SS Great Britain

“ Never has Great Britain been put to such a test. Never since the spacious days of Elizabeth has she been in such danger. Never, in any crisis, has she risen to so lofty a height of self-sacrifice and achievement. In the giant struggle against Napoleon, England's own safety was secured by the demoralisation of the French fleet. But in this contest the German naval authorities have at their disposal a fleet of extraordinary efficiency, and have devised for use on an extended scale the most formidable and destructive of all instruments of marine warfare. ”

“ All the fame and glory which the British navy has acquired at sea, have been dearly paid for in the sufferings and misery of that ill-fated people at home—sufferings occasioned in a great measure by the expense of that stupendous establishment. But without such a navy the United States could make a serious impression upon Great Britain, even at sea. We could have, within six months after a declaration of war, hundreds of privateers in every part of the ocean. We could harass, if not destroy, the vast and profitable commerce which she is constantly carrying on to every part of this continent. ”

“ If we had had a Navy as great as that of the British Empire, do you believe that Great Britain ever would have seized one of our ships in this war? Do you believe that Germany ever would have sunk an American ship? I have no more doubt in my mind that Germany would have carefully abstained from interfering with our commerce or firing upon our flag, if we had had a strong Navy, than I have of my existence. ”

“ To the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Empires that owe allegiance to the British Crown, to the United States of America, sea-power is at once their origin and the fundamental essential of their continued free and independent existence. And it is their predominant races that have produced the world’s greatest sea fighters and sea writers. It is to the British Fleet that the world owes its promise of safety from German diabolism bred of autocracy. It is to sea-power that America must look if she is to finish the work the Allies have begun. ”

“ Aware that Britain’s navy was vastly superior to her own, and that the only hope for success in a great encounter would be when the British navy had been reduced, Germany kept her Dreadnoughts and other big craft safe in her harbours, contenting herself with sending out submarines to strike sudden blows at the British patrolling vessels guarding the seas. ”

“ Great Britain gave the Navy what most voters think are needed for a war, especially such things as the papers talked of most, like dreadnoughts, guns, and torpedoes. But there was a lack of light cruisers and destroyers to fight off the same kind of German craft, guard the seaways, and kill the sneaking submarines. The docks in which ships are built and mended make little show for the money spent on them; so the Government never asked Parliament for enough till the war broke out, which meant that some dreadnoughts had to be more or less cramped so as to fit into the old-fashioned docks. ”

“ The spectacle of the burning ship which the inhabitants of Gibraltar had witnessed from the top of their renowned rock, was indirectly the work of their own Government. Why might not this Federal ship, when captured, have been taken into Gibraltar, there to await the disposition which a prize-court should make of her, instead of being burned? Because Great Britain would not permit it. Why might she not have been taken into some other neutral port, for this purpose? Because all the world had followed the lead of Great Britain, the chief maritime power of the earth. ”

“ Perhaps the first of the flashes as of lightning by which we have seen the drama of the past 365 days is that which shows us the part played by the British Navy. What a part it has been! Do we even yet recognize its importance? Have our faithful and loyal Allies a full sense of its tremendous effect on the fortunes of the campaign? On Sunday, August 2, two days before the dispatch of Great Britain’s ultimatum to Germany, we saw thousands of our naval reserve flying off by special boats and trains to their ships on our east and south coasts. ”

“ The British Grand Fleet, in fact, is a subject that stands alone in power and value and in difficulties. It classifies itself with nothing else. Since over and over again it has saved these islands from invasion when nothing else could have saved them and since during this war in particular it has saved the world from German conquest—as every Englishman believes—it lies in their reverence and their gratitude and their abiding convictions as a necessary and perpetual shield so long as Great Britain shall endure. ”

“ A Government that is surprised in a matter relating to war is already half defeated.
The creation of the German navy is the creation of means that could be used to challenge Great Britain's sea power and all that depends upon it. There has been no such challenge these hundred years, no challenge so formidable as that represented by the new German fleet these three hundred years. It brings with it a crisis in the national life of England as great as has ever been known; yet this crisis finds the British nation divided, unready and uncertain what leadership it is to expect. ”

“ So, whether by sea or land or air, whether as warriors or as civilians, the people of Great Britain gave their united all to the noblest cause on earth. And, when the war ended, Great Britain had the biggest army as well as the biggest navy in the world—biggest not only in absolute numbers but also biggest in proportion to the whole number of men fit to bear arms. ”

“ Interdiction of enemy trade has always been the great weapon of sea power; and hence, though mines, submarines, and the menace of the High Seas Fleet itself made a close blockade of the German coast impossible, Great Britain in the World War steadily extended her efforts to cut off Germany's intercourse with the overseas world. Germany, on the other hand, while unwilling or unable to take the risks of a contest for surface control of the sea, waged cruiser warfare on British and Allied commerce, first by surface vessels, and, when these were destroyed, by submarines. ”

“ It is, indeed, to us, a home picture—the only one we trust to have for many years to come—of the wide-spread evils of war in these modern days. But it is a picture quite unique in its nature; for the nation to which these seventeen fine ships belong has a Navy perhaps second only to that of Great Britain, and the enemy with which she has to cope, is but a schism from herself, possessed of no port that is not blockaded, and owning not more than five or six vessels on the high seas; and yet there is no apathy and nothing to blame on the part of the United States Navy. ”

“ Was it not by such ships as this that the great Protector raised the name of Britain to such a height as exceeds all we read of in the history of ancient or modern nations? What braver admirals, more skilful soldiers, more valiant captains, stouter-hearted mariners, have flourished than those whose cannon flamed in thunder from the sides of such ships as this? ”

“ The power of Great Britain was sea power in its widest sense, commercial and naval; against it, therefore, he aimed to effect such a combination as would both destroy her commerce and cripple her navy. The impotence of France and Spain, united, to injure the one or the other had been clearly shown by repeated defeats, and by the failure of the commerce-destroying so industriously carried on during seven years of war. Far from decaying or languishing, the commerce of Great Britain throve everywhere with redoubled vigor, and her fleets rode triumphant in all seas. ”

“ But this aroused public indignation to the breaking point in support of the war members of the cabinet. Sir Edward Grey, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, had his way.
The British navy was as thoroughly prepared for an emergency as the German army. It had no illusions as to the nature of its task or of its responsibility to the nation. Britain had superior resources in shipbuilding to Germany. She had a fleet superior in every class of ship, and she had led the world in naval progress—both her dreadnoughts and her battle cruisers being of a later type than her rival's. ”

“ But everybody knows that some such special laws are necessary in war time; there is no nation in Europe which attempts to do without such laws, and Mr. Bullard makes no attempt to show that any other nation applies them more leniently than England does. As to the fortunes made by shippers, why drag in the word "British"? With the German merchant ships out of use, with Allied and neutral ships sunk to the number of some hundreds by submarines and extensively commandeered by the various governments for war purposes, there is an extreme shortage of ships together with an immense demand. ”

“ Would Germany in profound peace have been allowed by Great Britain to build an enormous fleet of submarines which could have no other object than the starvation and ruin of this island through the sinking of unarmed merchant ships? Would Germany have waited to attack France while England raised a powerful conscript army to go to her aid?
Every event must be judged in fair relation to the circumstances of the time, and only in such relation. ”

“ The ruthlessness of the German rears itself like a sordid shadow against the background of Anglo-Saxon and Latin gallantry and heroism—a diminishing shadow, thank God, and thank, also, the navy of Great Britain and of the United States. ”

“ As occasion will prove too, when the time next comes for Great Britain to stand to her arms once more in defence on the sea of her rights and the honour of the flag against a European foe, the enemy, whosoever he may be, will find the spirit of the Cornwallis's and Rodneys and Faulknors and the Gardiners of the older day—to name no other, no more recent names—burning as brightly as of yore in the breasts of those who in that hour will officer and man the war-ships of the British Fleet. ”

“ The doctrine of the freedom of the sea which Germany has suddenly begun to preach at the top of its voice is yet another proof of either the entire absence of any sense of humour in the German mind, or of a morbid condition of the German conscience. For Great Britain, the geographical distribution of her Empire makes an overwhelming superiority in naval power a condition of its existence; but the seas of the planet, under her supremacy, have been free to every flag—except the black flag of the pirate. She has never abused her sea-power. ”

“ What has Great Britain to rely on in such a crisis but the energy of its seamen and the might of its navy, which might at least enable it to preserve its connexion with its own colonies, and maintain, as during the Continental blockade, its commerce with Transatlantic nations? And yet this is the moment which our rulers have selected for destroying the Navigation Laws, so long the bulwark of our mercantile marine, and permitting all the world to make those inroads on our shipping, which have already been partially effected by the nations with whom we have concluded reciprocity treaties! ”

“ But what could a repeller and half a dozen crabs do against the combined force of the Royal Navy,—a navy which had in the last few years regained its supremacy among the nations, and which had made Great Britain once more the first maritime power in the world? ”

“ There was no naval Power that was the least jealous of Great Britain. The submarine campaign had disgusted all with Germany’s sea ethics, and the whole world would have rejoiced had sea victory, which was necessary before the submarine could be finally defeated, been won. ”

“ Should we enter the war as an ally of Great Britain, and not then be at war with Japan, we envisage the British asking us for widespread naval assistance. Roughly, they would want us, in the Western Atlantic Ocean from Cape Sable to Cape Horn, to protect shipping against raiders and submarine activities. ”

“ The essentials of the attack are easy enough to tabulate. First, Germany would have to concentrate in the North Sea the largest force of capital ships that it was possible to equip. Her own force I have already enumerated. Had Germany contemplated war on Great Britain she would, of course, not have sent the Goeben away to the Straits. The nucleus of the German Fleet, then, would have been twenty and not nineteen ships. ”

“ Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. ”

“ Glance for a moment at a map of Europe—it will be seen that Great Britain lies like a huge breakwater across the sea approaches to Northern Europe, with Ireland as a smaller breakwater across the approaches to Great Britain. We realize that in the Great War, Germany was in the most unfavourable position possible for blockading England’s sea communications, her submarines having first to get outside this breakwater through a narrow outlet sown with mines and closely watched, and on completion of this mission make the same hazardous return to their bases. ”

“ You will be doing a good work if you can persuade people at headquarters to abandon their belief that Great Britain can be starved to submission. Unfortunately their other belief, viz., that we can cut off her supplies of ore and pit-props, will also have to be abandoned.
“Certainly, the achievements of our submarines have been amazing. At their present rate they will enormously diminish the British tonnage figures, and raise the hatred of everything German to boiling point; but they will not, unfortunately, lead to such an end of the war as our Pan-Germans desire. ”