A Short History of the Royal Navy by Christopher Lloyd

Author:Christopher Lloyd [Lloyd, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General
ISBN: 9781317395317
Google: ReOoCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-10-05T16:10:36+00:00

VII

THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR OF 1914–18

AT THE END of the nineteenth century Great Britain still stood unchallenged in her supremacy at sea. The figures of first-class battleships in the leading European navies in 1895 were as follows: Britain 29, France 21, Russia 17, Italy 8, Germany 5. Secure behind the protection of such a powerful navy, the British people welcomed the thesis of Mahan’s famous book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), that the nation which ruled the seas possessed political supremacy as well. So when the Tsar surprised the world by calling an international peace conference at The Hague in 1899 neither Britain nor any other nation felt inclined to support his proposals for all-round disarmament. Indeed, The Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 achieved little of practical importance. A court of arbitration was set up at the instance of the British delegation, but its powers were severely limited, and subsequent events showed that the efforts made in the unratified Declaration of London (1907) to humanize warfare by prohibiting the use of gas, the bombing of open towns and the sinking of merchant ships without regard for the safety of their crews, were merely pious hopes. With the failure of the main objectives of the conference, the last restraints upon a world in arms vanished.

At the same time Britain was gradually being drawn into the maelstrom of European politics, chiefly on account of the deterioration of Anglo-German relations. The megalomaniac ambitions of the Kaiser Wilhelm II began to shake the complacency of our ‘splendid isolation’ policy with regard to foreign affairs. ‘The British Navy,’ he complained in 1899, inspired by a reading of Mahan’s book, ‘is strong enough to defy any hostile combination. Germany has practically speaking no navy. I am therefore compelled to observe the strictest neutrality. But before everything else

I must provide myself with a navy. In twenty years’ time when the navy is ready, I shall speak a very different language.’ Under the direction of Von Tirpitz, the German Naval Law of 1901 was therefore prepared. It gave two excuses of the building of a navy equal in size to that of Britain: the need for the protection of Germany’s increasing seaborne trade, and the demands made by her recent acquisition of colonies. The naval race thus begun by the Kaiser’s ambition to ‘seize the trident’ was the chief reason for our quarrel with Germany. Attempts to call a halt having proved futile, the race for superiority in armaments proceeded at headlong rate. Faced with this challenge, Britain joined the system of continental alliances and threw in her lot with France and Russia, thus becoming one of the elements of that international anarchy which exploded in 1914.

During the period of the naval race certain important naval reforms were carried out by Sir John Fisher, First Sea Lord, a volcanic naval genius of the highest order. Realizing that increased range of fire was necessary to deal with the new danger of the torpedo, and

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