Some Principles of Maritime Strategy

It is obvious that the foregoing considerations, beyond the strategical reactions already noted, will have another of the first importance, in that they must influence the choice of a landing place. The interest of the army will always be to fix it as near to the objective as is compatible with an unopposed landing. The ideal was one night's march, but this could rarely be attained except in the case of very small expeditions, which could be landed rapidly at the close of day and advance in the dark. In larger expeditions, the aim was to effect the landing far enough from the objective to prevent the garrison of the place or the enemy's local forces offering opposition before a footing was secured. The tendency of the navy will usually be in the opposite direction; for normally the further they can land the army away from the enemy's strength, the surer are they of being able to protect it against naval interference. Their ideal will be a place far enough away to be out of torpedo range, and to enable them to work the covering and the transport squadron in sound strategical independence.

To reduce these divergencies to a mean of efficiency some kind of joint Staff is necessary, and to ensure its smooth working it is no less desirable to ascertain, so far as possible, the principles and method on which it should proceed. In the best recent precedents the process has been for the Army Staff to present the limits of coast-line within which the landing must take place for the operation to have the desired effect, and to indicate the known practicable landing points in the order they would prefer them. It will then be for the Naval Staff to say how nearly in accordance with the views of the army they are prepared to act. Their decision will turn on the difficulties of protection and the essentials of a landing place from the point of view of weather, currents, beach and the like, and also in a secondary measure upon the extent to which the conformation of the coast will permit of tactical support by gun-fire and feints. If the Naval Staff are unwilling to agree to the point or points their colleagues most desire, a question of balance of risk is set up, which the higher Joint Staff must adjust. It will be the duty of the Naval Staff to set out frankly and clearly all the sea risks the proposal of the army entails, and if possible to suggest an alternative by which the risk of naval interference can be lessened without laying too heavy a burden on the army. Balancing these risks against those stated by the army, the superior Staff must decide which line is to be taken, and each service then will do its best to minimise the difficulties it has to face. Whether the superior Staff will incline to the naval or the military view will depend upon whether the greater danger likely to be incurred is from the sea or on land.

Where the naval conditions are fairly well known the line of operations can be fixed in this way with much precision. But if, as usually happens, the probable action of the enemy at sea cannot be divined with sufficient approximation, then assuming there is serious possibility of naval interference, the final choice within the limited area must be left to the admiral. The practice has been to give him instructions which define in order of merit the points the army desire, and direct him to select the one which in the circumstances, as he finds them, he considers within reasonable risk of war. Similarly, if the danger of naval interference be small and the local conditions ashore imperfectly known, the final choice will be with the general, subject only to the practicable possibilities of the landing place he would choose.

During the best period of our old wars there was seldom any difficulty in making things work smoothly on these lines. After the first inglorious failure at Rochefort in 1757 the practice was, where discretion of this kind had been allowed, for the two commanders-in-chief to make a joint coast-reconnaissance in the same boat and settle the matter amicably on the spot.

It was on these lines the conduct of our combined operations was always arranged thenceforth. Since the elder Pitt's time it has never been our practice to place combined expeditions under either a naval or a military commander-in-chief and allow him to decide between naval and military exigencies. The danger of possible friction between two commanders-in-chief came to be regarded as small compared with the danger of a single one making mistakes through unfamiliarity with the limitations of the service to which he does not belong.

The system has usually worked well even when questions arose which were essentially questions for a joint superior Staff. The exceptions indeed are very few. A fine example of how such difficulties can be settled, when the spirit is willing, occurred in the Crimea. The naval difficulties, as we have already seen, were as formidable as they could well be short of rendering the whole attempt madness. When it came to the point of execution a joint council of war was held, at which sat the allied Staffs of both services. So great were the differences of opinion between the French and British Generals, and so imperfectly was the terrain known, that they could not indicate a landing place with any precision. All the admirals knew was that it must be on an open coast, which they had not been able to reconnoitre, where the weather might at any time interrupt communications with the shore, and where they were liable to be attacked by a force which, until their own ships were cleared of troops, would not be inferior. All these objections they laid before the Council General. Lord Raglan then said the army now perfectly understood the risk, and was prepared to take it. Whereupon the allied admirals replied that they were ready to proceed and do their best to set the army ashore and support it at any point that should be chosen.

There remains a form of support which has not yet been considered, and that is diversionary movements or feints by the fleet to draw the enemy's attention away from the landing place. This will naturally be a function of the covering battle-squadron or its attendant cruisers and flotilla. The device appears in Drake's attack on San Domingo in 1585, an attack which may be regarded as our earliest precedent in modern times and as the pattern to which all subsequent operations of the kind conformed so far as circumstances allowed. In that case, while Drake landed the troops a night's march from the place, the bulk of the fleet moved before it, kept it in alarm all night, and at dawn made a demonstration with the boats of forcing a direct landing under cover of its guns. The result was the garrison moved out to meet the threat and were surprised in flank by the real landing force. Passing from this simple case to the most elaborate in our annals, we find Saunders doing the same thing at Quebec. In preparation for Wolfe's night landing he made a show of arrangements for a bombardment of Montcalm's lines below the city, and in the morning with the boats of the fleet began a demonstration of landing his marines. By this device he held Montcalm away from Wolfe's landing place till a secure footing had been obtained. Similar demonstrations had been made above the city, and the combined result was that Wolfe was able to penetrate the centre of the French position unopposed.

Such work belongs of course to the region of tactics rather than of strategy, but the device has been used with equal effect strategically. So great is the secrecy as well as the mobility of an amphibious force, that it is extremely difficult for an enemy to distinguish a real attack from a feint. Even at the last moment, when a landing is actually in progress, it is impossible for the defenders to tell that all the troops are being landed at the one point if a demonstration is going on elsewhere. At Quebec it was not till Montcalm was face to face with Wolfe that he knew he had to deal with the whole British force. Still less from a strategical point of view can we be certain whether a particular landing represents an advance guard or is a diversionary operation to mask a larger landing elsewhere. This is a special difficulty when in the case of large operations the landing army arrives in echelon like the Second Japanese army. In that instance the naval feint was used strategically, and apparently with conspicuous effect. The Russians were always apprehensive that the Japanese would strike for Newchuang at the head of the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, and for this reason General Stakelberg, who had command of the troops in the peninsula, was not permitted to concentrate for effective action in its southern part, where the Japanese had fixed their landing place. Admiral Togo, in spite of the strain on his fleet in effecting and securing the disembarkation of the army, detached a cruiser squadron to demonstrate in the Gulf. The precise effect of this feint upon the Russian Staff cannot be measured with certainty. All we know is that Stakelberg was held back from his concentration so long that he was unable to strike the Japanese army before it was complete for the field and able to deal him a staggering counter-stroke.

This power of disturbing the enemy with feints is of course inherent in the peculiar attributes of combined expeditions, in the facility with which their line of operation can be concealed or changed, and there seems no reason why in the future it should be less than in the past. Good railway connections in the theatre of the descent will of course diminish the effect of feints, but, on the other hand, the means of making them have increased. In mine-sweeping vessels, for instance, there is a new instrument which in the Russo-Japanese War proved capable of creating a very strong impression at small cost to the fleet. Should a flotilla of such craft appear at any practicable part of a threatened coast and make a show of clearing it, it will be almost a moral impossibility to ignore the demonstration.

On the whole then, assuming the old methods are followed, it would seem that with a reasonable naval preponderance the power of carrying out such operations over an uncommanded sea is not less than it has proved to be hitherto. The rapidity and precision of steam propulsion perhaps places that power higher than ever. It would at any rate be difficult to find in the past a parallel to the brilliant movement on Seoul with which the Japanese opened the war in 1904. It is true the Russians at the last moment decided for political reasons to permit the occupation to take place without opposition, but this was unknown to the Japanese, and their arrangements were made on the assumption that their enemy would use the formidable means at his disposal to obstruct the operation. The risk was accepted, skillfully measured, and adequately provided for on principles identical with those of the British tradition. But, on the other hand, there has been nothing to show that where the enemy has a working command of the sea the hazard of such enterprises has been reduced. Against an enemy controlling the line of passage in force, the well-tried methods of covering and protecting an oversea expedition will no more work to-day than they did in the past. Until his hold is broken by purely naval action, combined work remains beyond all legitimate risk of war.

APPENDIX

THE "GREEN PAMPHLET"

WAR COURSE

Strategical Terms and Definitions used in Lectures on Naval History

BY JULIAN S. CORBETT, ESQ., L.L.M

NAVAL STRATEGY

Introductory.

Naval strategy does not exist as a separate branch of knowledge. It is only a section of a division of the art of war.

The study for officers is the art of war, specialising in Naval Strategy.

The true method of procedure then is to get hold of a general theory of war, and so ascertain the exact relations of Naval Strategy to the whole.

Theory of war.

War is a form of political intercourse, a continuation of foreign politics which begins when force is introduced to attain our ends.

OBJECTS

We seek our ends by directing force upon certain objects, which may be ulterior or immediate.

Immediate objects (also called "Primary") are the ends of particular operations or movements. But it must be remembered that every primary object has also its ulterior object; that is, every operation must be regarded, not only from the point of view of its special object, but also as a step to the end of the campaign or war.

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Strategy.

Strategy is the art of directing force to the ends in view. Classified by the object it is Major Strategy, dealing with ulterior objects; Minor Strategy, with primary objects.

This also means that every operation of an army or fleet must be regarded in a double light, i.e., it must be planned and conducted in relation (1) to the general progress of the war; (2) to the object to which it is immediately directed.

Major Strategy.

Major Strategy (always regarding the ulterior object) has for its province the plan of the war, and includes: (1) Selection of the immediate or primary objects to be aimed at for attaining the ulterior object; (2) Selection of the force to be used, i.e., it determines the relative functions of the naval and military forces.

NOTE.—Major Strategy in its broadest sense has also to deal with the whole resources of the nation for war. It is a branch of statesmanship. It regards the Army and Navy as parts of one force, to be handled together; they are instruments of war. But it also has to keep in view constantly the politico-diplomatic position of the country (on which depends the effective action of the instrument), and its commercial and financial position (by which the energy for working the instrument is maintained). The friction of these two considerations is inherent in war, and we call it the deflection of strategy by politics. It is usually regarded as a disease. It is really a vital factor in every strategical problem. It may be taken as a general rule that no question of grand strategy can be decided apart from diplomacy, and vice versa. For a line of action or an object which is expedient from the point of view of strategy may be barred by diplomatic considerations, and vice versa. To decide a question of grand strategy without consideration of its diplomatic aspect, is to decide on half the factors only. Neither strategy or diplomacy has ever a clean slate. This interaction has to be accepted by commanding officers as part of the inevitable "friction of war." A good example is Pitt's refusal to send a fleet into the Baltic to assist Frederick the Great during the Seven Years War, for fear of compromising our relations with the Scandinavian Powers.

Minor Strategy.

Minor Strategy has for its province the plans of operations. It deals with—

(1) The selection of the "objectives," that is, the particular forces of the enemy or the strategical points to be dealt with in order to secure the object of the particular operation.

(2) The directing of the force assigned for the operation.

Minor Strategy may be of three kinds:—

(1) Naval, where the immediate object is to be attained by a fleet only.

(2) Military, where the immediate object is to be attained by an army only.

(3) Combined, where the immediate object is to be attained by army and navy together.

NOTE.—It will be seen that what is usually called Naval Strategy or Fleet Strategy, is only a sub-division of a division of strategy, and that, therefore, strategy cannot be studied from the point of view of naval operations only.

NOTE.—Naval Strategy, being only a part of General Strategy, is subject to the same friction as Major Strategy, though in a less degree. Individual commanders have often to take a decision independently of the central government, or headquarters; they should, therefore, always keep in mind the possible ulterior effects of any line of action they may take, endeavouring to be sure that what is strategically expedient is not diplomatically inexpedient.

EXAMPLE.—Boscawen's attack on De la Motte on the eve of the Seven Years War.

NATURE OF OBJECT

Nature of object. Offensive and defensive.

The solution of every strategical problem, whether of Major or Minor Strategy, depends primarily on the nature of the object in view.

All objects, whether ulterior or not, may be positive or negative.

A positive object is where we seek to assert or acquire something for ourselves.

A negative object is where we seek to deny the enemy something or prevent his gaining something.

Where the object is positive, Strategy is offensive.