Sir Henry John Newbolt

“ In the trenches, in the air, in the fleet, you will see the same steady skilful British courage almost universally exemplified. But in the submarine war, the discipline needed is even more absolute, the skill even more delicate, the ardour even more continuous and self-forgetful; and all these demands are even more completely fulfilled.
This is fortunate, and doubly fortunate; for the submarine war has proved to be the main battlefield of our spiritual crusade, as well as a vital military campaign. The men engaged in it have been marked out by fate, as our champions in the contest of ideals. ”

“ Our Destroyer Service is perhaps as efficient, and as dashing, as anything ever seen in the way of organised human activity. It is long established, and its very perfection seems almost to stand in the way of our wonder at its achievement. The performance of our trawlers and drifters, on the other hand, is the more astonishing because it was an afterthought, the work of a service called into being—suddenly created, as it were, out of nothing—to meet the need of a grave moment which no imagination could well have provided against. ”

“ We have long been regretting that the work and the fame of our Submarine Service are for the most part hushed to a kind of undertone. We cannot speak of them as we wish, lest the enemy should overhear and profit by information which he is unable to get for himself. But there are victories that cannot be concealed—blows which must and will reverberate, now and for ages to come. The work of the Navy at Ostend and Zeebrugge may openly be spoken of as it deserves. ”

“ In the old days, among the cool and determined captains of our race, there were always a certain number of hot heads—‘men of courage without discipline, of enthusiasm without reason, of will without science.’ The best of them, like Sir Richard Grenville, had the luck to die conspicuously, in their great moments, and so to leave us an example of the spirit that defies odds, and sets men above the fear of death. ”

“ THE U-BOAT BLOCKADE
Nothing in the history of the past four years has more clearly brought out the difference between the civilised and the savage view of war, than the record of the German U-boat campaign. All civilised men are agreed, and have for centuries been agreed, about war. In their view war may be unavoidable, in so far as all order and security are ultimately dependent on force; but it is a lamentable necessity, and when unnecessary—that is, when undertaken for any object whatever except defence against aggression or tyranny—it is an abominable thing, a violation of human nature. ”

“ It is not beyond imagination to conceive a net so light and large of mesh, that it will diminish by no more than one knot the speed of the ship which carries it, and will yet catch and deflect a torpedo in the act of passing through it. For it must be remembered that the real problem is not how to stop a torpedo in its full 30-knot career, but how to prevent it from striking the ship with its head at an angle not too fine for the detonator to be fired. A turn of the helm, or the mere wave from the cut-water of a fast ship, has often sent a torpedo running harmlessly away along the quarter. ”

“ It was, therefore, possible for our submarines to stop an occasional ship with impunity, or to call up a destroyer and send a prize into port; and in the narrow waters of the Baltic and the Sea of Marmora, supply ships and merchantmen were captured and destroyed by them with every regard for the laws of humanity. But the German submarines had no fleet at sea to back their attempted blockade, and German war policy therefore took the downward course, hacking a way through the rules, and sacrificing, for the hope of victory, the very foundations of civilised human life. ”

“ Often it is the most patriotic and intelligent who are the most distressed at being kept in the dark. They understand the dangers of a great war, and they desire, above all things, not to live in a fool’s paradise. They know that they can bear to hear the worst, and they feel that they deserve to hear the best. The anti-submarine campaign has especially tried their patience. ”

“ Most Englishmen can understand the pure joy of onset, the freedom of the moment when everything has been given for the hope of winning one objective; but it has been the more characteristic way of our people—at any rate for the last five centuries—to double courage with coolness, and fight not only their hardest but their best. From Cressy to Waterloo, and from Mons to Arras, we have won many battles by standing steadily and shooting the attack to pieces. Charges our men have made, but under discipline and in the nick of opportunity. ”

“ For every man of our national birth and breeding would feel, when he was told the story of such heroes, not only their superiority but their likeness to himself. ‘There,’ he would say, ‘but for lack of fortune, or opportunity, or courage, or stature, there goes John Smith.’ It is admiration which helps us to feel that, and a mean spirit which conceals it from us. ”

“ Before the boat dives, there is time for a good deal to be taken in. The interior seems large beyond expectation. This is partly an illusion, produced by the vista of the compartments, fore and aft of the central control where you are standing. The bulkhead doors being all open at this moment, you can see into the engine and motor rooms towards the stern, and forward through the battery compartment to the bow torpedo-tubes. The number of men seems large too, and they are all busy; but you note that every part of them is more active than their feet—there is very little coming and going. ”

“ The accentuation of submarine warfare was a natural consequence. You Socialists are also guilty because, to the very last, you gave the old regime the credits for carrying on the War.’
The Germans do not yet realise the crime they confess; they have corrupted one of the oldest and noblest bonds in human life—the brotherhood of ‘them that go down to the sea in ships, and have their business in great waters.’ And this they have done because they are, by nature, not seamen but savages. ”

“ They have sunk without warning women and children, doctors and nurses, neutrals and wounded men, not by tens or hundreds but by thousands. They have publicly rejoiced over these murders with medals and flags, with songs and school holidays. They have not only broken the rules of international law; they have with unparalleled cruelty, after sinking even neutral ships, shot and drowned the crews in open boats, that they might leave no trace of their crimes. The men who have done—and are still doing—these things have courage of a kind. ”

“ Water, being much less elastic than air, conveys the shock of a blow far more completely; and of course, in such a case, a submarine vessel, being entirely surrounded by water, would suffer much more from the concussion than a ship with only part of its hull below the surface.
If we take account of these obvious difficulties, and remember that there are others of which we know nothing, we shall realise that the destruction of a U-boat by one of our own submarines can only be accomplished by a combination of skill, courage, and good fortune. ”

“ You carry on, in hope of something nearer, and suddenly a much larger object comes into the field of vision. A ship, of course, though it does not look like any ship you have ever seen; and you are asked to guess its distance and direction. You are bewildered at first; for as you were moving the lens rapidly to starboard, the vessel came in rapidly to port, and as her dazzle-paint makes her stern indistinguishable from her bows, you continue to think she is steaming in that direction. ”

“ The existence of a submarine is so precarious—its chance of surviving a single direct hit is so slight—that the mere sound of a gun will almost always be enough to make it submerge completely—unless it can engage the enemy, with superior gun-power, at a range of its own choosing. When Captain Weddigen had already hit the Aboukir, the Hogue, and the Cressy, and all three were sinking, the sound of the Cressy’s guns was enough to cause his disappearance, though it is very improbable that the shooting was really dangerous ”

“ There is no German cunning that cannot be matched by British science and discipline, and no German brutality that cannot be overmatched by British daring and endurance. This has been proved a hundred times in the course of the submarine war, and never more brilliantly than by the captains of the Q-boats, of whom the pattern for all time is Gordon Campbell, till yesterday known only as ‘The Mystery Star Captain’ of the British Navy. ”

“ You begin to think that the ingenuity at command of the nation has been underestimated. But this ship is nothing of a dazzle, the Commander tells you—he can show you one whose cut-water seems always to be moving at a right angle to her stern! ”

“ Life is now a matter of minutes and feet. At 12.15, the boat goes down to eighteen feet, but is still bumping badly. At 12.19, Commander Goodhart stops her and comes silently to the surface. The destroyer is there, close on our starboard beam. At 12.20, we dive again, as slowly as we dare, and at seventeen feet we glide away on our course, the depth of water mercifully increasing as we go. For a long time we seem to be escaping. Then, at 2.10 A.M., we strike bottom again at eighteen feet. An hour more, and we rise to the surface, only to see the destroyer on our port beam. ”

“ A prompt cry from the look-out, a steersman ready to put his helm over instantly, and the torpedo goes bubbling past, a few feet ahead or astern, or comes in on a tangent and runs harmlessly along the ship’s side without exploding. Then away it goes across the open sea, until the compressed air is exhausted, the engine stops, and the mechanical sinker sends it to the ocean bed, which must be fairly strewn with dead torpedoes by this time; for as we know, to our advantage, the proportion of misses to hits is very large in the U-boat’s record. ”

“ An epic—the common definition tells us—is ‘a theme of action treated in heroic proportions and style.’ ‘The Dynasts’ certainly is that—the struggle is great, the issues are great, the men are great. Even more than their heroic fighting, their speech and manners in the moment of action are such as to show unfailingly by what a distinctive and ever-present spirit national life may be sustained and magnified. ”

“ It must be clear, from the beginning to the end of the vast record, that the British blood has equalled and surpassed its ancient fame—that in every rank the old virtues of courage, coolness, and endurance, of ordered energy and human kindliness, have been, not the occasional distinction, but the common characteristics of our men. ”