Predictions that had been made long before the war came were found to be worthless; there were those who had predicted that Germany in the event of war with England would give immediate battle with her largest ships; but twelve months went by without an actual battle between superdreadnoughts. "Der Tag" had not come. There were those who had predicted that the British navy would force the German ships out of their protected harbors. "We shall dig the rats out of their holes," said Mr. Winston Churchill, British Secretary of State for the Navy in the early months of the war. Mr. Churchill was removed from his position, and twelve months passed by with the German ships still in their "holes."
Certain lessons had been taught naval authorities of all nations through the actual use of the modern battleship in war. The first year showed that the largest ships must have very high speed and long gun range. To some extent the fact that the fighting ships of nearly all of the belligerent countries were thus equipped changed battle tactics.
When the allied fleets had started their bombardment of the Turkish forts at the Dardanelles they were breaking certain well-defined rules which had been axiomatic with naval authorities. The greatest of modern battleships were designed to fight with craft of their like, but not to take issue with land fortifications. For weeks, while the fleets succeeded in silencing for a time some of the Turkish forts, it was thought that this rule no longer held good. But when, after March 19, 1915, the fleets ceased attempting to take the passage without military cooperation, the worth of the rule was reestablished. The ease with which the bombarding ships were made victims of hostile submarines was greatly instrumental in making the rule again an axiom.
The naval supremacy of the allied powers brought them certain advantages—advantages which they had without winning a decisive victory. Germany and Austria were cut off from the Western Hemisphere, and were troubled, in consequence, by shortage in food for their civilian populations to a greater or lesser degree. This was perhaps a negative benefit derived by the Allies from their naval supremacy; the affirmative benefit was that their own communications with the Western Hemisphere were maintained, enabling them not only to get food for their civilian populations, but arms and munitions for their armies; and even financial arrangements, which, if their emissaries could not pass back and forth freely could not have been made, depended on their control of the high seas.
They were able to keep the Channel clear of submarines long enough to permit the passage of the troops, which England from time to time during the first year of the war sent to the Continent, and permitted the participation of the troops of the British overseas dominions, the troops from Canada joining those in France, and the troops from New Zealand and Australia taking their places in the trenches along the Suez Canal and on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Thus, to a certain extent, the advantage of continuous railroad communication which was enjoyed by the Teutonic allies "inside" the arena of military operations was offset by the naval communication maintained by the Entente Powers "outside" the arena of military operations.
CHAPTER XXI
FIGHTS OF THE SUBMARINES
When, on the 5th of February, 1915, the German admiralty proclaimed a "war zone" around the British Isles and announced that it would fight the sea power of the Allies with submarines, a new era in naval warfare had opened. In all previous wars, and in the earlier months of the Great War, submarines were employed as auxiliaries to the larger naval units. The Germans were the first to use them as separate units. The idea of sending a fleet of submarines out on to the high seas was a new one, and had been impossible in the last war in which they had been used—that between Russia and Japan. But the improvements which had been made in their design and equipment since then had made an actual cruising submarine possible, and made possible the new phase of naval warfare inaugurated by the German admiralty.
While Germany was the last great sea power to adopt the submarine as a weapon, both England and Germany, in the years immediately preceding the war, had spent the same amounts of money on this sort of craft—about $18,000,000—but while the Germans had later given as much attention to them as to any other sort of naval craft, the British authorities did not figure on employing the submarine as a separate offensive tactical unit being sufficiently equipped in large ships carrying large guns. And being weaker in capital ships Germany was compelled to rely upon underwater warfare in her campaign of attrition. Not only were the naval authorities of the rest of the world uninformed about the improvements that German submarines carried, but they were fooled even as to the actual number which Germany had built.