counts for less to-day than at any time since men attempted to navigate the seas. Ships of war have become vast complicated boxes of machinery, and naval life requires the exercise of qualities different from those it demanded in the sail era. Then brute courage, endurance, and familiarity with the moods of the sea were the main attributes of sailors, but to-day a large proportion of the crews must be experts in the handling of complicated mechanical appliances. In these changed conditions the compulsory system of education in Germany has proved of the greatest advantage in providing recruits of a high standard of intelligence, who probably acquire in six months as complete a familiarity with their work as it would have taken a seaman of the old school as many years to attain. At the same time, while resisting the temptation to place too great importance upon the inherited sea habit, it would be no less a mistake to ignore entirely its influence upon naval efficiency. Familiarity breeds contempt for the terrors of the sea and for the horrors of a naval action, and it is reasonable to expect that in the hour of trial the long-service men of the British Navy will exhibit a moral standard when projectiles are falling fast and thick far higher than that of the conscript. A modern Dreadnought is intended to fire its guns in broadsides and not in succession, and when it is borne in mind that at one discharge these guns will deliver on an enemy's ship, if they are fired accurately, between five and six tons of metal, it will be realized that at such a moment the calibre of men will count more than the calibre of guns.

When the Act of 1900 was introduced the Reichstag was informed by Admiral von Tirpitz in a Memorandum that "as, even after the projected increase has been carried out, the number of vessels in the German Navy will still be more or less inferior to that of other individual Great Powers, our endeavours must be directed towards compensating this superiority by the individual training of the crews and by tactical training by practice in larger bodies.... Economy as regards commissioning of vessels in peace time means jeopardizing the efficiency of the fleet in case of war." Never since navies existed have a body of officers and men been worked at higher pressure than those of Germany; drill has never ceased; no effort has been spared to obtain the last ounce of value out of every one on board the ships. The promotion of officers rests with the Emperor, and he is unsparing in his punishment of anything like slackness; an officer who is not enthusiastic, alert, and competent, stands no chance of rising in rank. The German Navy has no use for anything but the best which the Empire can provide, and in order that the highest expression of the esprit de corps which has contributed to German influence on shore may be instilled into the Navy, no officer, however influential or brilliant, can enter either the executive or engineering branch unless his claims are endorsed by all his contemporaries; one black ball—if the term may be used—is sufficient to disqualify an aspirant, though he may have passed all the prescribed examinations brilliantly.

The German Fleet has its limitations, but within those limitations it probably has no superior in the world: the ships are well built, the officers are capable sailors, and the men are raised to the highest pitch of efficiency possible under a short-service system.