Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/263

 Secrecy is the essential to success in naval strategies. In the rush to be first with any important news few editors will consider the result of the news becoming known to the enemy, and supposing a certain number to be sufficiently patriotic and self-denying to withhold publication of news of movements, one here and there may be depended upon to lay bare important secrets without hesitation. This and more is the case for the introduction of a muzzle.

In support of it Japan's reticence is quoted, also a Russian statement to the effect that in the Crimean war Russian movements were always governed by intelligence as to Allied intentions gleaned from British and French newspapers. The fact that Kamimura learned from newspapers whenever the Russian Vladivostok ships put to sea in 1904–5 is also instanced and dwelt on: so also incidents of the South African War. Altogether an almost perfect case is made out—till we come to examine it.

To take the principal case—Japanese secrecy in the war with Russia. By means of that secrecy the news of the loss of the Yashima at the time of the Hatsuse disaster was concealed from the Japanese public and most of the rest of the world. The thing was done with unexampled thoroughness: long after the Yashima was at the bottom official references were continually made to 'a detachment from the Yashima,' and when rumours of the disaster got into foreign newspapers it was shown that 'the ship could not