Submarine Warfare, Past, Present, and Future

by Herbert C. Fyfe

The whole trend of modern invention has been to the advantage of weaker nations. Earl St. Vincent described under-water methods as “a mode of war which they, who commanded the seas, did not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of it.” It is quite true that Great Britain would sooner trust to her guns and her line-of-battle ships than to her torpedoes and torpedo craft in actions on the high seas, but owing to other nations—admittedly weaker—having adopted the torpedo, she has no choice but to adopt it also in order to maintain her naval supremacy. So long as she provides herself not only with methods of submarine attack, but also with means of warding off the under-water attacks of the enemy, other nations are not likely to wrest the command of the seas from her.

It is idle to lament the advancement of Science. Man is an inventive animal, and is ever trying to inaugurate new devices and improve on old ones. For hundreds of years the sailing ship held the field, and guns and cannon underwent but little change. During the “Wonderful Century,” however, changes began in earnest. The wooden sailing ship disappeared, and the steam-driven ironclad took its place, whilst rifled ordnance, high explosive shells, and powerful propellants were introduced.

The fish torpedo made its appearance, and the swift torpedo vessel followed in its wake, and we are now threatened with submarine boats, turbine-driven men-of-war, and aerial machines for the launching of aerial torpedoes both on armies and on fleets.

What the future has in store none can foresee, and until the next great naval battle between first-class Powers comes to pass the value of modern engines of warfare will remain doubtful. All that is certain at present is that Great Britain cannot afford to dispense with mines, torpedoes, and submarine boats.

We may seem to have wandered a long way from the “morality of submarine warfare,” but our purpose has been to show that when certain people argue—as they do seriously in this year of grace—that torpedo warfare should be declared contrary to the laws and customs of war, they are, to a certain extent, influenced by the fact that the torpedo is a weapon which Great Britain could very well do without, provided it was tabooed by other nations.

No one, not even a member of the Peace Society, would urge the suppression of the Lee-Enfield, or the quick-firer, because Great Britain relies on these for the maintenance of her place in the front rank of the nations of the world, and the argument as to the “illegitimacy” of the torpedo depends largely on the fact that other nations gain and Great Britain loses by its adoption.

There have been persons who have argued in favour of giving no quarter to crews of torpedo boats and submarines that might fall into our hands, and have suggested that we could explain such action to the other Powers, to whose advantage it is to use such weapons, by saying that though we had been driven to employ such methods, we were forced to treat the practice with severity. Such a course of action would cut both ways, and we suspect our own torpedoists would be very much averse to it.

Strange engines of warfare and new modes of fighting are received by the bulk of a nation, whose instincts are conservative and whose minds are incapable of imagining a state of things other than that which prevails at the moment, in much the same way as are new inventions. They are first of all scouted as impossible; then, if possible, of no utility; and finally, when they have been universally adopted, they are declared to be no novelties at all. Just as many old ladies have been heard to declare that they will never travel by the Two-penny Tube, so nations have been known to disclaim all intention of using particular weapons. Yet after a time we find the old ladies in the Tube and the nations employing the weapons. Familiarity breeds contempt.

The earliest man—Homo sapiens—fought with his fists, his legs, and his teeth. Gradually he made for himself weapons, deriving his first instruction in their manufacture by observing the ways in which the animal creation fought one another. His earliest weapons were made of wood, bone, and stone, and in due course there was evolved the spear, the waddy, the boomerang, the hatchet, the tomahawk, the bow and arrow, the pike, the lance, the axe, the sword, and other implements.

It is exceedingly probable that the adoption of a new engine of warfare by a tribe would be condemned by another tribe—to whom it had not occurred to use it—as illegitimate, but it is equally probable that while sturdily protesting against the use of one weapon the tribe would be slily endeavouring to procure one more deadly still.