Carlyon Bellairs

“ No man can forecast the will of a many-headed democracy. Alarmists can play on its nerves as orators do on its passions. The one makes fook rush in where angels fear to tread; the other shouts 'Fire!' to an excitable crowd. ”

“ They will see how useless is a weak detached force, and how strong is a combined one. 'Only numbers can annihilate,' said Nelson; and even when the Colonies are as rich as Holland, Denmark, Spain, or Belgium, they cannot hope to do better than those countries which are unable to afford battleships.
The so-called battleships of Austria are quite unfit to lie in the line of battle, while to build a Dreadnought outside Great Britain or Germany would probably cost about two and a half millions sterling, or nearly as much as we raise by a penny on the income tax. ”

“ Since all the initial stages of a great British war must be on the sea, and the security of the United Kingdom, its Empire and its trade, depends on the ability of the Royal Navy to defend the sea communications, the policy of a British Government derives a unity of purpose which is the envy of European Powers forced to regard their land frontiers as exposed to the eruption of great conscript armies. ”

“ As nations become richer, they act very much as individuals in devoting more attention to insurance. The advantage of a common navy over separate ones, both from the point of view of efficiency and economy, are so obvious that there need be no fear of a permanent tendency to create separate navies. The future might be safeguarded if far-seeing statesmen will bring colonial representatives more and more into our councils. At present the Colonies resemble the past history of the United States in looking inwards to internal development. ”

“ These sums represent an annual tax, for expenditure sanctioned during the last ten years, of £1,500,000. That great repairing establishments are absolutely necessary to the navy is a self-evident proposition, but to disperse the facilities of these establishments by a multiplication of dockyards in different parts of the world may easily result in loss rather than gain, and when done at the expense of fighting strength it is as if a general, having asked for reinforcements, is sent ambulances. With navies it is very much as it is in business—the large establishments win the orders. ”

“ The experience of France shows that every attempt 'to turn' the position of the battleship, if we may use a military expression, has resulted in complete disillusionment. The French Parliament has now passed a vote which practically pledges the Government to build ship for ship against Germany, a course which, if pursued for a generation at the present rate of German shipbuilding, would entail, under the two-Power standard, a programme of four battleships a year for Great Britain. ”

“ Much the same consideration should induce us to regard with suspicion the policy of shipbuilding in the dockyards, since it is notorious that the work is more cheaply performed by private firms.
Many conclusions follow on a policy of sea supremacy, which lead to vast economies. The distribution of the fleets for war purposes instead of police work is a case in point. Sea supremacy means safe communications for the predominant Power. We can, therefore, rely on merchant vessels to carry the bulk of our naval stores and coal. The very reverse has always been argued and carried out in practice. ”

“ If a thorough knowledge of strategy had been brought to bear on both the class of ships built and their designs, a smaller building programme would have left us in an equally unassailable position. If it were realized that the battleships of a predominant Power always afford a secure base of refuge to the cruisers, which, even when out of sight, can communicate by wireless telegraphy, we should hardly be building hybrid cruiser-battleships to do the work of scouts and look-out vessels. ”

“ The wealth of America is the result of internal development, the annual ton-mileage of its railways being over six times as great as that of the United Kingdom. This development was very largely the result of the outward flow of British capital I once asked the President of the New York Chamber of Commerce what would happen when the rate of interest in the United States settled down to a safe and low basis. ”

“ The policy which devotes one-half the expenditure, and nine out of eleven soldiers—whether regulars, militia, yeomanry, or volunteers—to the work of passively waiting for the blows of an enemy, can only be compared to that of a football team which ties up nine out of eleven of its men in the goal. The comparison is unfair only in respect of the fact that the goal in football is really liable to be threatened, whereas in strategy the British goal is already covered by the operations of a strong navy. ”

“ No ability and no exchequer can retrieve grave administrative blunders. The training of the personnel is, for instance, the work of years. At Trafalgar the training revealed inestimable advantages on the side of Nelson's fleet, for the mere enumeration of guns shows a superiority of 22 per cent for the allies. In his progress to Tsushima, the Japanese engineer pursued his ideal of mechanical efficiency from early youth upwards no less relentlessly than did the sucking Togos on deck that of fighting efficiency. Perfection it is given to no system to attain ”

“ The course of a diplomatic contest in which Great Britain is engaged must, therefore, largely depend upon the relative sense of power derived through the estimate framed of the strength of the respective navies. Organization, coal, and ammunition necessarily play their part as bearing on the training of the personnel, but, other things being equal, it is the battleships which are chiefly regarded. ”

“ The present programme of two battleships a year can easily be rivalled by Great Britain. In a few years Germany will cease to enjoy the advantages a new navy confers of a small pensioner or ineffective list, and but little wastage of ships to replace. For fifteen years Great Britain has nearly averaged a programme of three battleships and four to five cruisers, and could have obtained the same results with a smaller programme if the wise, economical method had been adopted of building a ship as rapidly as possible. ”

“ On the other hand, the battleships are based only on their own strength. They must always be our first care. With them we obtain security, so that we can adjust and augment our forces during war, and, working to standard patterns, all types of vessels could be built in a year instead of sixteen to eighteen months, as is now estimated, or over three years, as has hitherto been our average for battleships. In the war of American Independence we replaced all the waste of war, and increased the navy from 188 battleships to 178, and from 97 frigates to 201. ”

“ His reply was that capital would flow outwards—history would repeat itself; so that the present population, wealth, and progress of the British Colonies are no measure of the rapid increase which may be destined to come when capital flows in more and more from America and the older countries. ”

“ In the case of India it is sometimes held that the situation is far more complicated, but if it be conceded for the sake of argument that India cannot be adequately defended on its land frontiers by the existing British and native garrison, it must also be acknowledged that the ability to send reinforcements depends absolutely on the adequacy of the Royal Navy. In this connection the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is a factor of considerable importance. ”

“ As compared with the United States, France, and Russia, the German building resources are cheaper in their work and more efficient, but they cannot be compared with those of Great Britain, which exceed all Europe combined. In 1901 the United Kingdom built 983,133 tons of shipping as compared with the record output for Germany of 132,873 tons in 1903. The United States has a higher output than Germany, but it is almost exclusively for the coastal, river, and lake trades, which are a national monopoly. ”

“ This great effort is being made under the grave disadvantage of heavy expenditure connected with the defence of three important land frontiers, and a drain on resources through the military campaigns in the colonies. Great as are the advantages derived by Germany through the concentration of her navy, it involves the sacrifice of both colonies and distant commerce in face of a Power which can more than hold its own in home waters, and is in a position to attack elsewhere. ”

“ Thus, when the Howe lost her rudder in the Levant, it was found to be the speediest and most efficient course to send her to England and back, rather than to the dockyards at Malta and Gibraltar, which we have so assiduously nursed at the cost of many millions. As for the mere provision of docks, it will generally be found that at any port on a great trade route, private capital is only too anxious to provide those accessories to commerce and navies without any cost to the taxpayer, or, as at Colombo, with the assistance of a small subsidy. ”

“ The gravest reasons can be urged against any measure which might fetter this country in adjusting its principal naval defence of battleships, not solely in accordance with the variations of her policy and the number of probable battleships which may threaten her, but also in the provision of the requisite margin of safety against the accidents of navigation and possible successful operations on the part of torpedo vessels, submarine boats, and submarine mines. To state that naval campaigns are decided by battleships does not preclude the possibility of some losses through other causes. ”

“ Apart from the low national debt, the best German assets in this rivalry are the cheapness of the personnel, as compared with our own and the American, and the good administration, which has never wasted money in copying the crazes to which France has so often been subjected. ”

“ We see from this instance that the National Debt is swollen by costly wars that might have been avoided by convincingly adequate organization, or, at any rate, curtailed by rapid blows at the outset of the war. ”

“ Cardiff alone exports in a year more than the navy uses in thirty years. Battleships fell in the estimation of all but the historical school, and, therefore, tended to be neglected. The powerful influence of the aged Duke of Wellington was used in favour of shore preparations for defence, and it was inevitable that the War Office should overlap naval functions by sedentary defences to resist invasion or coastal attacks. ”

“ The path chosen, however, is one along which Germany will be forced to follow Great Britain with much reluctance. She is bound to involve herself in a very large expenditure, which is merely accessory to fighting strength, and not the provision of fighting strength itself. This expense was certainly not foreseen when the second German Navy Bill was passed in 1900 for an extraordinary expenditure of £94,000,000 by the year 1920 as regards works, and the year 1916 as regards ships. ”

“ The military forces became less and less mobile, losing altogether the amphibious power, conferred by maritime strength, of being able to choose their striking point, or to assist the navy to capture ships protected by fortifications. ”

“ Indeed, one of the most significant changes since Nelson's time, when we found it indispensable that we should deal with the battleships of the Portuguese and Danish navies, is that the business of owning battleships has become far too expensive for any but the seven great maritime Powers, and of these Italy, in spite of spasmodic programmes, tends to drop out of the race. ”

“ We have by no means, however, laid bare the full extent of the evil. A very large part of the £84,000,000 being spent on naval works out of loans, and of the £18,000,000 on military works, is for purely sedentary purposes. ”