Admirals of the British Navy Part 4

Generals of the British Army

PORTRAITS BY FRANCIS DODD

_INTRODUCTION_

I.--HAIG, FIELD MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS, K.T., G.C.B., G.C.V.O., K.C.I.E., =A.D.C.=

II.--PLUMER, GENERAL SIR H. C. O., G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., K.C.B., =A.D.C.=

III.--RAWLINSON, GENERAL SIR H. S., Bart., G.C.V.O., K.C.B., K.C.V.O.

IV.--GOUGH, GENERAL SIR H. De La POER, K.C.B., K.C.V.O.

V.--ALLENBY, GENERAL SIR E. H., K.C.B.

VI.--HORNE, GENERAL SIR H. S., K.C.B.

VII.--BIRDWOOD, LIEUT.-GEN. SIR W. R., K.C.B., K.C.S.I., K.C.M.G., C.I.E., D.S.O.

VIII.--BYNG, GENERAL THE HON. SIR J. H. G., K.C.B., K.C.M.G., M.V.O.

IX.--CONGREVE, LIEUT.-GEN. SIR W. N., =V.C.=, K.C.B., M.V.O.

X.--HALDANE, LIEUT.-GEN. J. A. L., C.B., D.S.O.

XI.--WATTS, LIEUT.-GEN. H. E., C.B., C.M.G.

XII.--s.m.u.tS, LIEUT.-GEN. THE RT. HON. JAN C., P.C., K.C., M.L.A.

HUDSON & KEARNS, LTD., Printers, HATFIELD STREET, LONDON, S.E. 1.

Contents of this Issue.

_INTRODUCTION._

I.--BEATTY, ADMIRAL SIR DAVID, G.C.B., G.C.V.O., D.S.O.

II.--JACKSON, ADMIRAL SIR HENRY B., G.C.B., K.C.V.O., F.R.S.

III.--COLVILLE, ADMIRAL THE HON. SIR STANLEY C. J., G.C.V.O., K.C.B.

IV.--BROCK, ADMIRAL SIR F. E. E., K.C.M.G., C.B.

V.--GRANT, REAR-ADMIRAL HEATHCOAT S., C.B.

VI.--TUDOR, REAR-ADMIRAL F. C. TUDOR, C.B.

VII.--CALLAGHAN, ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET SIR GEORGE A., G.C.B., G.C.V.O.

VIII.--LEVESON, REAR-ADMIRAL A. C., C.B.

IX.--EVAN-THOMAS, VICE-ADMIRAL SIR H., K.C.B., M.V.O.

X.--BRUCE, REAR-ADMIRAL HENRY H., C.B., M.V.O.

XI.--ALEXANDER-SINCLAIR, REAR-ADMIRAL E. S., C.B., M.V.O.

XII.--KEYES, REAR-ADMIRAL SIR ROGER J. B., K.C.B., C.M.G., M.V.O., D.S.O.

INTRODUCTION

PART II.

The first thing a landlubber does when he opens his mouth about the sea or about sea power is to put his foot in it; and therefore one's sense of decency in approaching this procession of ill.u.s.trious admirals, headed by Sir David Beatty, compels one to put oneself in a posture of reverent trepidation and respectful humility. The man of words in time of war ought to prostrate himself before the man of action. He ought to order himself lowly and reverently before and very much below his betters. In his case judgment or even criticism is an outrageous impertinence. He knows little about war by land and even less about war by sea. Any enlargement of his knowledge is only a microscopical diminution of his ignorance. The sea is a mystery, unveiled only to those who go down to (or in) the sea in ships.

Sailors tolerate our immeasurable ignorance, for they rejoice in the sense of humour which the sea seems to enrich and expand. It is many years since a mischievous midshipman cajoled me into climbing the mast of H.M.S. "Majestic," then flying the flag of Sir Harry Rawson. Until I went up in an aeroplane at St. Omer I never drank more deeply of the cup of terror. That midshipman, for all I know, may now be one of these grave admirals with smiles lurking at the corners of their eyes and lips. It is a far cry from the naval manoeuvres of the "'nineties" to the "real thing" of 1918, but the impulse to hark back to those mimic battles is irresistible. My first and last misdemeanour was the striking of a match on the paint of a casemate. The memory of it even now makes me blush from nape to heel, and warns me that nearly everything a landlubber may say about the Navy is as the striking of a match on the wrong place at the wrong time on a Victorian man o' war.

And yet those far-off days in wardroom and gunroom, on navigating bridge and quarter-deck, helped me to drink the pure milk of the Navy word. No man who has watched a blinded battle fleet keeping station on a pitch-black night, or whose head has grown giddy in the mazes of a cruiser action, or who has seen a destroyer attack pushed home in the dark, or who has seen the drifters coming in coated with ice, can fail to feel in his bones the thrill of sea-power. To such a man there comes at all moments the salt warning, "Put not your trust only in armies. For England there is but one supreme war-faith, the creed of the sea."

There is no lack of lip-service to the sea-creed in these islands. The sea-litany and the sea-liturgy and the sea-prayers and the sea-collects and the sea-psalms and the sea-proverbs are tirelessly chanted and sung and said by high and low. Line upon line, precept upon precept, sea-bible and sea-gospel and sea-hymn--we know them all by heart. Our Newbolts, our Kiplings, our Conrads, our Hurds, our Leylands--yes, and our Mahans--they are all a great cloud of witnesses to the supreme necessity of sea-power. And yet in one's lay bones one feels that our practice falls far short of our preaching, and that we as a race are not utterly single-minded in our worship of the one power who has never betrayed us, the sea. The sea is a jealous G.o.d, and in these latter days a sure instinct leads one back to the old faith taught by Nelson and his forerunners, by the great captains and admirals whose bones are dust.

Peace is a rust that tarnishes a Navy, and, as one studies these portraits and these all too brief and bare biographies, one wonders whether "the Nelson touch" is hereditary, and whether these clear-eyed, strong-lipped admirals are all chips of the old block. One wonders, I say, and yet one does not doubt, for at every meal we eat the proof of the pudding. These admirals and their men have kept the faith and held the sea against High Seas Fleet and mine and submarine. Not for many a long day will all the wonders they have wrought be known or even suspected. Few there be who are allowed to peep into the inner shrine of admiralty. The higher secrets of sea-power are guarded and will be guarded long after Britain shall have won this war.

Herein is the true explanation of these modest memoirs which tell so little with all their camouflage of dates and decorations. Compared with a British admiral, Tacitus was a loquacious and copious blabber and babbler. If you interrogate him, he smiles and displays a long row of ribbons or a festoon of foreign orders. "The Silent Navy" is silent because it is not safe to talk or to be talked about, and also because it is not in love with the gauds of publicity. I confess I like the austere reticence of these dull and dreary lifelets of our great admirals. It warns us that we must walk by faith and not by sight when, like Peter, we take to the stormy waters.

There is, of course, the doubting Thomas, who is "hot for certainties"

in the sea affair. He whispers in my ear that there is in the higher ranks a dearth of genius as compared with the lower ranks, and he tries to support his theory by a.s.serting that all the brilliant junior officers must pa.s.s through a narrow bottle-neck before they become captains, and that the captains, after ten or twelve years of that awful solitude which is the captain's pride and peril, are apt to suffer from the ossifying brain which rejects new ideas, from the crusted conservatism which resists reform, from deskwork and paperwork, and from all the ravages of the red tapeworm.

My answer is that the sea is a giant that refreshes itself, and that your Nelson is proof against his routine, master of his groove. The long duel with the submarine is in itself evidence of the adaptability of our seamen. Where we have failed is not on the sea but in the dim region behind the sea, where the word of the sailor is no longer dominant and where other forces and factors interlock and interplay. Many and manifold are the uses of sea-power; many and manifold also are its abuses. And it is one of the qualities of sea-power that it is inarticulate, not given to polemics or dialectics or rhetoric or oratory, a thing of profound instinct and intuition, a product of the genius of race. Napoleon never understood sea-power as the German Emperor and Admiral von Tirpitz have learned to understand it, after much patient poring over the writings of Mahan. In all humility we ought not to be surprised that some of our own great ones have been and perhaps still are in the same state of pupilage as Napoleon. But war is a schoolmaster whose lessons are learned in due time by the most backward scholars.

There is a music-hall song sung in these stern days by some witless buffoon, "If you don't want to fight, join the Navy." As if the locker of Davy Jones were not fat with the valour of our seamen and our fishermen! In the bitterness of his soul a Super-Dreadnought captain said to me, "After the war I'll not be able to walk down Piccadilly without being hissed." These are extravagances of hyperbole, but they are a reflection of the folly that asks, "What is the Navy doing?" When I hear that fatuous question I retort, "What on earth and what on the sea is the Navy not doing?" It is keeping the ring for all the armies of all the Allies, and it is waiting for the last great sea-fight of Armageddon, the fight that is bound to come.

"They were dull, weary, eventless months, those months of watching and waiting of the big ships. Purposeless they surely seemed to many, but they saved England. Those far distant storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world." A greater army than the Grand Army, led by chieftains hardly less renowned than Napoleon, is battering, as I write, at the gates of the Channel Ports. Whatever may befall, we know in our bones that these admirals of ours and their seamen stand between the Emperor Wilhelm and his imperial dream of world tyranny. Sir David Beatty sitting in his deck-chair is a living symbol of sea-power, and the armchair pessimist may well emulate his nonchalant vigilance, noting the wicked twinkle in his humorous eye and the sardonic curl of his sailor-mouth.

The Kaiser has chosen to sup with the sea-devil, and he has need of a very long spoon before he sees his supper, which happens to be our freedom and the freedom of all free men.

JAMES DOUGLAS.