It was this that brought about the third naval crisis of the war. Once more the old wrong remedy was tried. The Government and the public had learned nothing from the revelation that we had gone to war on the doctrine that the Fleet need not, and ought not, to fight the enemy, and were apparently unconcerned at discovering that it could not fight with success. And so, still not realizing the root cause of all our trouble, once more a remedy was sought by changing the chief naval adviser to the Government.
But on this occasion it was not only the chief that was replaced, as had happened when Lord Fisher succeeded Prince Louis of Battenberg, and when Sir Henry Jackson succeeded Lord Fisher. When Admiral Jellicoe came to Whitehall several colleagues accompanied him from the Grand Fleet. There was nothing approaching to a complete change of personnel, but the infusion of new blood was considerable. But this notwithstanding, the menace from the submarine grew, when ruthlessness was adopted as a method, until the rate of loss by April had doubled, trebled, and quadrupled that of the previous year. All the world then saw that, with shipping vanishing at the rate of more than a million tons a month, the period during which the Allies could maintain the fight against the Central Powers must be strictly limited.
Thus, without having lost a battle at sea—but because we had failed to win one—a complete reverse in the naval situation was brought about. Instead of enjoying the complete command Mr. Churchill had spoken of, we were counting the months before surrender might be inevitable. During the ten weeks leading up to the culminating losses of April, a final effort was made to make the public and the Government realize that failure of the Admiralty to protect the sea-borne commerce of a seagirt people was due less to the Government’s reliance on advisers ill-equipped for their task, than that the task itself was beyond human performance, so long as the Higher Command of the Navy was wrongly constituted for its task. It was, of course, an old warning vainly urged on successive Governments year after year in peace time, and month after month during the war. Evidences of inadequate preparation of imperfect plans, of a wrong theory of command, of action founded on wrong doctrine but endorsed by authority, had all been numerous during the previous two and a half years.
THE FOURTH CRISIS
But where reason and argument had been powerless to prevail, the logic of facts gained the victory. At last, in the fourth naval crisis of the war, it was realized that changes in personnel at Whitehall were not sufficient, that changes of system were necessary. Before the end of May the machinery of administration was reorganized and a new Higher Command developed, largely on the long resisted staff principle.
Thus, after repeated failures—not of the Fleet but of its directing minds in London—a complete revolution was effected in the command of the most important of all the fighting forces in the war, viz., the British Navy. It was actually brought about because criticism had shown that the old régime had first failed to anticipate and then to thwart a new kind of attack on sea communications—just as it had failed to anticipate the conditions of surface war. It was at last realized that two kinds of naval war could go on together, one almost independent of the other. A Power might command the surface of the sea against the surface force of an enemy, and do so more absolutely than had ever happened before, and yet see that command brought, for its main purposes, almost to nothing by a new naval force, from which, though naval ships could defend themselves, they seemingly could not defend the carrying and travelling ships, upon which the life of the nation and the continuance of its military effort on land depended. The revolution of May saved the situation. At last the principle of convoy, vainly urged on the old régime, was adopted, and within six months the rate at which ships were being lost was practically halved. In twelve months it had been reduced by sixty per cent.
But the departure made in the summer of 1917, though radical as to principle, was less than half-hearted as to persons. Many of the men identified with all our previous failures and responsible for the methods and plans that have led to them, were retained in full authority. The mere adoption of the staff principle did indeed bring about an effect so singular and striking as completely to transform all Allied prospects. In April, defeat seemed to be a matter of a few months only. By October it had become clear that the submarine could not by itself assure a German victory. If such extraordinary consequences could follow—exactly as it was predicted they must—from a change in system which all experience of war had proved to be essential, why, it may be asked, was the adoption of the staff principle so bitterly opposed? Partly, no doubt, because of the natural conservatism of men who have grown old and attained to high rank in a service to which they have given their lives in all devotion and sincerity. The singularity of the sailor’s training and experience tends to make the naval profession both isolated and exclusive. And that its daily life is based upon the strictest discipline, that gives absolute power to the captain of a ship because it is necessary to hold him absolutely responsible, inevitably grafts upon this exclusiveness a respect for seniority which gives to its action in every field the indisputable finality bred of the quarter-deck habit. Thus, there was no place in Admiralty organization for the independent and expert work of junior men, because no authority could attach to their counsel. It is of the essence of the staff principle that special knowledge, sound, impartial, trained judgment, grasp of principle and proved powers of constructive imagination, are higher titles to dictatorship in policy than the character and experience called for in the discharge of executive command. But to a service not bred to seeing all questions of policy first investigated, analyzed, and, finally, defined by a staff which necessarily will consist more of younger than of older men, the suggestion that the higher ranks should accept the guiding coöperation of their juniors seemed altogether anarchical. The long resistance to the establishment of a Higher Command based on rational principles may be set down to these two elements of human psychology.
That successive Governments failed to break down this conservatism must, I think, be explained by their fear of the hold which men of great professional reputation had upon the public mind and public affections. It was notable, for example, that when our original troubles came to us at the first crisis, the Government, instead of seeking the help of the youngest and most accomplished of our admirals and captains, chose as chief advisers the oldest and least in touch with our modern conditions. It was, perhaps, the same fear of public opinion that delayed the completion of the 1917 reforms until the beginning of the next year. But, with all its defects and its limitations, the solution sought of the fourth sea crisis had made the history of the past twelve months the most hopeful of any since the war began.
THE NEW ERA
The period divides itself into two unequal portions. Between June and January, 1918, was seen the slowly growing mastery of the submarine. The rate of loss was halved and the methods by which this result was achieved were applied as widely as possible. But in the next six or eight months no improvement in the position corresponding to that which followed in the first period was obtained. The explanation is simple enough. The old autocratic régime had not understood the nature of the new war any better than the nature of the old. It had from the first, under successive chief naval advisers, repudiated convoy as though it were a pestilent heresy. In June, 1917, the very men who, as absolutist advisers, had taken this attitude, were compelled to sanction the hated thing itself. It yielded exactly the results claimed for it, but no more. It was in its nature so simple and so obvious that it did not take long to get it into working order. It was the best form of defence. But defence is the weakest form of war. The stronger form, the offensive, needed planning and long preparations. In the nature of things these could not take effect either in six months or in twelve. Nor is it likely that, while the old personnel was suffered to remain at Whitehall, those engaged on the plans and charged with the preparations for this were able to work with the expedition which the situation called for. For the first six months after the revolution, then, little occurred to prove its efficiency, except the fruits of the policy which instructed opinion had forced on Whitehall. But these, so far as the final issue of the war was concerned, were surely sufficient. For the losses by submarines were brought below the danger point.