These papers are sufficient to show that we did not ignore the dangers that lay before us or neglect the attempt to penetrate their mysteries. It is easy to underrate the difficulty of such work in days of peace.

In time of war there is great uncertainty as to what the enemy will do and what will happen next. But still, once you are at war the task is definite and all-dominating. Whatever may be your surmises about the enemy or the future, your own action is circumscribed within practical limits. There are only a certain number of alternatives open. Also, you live in a world of reality where theories are constantly being corrected and curbed by experiment. Resultant facts accumulate and govern to a very large extent the next decision.

But suppose the whole process of war is transported out of the region of reality into that of imagination. Suppose you have to assume to begin with that there will be a war at all; secondly, that your country will be in it when it comes; thirdly, that you will go in as a united nation and that the nation will be united and convinced in time, and that the necessary measures will be taken before it is too late,—then the processes of thought become speculative indeed. Every set of assumptions which it is necessary to make, draws new veils of varying density in front of the dark curtain of the future. The life of the thoughtful soldier or sailor in time of peace is made up of these experiences—intense effort, amid every conceivable distraction, to pick out across and among a swarm of confusing hypotheses what actually will happen on a given day and what actually must be done to meet it before that day is ended. Meanwhile all around people, greatly superior in authority and often in intelligence, regard him as a plotting knave, or at the best an overgrown child playing with toys, and dangerous toys at that.

Therefore the most we could do in the days before the war was to attempt to measure and forecast what would happen to England on the outbreak and in the first few weeks of a war with Germany. To look farther was beyond the power of man. To try to do so was to complicate the task beyond mental endurance. The paths of thought bifurcated too rapidly. Would there be a great sea battle or not? What would happen then? Who would win the great land battle? No one could tell. Obviously the first thing was to be ready; not to be taken unawares: to be concentrated; not to be caught divided: to have the strongest Fleet possible in the best station under the best conditions in good time, and then if the battle came one could await its result with a steady heart. Everything, therefore, to guard against surprise; everything, therefore, to guard against division; everything, therefore, to increase the strength of the forces available for the supreme sea battle.

But suppose the enemy did not fight a battle at sea. And suppose the battle on land was indeterminate in its results. And suppose the war went on not for weeks or months, but for years. Well, then it would be far easier to judge those matters at the time, and far easier then, when everybody was alarmed and awake and active, to secure the taking of the necessary steps; and there would be time to take them. No stage would be so difficult or so dangerous as the first stage. The problems of the second year of war must be dealt with by the experience of the first year of war. The problems of the third year of war must be met by results observed and understood in the second, and so on.

I repulse, therefore, on behalf of the Boards of Admiralty over which I presided down to the end of May, 1915, all reproaches directed to what occurred in 1917 and 1918. I cannot be stultified by any lessons arising out of those years. It is vain to tell me that if the Germans had built in the three years before the war, the submarines they built in the three years after it had begun, Britain would have been undone; or that if England had had in August, 1914, the army which we possessed a year later, there would have been no war. Every set of circumstances involved every other set of circumstances. 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.

In examining the questions with which this chapter has been concerned, I was accustomed to dwell upon the dangers and the darker side of things. I did this to some extent intentionally, in order to create anxiety which would lead to timely precautions. Every danger set forth we tried to meet. Many we met. More never matured, either because they were prevented by proper measures, or because the Germans were less enterprising than I thought it prudent to assume. I will end on a more robust note.

The following letter was written by me on November 1, 1913, to a friend—a high naval authority—who had delivered a pessimistic lecture at the War College.

Do you not think you are looking at the problem from a weak and one-sided point of view which sees only the dangers which menace us and is blind to all the far greater dangers which surround the weaker fleet?

Taking your hypothesis that the German Fleet come out to fight with every unit they can bring into line, why should it be supposed that we should not be able to defeat them? A study of the comparative fleet strength in the line of battle will be found reassuring.

Why are our Second Fleet ships, which do not require a single reservist, to be considered less ready than German ships dependent on mobilised men?

Why should it be supposed that a British Fleet is bound to fight the German Fleet at the exact time and place the German Fleet desires?

Why should we not, if we wish, refuse battle until any detached division has joined up?

Why should we be forced to follow the enemy on to his selected ground (presumably, from your paper, off our coasts) when a movement across his communications would not only place us in healthy waters but cut him from his only hope of retreat and fuel?

Why should the British Battle Fleets have to fly the North Sea when the Germans apparently can move about in perfect safety?

All this drift of mind is pusillanimous. Put yourself for a few moments in the position of the Admiral Commanding the weaker fleet. If he goes out to fight ‘with every unit,’ he knows he must expect to be attacked by a force at least three to two superior in numbers, superior in addition in strength, and superior by far ship for ship and squadron for squadron, in quality.

He knows he will have to move with his weaker force into waters which (to him) will appear ‘infested’ by 70 or 80 British submarines and over 200 sea-going torpedo craft. He knows that he must sooner or later, and sooner much rather than later, return to German ports to coal; and that if he is cut off either by the British Fleet or by the British submarines, or preferably by both, he runs the gravest risk of being not merely defeated but destroyed. If he tries to reduce his inferiority in the line of battle by attempting diversions in the shape of landings, he knows he will have to send transports crowded with men through waters commanded by an unfought superior enemy and swarming with torpedo craft, any one of which will send 5,000 or 6,000 men to the bottom.

If he succeeds by great good fortune, probably at a heavy sacrifice, in landing 15,000 or 20,000 men, he knows that is perfectly useless unless it can be reinforced by three or four times as many.

He knows that if his raid is not successfully supported within a very few days those already on shore will have been killed or captured, and he will have to begin all over again.

Lastly, he knows what people at manœuvres so often forget, viz., that cannons kill men and smash ships and that battles produce decisions against which there is no appeal.

He knows that it will pay his enemy to lose ship for ship with him in every class, and that when this melancholy process has run its full course that enemy would still have on the water a fleet in being not less numerous than that with which Germany had begun the war.

If, knowing all this, the ‘naturally offensive character of the German’ leads him to come out and stake everything on a pitched battle, surely that ought to be a cause to us of profound satisfaction.

The second hypothesis—the war of harassments—is more indeterminate, and both sides may look about for some means of waiting on each other without undue risk, till decisive periods supervene. For after all a ship can only fight another ship when she meets her.