THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE. By L. Cope Cornford. Hodder & Stoughton. 7s. 6d. net.
The story of the paravane, the remarkable anti-submarine contrivance invented by Commander Burney and used by the Allied navies and also by merchant ships during the later period of the war, is told by Mr. Cope Cornford in a popular style and with considerable enthusiasm. It is possible that he is over-enthusiastic, for in a prefatory note he tells us that some naval officers and also the Admiralty consider that he exaggerates the effects of the paravane. There is no doubt, however, as the official figures themselves show, that paravanes and "Otters" (as they were called when fitted to merchant vessels) did have an enormous success. The total tonnage of H.M. ships and merchant ships definitely saved by them comes to over a quarter of a million; and the financial saving to the British Empire is estimated at approximately £100,000,000. Mr. Cope Cornford has a good deal of criticism—some open and more, we think, implied—to make against the Admiralty. Exactly how far it is justified we cannot say; but there are certainly a good many people with inside knowledge who assert that the Admiralty were decidedly cold about the paravane, even if they did not actually "crab" it. And the rewards and honours bestowed on the brilliant young officers who devoted themselves to the paravane and Otter services were not particularly generous.
SUBMARINES AND SEA POWER. By Charles Domville-Fife. Bell. 10s. 6d. net.
Mr. Domville-Fife's purpose is to discuss the importance of the submarine arm in naval warfare of the future. His treatment of the subject is very balanced and his conclusions are cautious. He gives us a great deal of interesting information about the history of submarine craft (beginning as far back as 1578) and of the submarine explosive mine. In dealing with the tactics of submarines and their influence in naval strategy, he speaks as an expert; for not only has he devoted many years to their study, but during the war he was in command of anti-submarine craft and an instructor at H.M. School of Submarine Mining. The economic influence of the submarine on this country, Mr. Domville thinks, is summed up in the words of Lord Selborne in 1915: "After the war the whole question of our agricultural and economic policy of the food production at home will have to be revised in the light of our submarine experience." But what of the League of Nations? Are we not entitled to voice our views of the future of naval warfare in the light of that? Here Mr. Domville-Fife is guarded. He looks forward "steadfastly and even hopefully towards the vivid dawn of a new era." But he is not for abandoning the old motto, Si vis pacem para bellum.
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
BEFORE THE WAR. By Viscount Haldane. Cassell. 7s. 6d. net.
THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE. By John Maynard Keynes, C.B., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Macmillans. 8s. 6d. net.
These two books must rank among the most important documents yet produced which bear upon the antecedents and the consequences of the war in so far as British policy is involved. Lord Haldane was for many years War Minister, and during the critical period of Anglo-German relations he was also a sort of supplementary Foreign Secretary whose influence over the most important department of Foreign Affairs was very great, partly because of the weight his opinion carried with Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith, and partly because of his special knowledge of Germans and Germany. His book has a double subject as it has a double object. He outlines the main elements and the principal stages in our policy versus Germany before the war, and he sketches what was done during his administration to perfect the organisation of our Army. He defends our national policy (there are interesting sidelights thrown by his personal experiences with the Emperor and among the governing classes of Prussia) on the ground that we did the best we could when we combined an earnest effort to prevent war with a resolution to be ready for it; and in his personal apologia he argues, in effect, that in the circumstances (we must not forget that the nation as a whole, and Parliament in particular, viewed military expenditure with a very jealous eye) his régime did the utmost that could have been expected. It is now commonly conceded, even by those who distrusted Lord Haldane's views in foreign affairs, and those who were bitterly against him because of his refusal to adopt universal military service, that he did a great work at the War Office. What he says about the efficiency of his Expeditionary Force ("If the warrior looked slender he was at least as well prepared for the ring as science could make him") must be universally admitted; and with his great work in that department must be coupled the creation of the Territorial Force. On the point of compulsory service Lord Haldane defends himself by saying that in 1912 the General Staff was allowed to investigate "the question whether we could or could not raise a great army." "The outcome was embodied in a report made to me by Lord Nicholson, himself a soldier who had a strong desire for compulsory service and a large army. He reported, as the result of a prolonged and careful investigation, that, alike as regarded officers and as regarded buildings and equipment, the conclusion of the General Staff was that it would be in a high degree unwise to try, during the period of unrest on the Continent, to commence a new military system." We might have become "seriously weaker before we had a chance of becoming stronger," and an enemy might have sprung on us. "I quite agreed, and not the less because it was highly improbable that the country would have looked at anything of the sort." We imagine that the one thing which should (in the light of our subsequent experience) have been done and was not done (though lack of money would have been a severe limitation to the actual accumulation of large stores, whether of rifles or of clothing) was to prepare a scheme whereunder the material for a greatly expanded force would be easily and rapidly obtained immediately an emergency had arisen.
Lord Haldane has many interesting obiter dicta. He insists on the need (never more necessary than now) for politicians to understand the meaning of the words they use, and the nature of the main conceptions which are entertained by the nation, and those which dominate their own minds. He says that his opinion of the German people remains unchanged. "They were very much like our own people, except in one thing. This was that they were trained simply to obey, and to carry out whatever they were told by their rulers. I used, during numerous unofficial tours in Germany, to wander about incognito, and to smoke and drink beer with the peasants whenever I could get the chance. What impressed me was the little part they had in directing their own government, and the little they knew about what it was doing." Lord Haldane dates this habit of mind back to the days of Frederick the Great; but is there not something to be said for the view that it is to be traced back through the period of the religious wars into the baronial Middle Ages?