“If the Germans secretly mobilise at a moment when a third of our big ships are out of commission or are under repair, they may not only by a sudden torpedo attack cripple our battle squadrons, but may open the seas to their own cruisers and submarines. We might, possibly should, recover in time to deal with an invasion, but in the meantime our overseas trade, on which you people depend at home for food and raw materials, would have been destroyed. And until we had fully recovered, not a man or a gun could be sent over sea to help France.”
“Surely we should have some warning,” I objected.
“You won’t get it from Germany,” said he gravely. “The little old man (Roberts) is right. Germany will strike when Germany’s hour has struck. If we are ready she will have no chance at all and knows it; she will not give us a chance to be ready. When she wants to cover a secret mobilisation she will invite parties of journalists, or provincial mayors, or village greengrocers to visit Berlin and to see for themselves how peaceful her intentions are!”
That is how the Navy felt and talked during the months immediately before the War, and who shall say that their apprehensions were not well founded? What it feared was unquestionably possible, even probable. But happily for the Navy, and for these Islands and the Empire which it guards, those whom the gods seek to destroy they first drive mad. The wisdom of Germany’s rulers was by all of us immensely overrated. They fell into the utter blindness of unimaginative stupidity. They understood us so little that they thought us sure to desert our friends rather than risk the paint upon our ships and the skins upon our fat and slothful bodies. They watched us quarrelling among ourselves, talking savagely of fighting one another in Ireland—we went on doing these things until July 28th, 1914, four days before Germany attacked Belgium!—and failed to realise that the ancient fighting spirit was as strong in us as ever, however much it might seem to be smothered under the rubbish of politics and social luxury. And meanwhile, during those intensely critical weeks of July, while Parliament chattered about Ulster and politicians looked hungrily for the soft spots in one another’s throats, the Royal Navy was quietly, unostentatiously preparing for war. What the Navy then did,—moving in all things with its own silent, serene, masterful efficiency and grimly thanking God for the dense political gas clouds behind which it could conceal its movements from the enemy,—saved not only Great Britain and the Empire; it saved the civilisation of the world.
Blindly Germany went on with her preparations for war against France and Russia, including in the programme the swallowing up of little Belgium, and left us wholly out of her calculations. The German battle Fleet, which had been engaged in peace manœuvres, was cruising off the Norwegian coast. Grand Admiral von Tirpitz had never expected us to intervene, and no naval preparations were made. The Germans were in no position to interfere with our disposition, or to move their cruisers upon our trade communications. But all through those later days of imminent crisis the English First Fleet lay mobilised at Portland, whither it had moved from Spithead, until one night it slipped silently away and disappeared into the northern mists. The Second and Third Fleets had been filled up and were completely ready for war in the early summer dawn of August 3rd. The big ships rushed to their war stations stretching from the Thames to the Orkneys and commanding both outlets from the North Sea; the destroyers and submarines swarmed in the Channel and off the sand-locked German bases. The hour had struck, everything had been done exactly as had been planned. The German Fleet crept into safety through the back door of the Kattegat and Kiel, and on the evening of August 4th, the British Government declared war.
Germany, who thought to catch the Navy asleep, was herself caught. She had never believed that we either would or could fight for the integrity of Belgium. She went on blindly in her appointed way until suddenly her sight returned in a flash of bitter realisation that the Royal Navy, without firing a single shot, had won the first tremendous decisive, irreparable battle in the coming world’s war. Her chance of success at sea had disappeared for ever. Before her lay a long cruel dragging fight with the seas closed to her merchant ships and her whole Empire in a state of blockade. No wonder that then, and since, Germany’s fiercest passion of hate has been directed against us, and above all against that Royal Navy which shields us and strikes for us. Before a shot had been fired she saw herself outwitted, outmanœuvred, out-fought. “Gott strafe England!”
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT VICTORY
In naval warfare there are many actions but few battles. An action is any engagement between war vessels of any size, but a battle is a contest between ships of the battle-line—sometimes called “capital ships” upon the results of which depends the vital issues of a war. During the whole of the long contest with Napoleon, there were only two battles of this decisive kind—the Nile and Trafalgar.