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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 40

The Scope of Naval Intelligence

The Scope of Naval Intelligence.

Naval intelligence comprehends within its scope a vast number of subjects widely different in their nature, but in their several orbits controlled by one great general consideration, viz., the efficiency and adaptation of our naval means to the work to be done in war. Now the two main conditions to be fulfilled by the Naval Service are the closing up of our enemy's ports and the protection of our own commerce on the high seas from depreciations. Attacks on the high seas will be made by hostile cruisers which may elude the vigilance of blockading fleets, or by vessels purchased, fitted out, and armed in rear of our fleets, perhaps thousands of miles away from the blockaded coasts. It is to be observed that while the extent of the enemy's seaboard, limits the operations of blockade, the area of operations for the direct protection of our commerce has, in a geographical sense, practically no limits at all. While I am speaking, British smoke from British coal burning in British steamers, carrying foreign food to British mouths, material to British manufactories, and goods to British warehouses, is blackening the airs of the tropic, the temperate, and even of the arctic zones. At this moment British sails are being blown away in dreary morning watch kept by British seamen at the antipodes, are idly flapping in the regions of calms in both hemispheres, and being frozen still in arctic, and even in antarctic, seas.

As naval operations may be grouped under two great heads, so naval intelligence may be classified in two divisions—one referring to blockade, the other to the direct protection of commerce. The broadest difference between the sort of "intelligence," essentially necessary to success in undertaking either operation, appears to me to be this—that in one case what is most required is knowledge of your enemy's position; in the other, knowledge of your own. In both cases success will relatively depend on knowledge, down to the smallest detail, of the work to be done. The operations of blockade are carried on against a seaboard fixed and invariable, and against naval and military appliances wielded under one direction, for a distinct and page 4 settled war purpose. The conditions which determine operations for the direct defence of sea-commerce are almost the reverse. The carrying trade to be protected is not fixed, it varies with circumstances, both in direction and value, and is the visible resultant of many thousand busy minds, working ceaselessly in all parts of the globe by many thousand processes for individual peaceful objects. These objects defy the control of war policies and war ministers, for they are only attainable by obedience to the eternal laws of supply and demand. These laws have survived the Tyrian, Carthaginian, Venetian, Spanish, and Dutch sea supremacies, and will survive so long as business in the world is done. Those who think that the movements of British commerce could be made to conform to arrangements for its protection by convoy war-ships should really picture the scenes "on 'Change" in London, Manchester, Liverpool, and hundreds of business centres in England, to say nothing of Sydney, Montreal, Melbourne, Calcutta, Cape Town, &c., which would follow the posting up of an Admiralty notification that "the Imperial sea-roads were so interrupted that "arrangements were under immediate consideration to provide, so far as means would permit, convoy protection for eight hundred millions' worth of exports and imports, and the entry, clearance, and safe passage of several million tons of British shipping from and to ports on every sea and ocean in the world." The figures I offer as a stippling in of the background of the pictures, because they are founded on the official returns for last year. The time would then, I think, have come for the operations of invasion to be wholly unnecessary for our complete subjugation. Our Volunteer Army would not then need a commissariat department, because nearly one-half our home Army, as well as civil population, would have no food. The burning question which exercises some minds now as to whether our militia shall wear gold or silver lace would then lose much of its point. It is very desirable to keep clearly in view the broad issues of great national defence questions, and I specially allude to the one of convoys, not as a matter to be settled in a "ten minutes" discussion, but for patient calculation and serious study. Were naval Officers afforded by the nation, as they should be, opportunities of studying, as part of their superior professional training, the directions and variations of that huge commerce, the safety of which in war will be committed to their keeping, I confess I think systems of naval intelligence and principles of sea-strategy would replace more or less, vague national ideas as to convoys. But, be it observed, England affords her naval Officers no such opportunity.