Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/33

1917] those waters surrounding the British Isles. What was this strange new type of warfare that was bringing the Allied cause to its knees? Nothing like it had ever been known in recorded time; nothing like it had been foreseen when, on August 4, 1914, the British Government threw all its resources and all its people against the great enemy of mankind.

Leaving entirely out of consideration international law and humanity, it must be admitted that strategically the German submarine campaign was well conceived. Its purpose was to marshal on the German side that force which has always proved to be the determining one in great international conflicts sea power. The advantages which the control of the sea gives the nation which possesses it are apparent. In the first place, it makes secure such a nation's communications with the outside world and its own allies, and, at the same time, it cuts the communications of its enemy. It enables the nation dominant at sea to levy upon the resources of the entire world; to obtain food for its civilian population, raw materials for its manufactures, munitions for its armies; and, at the same time, to maintain that commerce upon which its very economic life may depend. It enables such a power also to transport troops into any field of action where they may be required. At the very time that sea power is heaping all these blessings upon the dominant nation, it enables such a nation to deny these same advantages to its enemy. For the second great resource of sea power is the blockade. If the enemy is agriculturally and industrially dependent upon the outside world, sea power can transform it into a beleaguered fortress and sooner or later compel its unconditional surrender. Its operations are not spectacular, but they work with the inevitable remorselessness of death itself.

This fact is so familiar that I insist upon it here only for the purpose of inviting attention to another fact which is not so apparent. Perhaps the greatest commonplace of the war, from the newspaper standpoint, was that the British fleet controlled the seas. This mere circumstance, as I have already said, was the reason why all students of history were firm in their belief that Britain could never be defeated. It was not until the spring of 1917 that we really awoke to the actual situation; it was not until I