This is only a hurried line written in the watches of the night.
No words written after the event can convey half so truthful or half so vivid an impression as these unstudied letters and brief operative telegrams flashing to and fro. Reading them again I feel once more the battle going on, the exhausted Belgians clinging desperately to the last few miles of soil left to their nation, their dauntless King and Queen amid the shells at Furnes; the French troops hastening up, but only in driblets; the heroic Fusiliers Marins holding Dixmude till not a fifth were left alive; our little ships barking away along the coast with the submarines stabbing at them from underneath and heavier metal opening on them every day from the shore; inundations slowly growing, a shield of merciful water rising inch by inch, hour by hour, between the fainting Belgian line and the cruel monster who had come upon them; and all the time our own men fighting against appalling odds, ten days, twenty days, thirty days, from Ypres to Armentières; nothing to send anyone, not a man, not a musket. Each night Colonel Bridges spoke to me on the telephone from the Belgian Head-quarters at Furnes. Each night we felt it might be the last time he would speak from that address. It was only very gradually towards the end of October that one began to feel that the French and Belgian troops were getting a firm grip of the line of the Yser, and that Sir John French could write, ‘The Germans will never get further west.’ But three more weeks of agony ensued before the decision at Ypres finally declared itself in favour of the British Army.
We are, I feel, entitled to treat the Antwerp episode as an integral and vital part of this tremendous battle for the Channel Ports. If we had not made our belated effort to prolong its defence, the whole after course of events would have been different, and could hardly have been better. But for the time gained at Antwerp and the arrival in such a forward situation of the British and French forces assigned so hurriedly for its relief, the impulsion of the Allied Armies towards the sea—already less than was required—must have been sensibly weakened. The great collision and battle with the German right would have taken place all the same. Perhaps the same result would have been achieved. But where? Where would the line have been drawn when the armies settled down into trenches from which they were not appreciably displaced for more than four years? At the very best the water defences, Gravelines—St. Omer—Aire, would have been secured. Dunkirk and its fine harbour would have become another nest of submarines to prey on our communications in the Channel; and Calais would have been exposed to a constant bombardment. The complications of these evils—the least that could be expected—must have reacted formidably upon the whole subsequent fortunes of the Allied Armies in France.
If this be true—and history must pronounce—the men who were responsible for the succour of Antwerp will have no reason to be ashamed of their effort. Hazard and uncertainty pervade all operations of war. It is idle to pretend that Lord Kitchener or anyone else foresaw all the consequences that flowed from the decisions of October 4. The event was very different from both hopes and expectations. But rarely in the Great War were more important results achieved by forces so limited and for losses so small, as those which rewarded this almost forlorn enterprise; nor is there in modern times, a more remarkable example of the flexibility, the celerity, and the baffling nature of that amphibious power which Britain alone wields, but which she has so often neglected.
CHAPTER XVII
THE GRAND FLEET AND THE SUBMARINE ALARM
October and November, 1914
‘Silence is the secret of war.’
Prior.
The Grand Fleet and the Submarine Alarm—The Harbour Peril—Anti-Submarine Defences—Unwarranted Reproaches—Correspondence with Sir John Jellicoe—Telegrams—Sir David Beatty’s Letter of October 17—Exertions of the Admiralty—Decisions of November 2—The Loss of the Audacious—Suppression of the News—The Hard Days of October and November, 1914—Public and Political Unrest—‘What is the Navy doing?’—Retirement of Prince Louis of Battenberg—The Return of Lord Fisher—Fisher and Wilson—Rear-Admiral Oliver becomes Chief of the Staff—The New Admiralty War Group—The Perpetual Clock—The Port and Starboard Lights.
All the anxieties recorded in the last chapter faded before our preoccupations about the Fleet. Indeed, the alarums and excursions on the Belgian Coast were at times almost a relief compared to the stress of our prime responsibilities. Everything depended upon the Fleet, and during these same months of October and November the Fleet was disquieted about the very foundations of its being. There lay the mighty ships; every man, from stoker to Admiral, was ready to die at his duty at any moment; no personal or individual fear found foothold. Still, at the summit from which we watched, one could feel a new and heart-shaking sensation. The Grand Fleet was uneasy. She could not find a resting-place except at sea. Conceive it, the ne plus ultra, the one ultimate sanction of our existence, the supreme engine which no one had dared to brave, whose authority encircled the globe—no longer sure of itself. The idea had got round—‘the German submarines were coming after them into the harbours.’