You ask for information in regard to a prophecy I made before the War in relation to Submarines, because, you say, that my statement made in 1912 that Submarines would utterly change Naval Warfare is now making a stir. However, I made that same statement in 1904, fourteen years ago.
I will endeavour to give you a brief, but succinct, synopsis of the whole matter. I have to go some way back, but as you quite correctly surmise the culmination of my beliefs since 1902 was the paper on Submarine Warfare which I prepared six months before the War.[9]...
In May, 1912 (I am working backwards), Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, and Mr. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, came to Naples, where I then was, and I was invited to be Chairman of a Royal Commission on Oil Fuel for the Navy, and on Oil Engines. What most moved me to acceptance was to push the Submarine, because oil and the oil engine had a special bearing on its development.
Continuing my march backwards in regard to the Submarine, there was a cessation in the development of the Submarine after I left the Admiralty as First Sea Lord on January 25th, 1910. When I returned as First Sea Lord to the Admiralty in October, 1914, there were fewer Submarines than when I left the Admiralty in January, 1910, and the one man incomparably fitted to develop the Submarine had been cast away in a third-class Cruiser stationed in Crete. No wonder! An Admiral, holding a very high appointment afloat, derided Submarines as playthings!
In one set of manœuvres the young officer commanding a Submarine, having for the third time successfully torpedoed the hostile Admiral’s Flagship, humbly said so to the Admiral by signal, and suggested the Flagship going out of action. The answer he got back by signal from the Admiral was: “You be damned!”
I am still going on tracing back the Submarine. In 1907, King Edward went on board the “Dreadnought” for a cruise and witnessed the manœuvres of a Submarine Flotilla. I then said to His Majesty: “The Submarine will be the Battleship of the future!”
In February, 1904, Admiral Count Montecuccoli, the Austrian Minister of Marine, invited himself to stay with me at Portsmouth, where I was then Commander-in-Chief. He had been Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian Navy at Pola when I was Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean. We became very great friends out there. The Austrian Fleet gave us a most cordial reception. He also was an ardent believer in the Submarine. That’s why he invited himself to stay, but I refused to let him see our Submarines at Portsmouth, which were then advancing by leaps and bounds. Admiral Bacon was then the admirable Captain in charge of Submarines, and he did more to develop the Submarine than anyone living. The Submarine is not the weapon of the weak. Had it only been properly used and developed, it’s the weapon of the strong, if you use your Naval Supremacy properly, and
seize the exits of the enemy, and make a blockade effectual by Submarines and Mines, which our predominant and overwhelming naval superiority renders feasible.
All that was required to meet a German Submarine Menace was the possession of Antwerp, the Belgian Coast, and the Baltic. We could quite easily have accomplished these three objects.
Nearly three months before the War, before the meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence held on May 14th, 1914, I sent the Prime Minister the following Memorandum which I had written in the previous January; and added:—