Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  In 1890, an American naval officer, more scholar than sea dog, codified the Briton's intuitive sense of the relationship between sea power, prosperity, and national greatness. In The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Alfred Thayer Mahan traced the rise and fall of maritime powers in the past and demonstrated that the state which controlled the seas controlled its own fate; those which lacked naval mastery were doomed to defeat or the second rank. Mahan, using a graphic metaphor to make his point, said the sea "is… a great highway, or better, perhaps… a wide common over which men may pass in all directions, but on which some well-worn paths show that controlling reasons have led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than others. These lines of travel are called trade routes; and the reasons which have determined them are to be sought in the history of the world… Both travel and traffic by sea have always been cheaper than by land." From the metaphor arose an imperative: to patrol the common, a policeman was needed; to protect shipping and trade routes, maritime powers required navies.

  The British Empire was a sea empire. More than half the steamships plodding the oceans in 1897 flew the Red Ensign of the British merchant navy. To service this huge tonnage, Britain had girdled the globe with trading ports and coaling stations. The preeminent trade route, the Imperial lifeline, stretched to the east, through the Mediterranean and Suez to India and China. Other sealanes extended south to Capetown and west to Halifax, St. Johns, and

  Montreal. There were fortresses to guard the strait at Gibraltar and Singapore and the narrow seas at Malta and Aden, but what made it all possible, the tie that held the empire together, was the navy. Wherever the Union Jack floated over battlements and warehouses, and the Red Ensign flew from the sterns of merchant steamers, there too was the White Ensign of the Royal Navy to protect, defend, deter, or enforce.

  Without the navy, Britain was instantly vulnerable. The merchant steamers could be captured or driven from the seas, the fortresses besieged and taken, the colonies-deprived of reinforcement -stripped away. Without the navy, Britain itself, a small island state, dependent on imported food, possessing an insignificant army, could be in immediate peril of starvation or invasion. Bonaparte, waiting on the cliffs at Boulogne, had understood this. "Give me six hours' control of the Strait of Dover," he said, "and I will gain mastery of the world."

  But with control of the seas, all was reversed. While Britain maintained naval supremacy, no Continental power, no matter how large or well-trained its army, could touch the British homeland. With naval supremacy, Britain acquired diplomatic freedom; British statesmen and diplomats could afford to stand back and regard with detachment the rivalries and hatreds which consumed the youth and treasuries of Continental powers facing each other across land frontiers.

  Few European statesmen or military men understood Great Britain or the British Empire. They were puzzled when they studied the small island, with its ridiculous army, its aloof, almost patronizing manner, its pretension to be above the passions and squabbles which dominated their days. And yet, for all its smallness and seeming fragility, there Britain stood, serene, unchallengeable, with a range of action which was immense; which had in the past toppled Continental giants. Foreign military officers were particularly incredulous. With an army which was only an insignificant fraction of their own, Britain ruled a quarter of the globe. To German officers especially, representing the mightiest army in the world, it seemed absurd that Britain should claim to rule India's 300 million people with an army of seventy thousand. Yet, in India, Britain continued to rule.

  If British naval supremacy had made it possible for the island kingdom to remain outside the web of Continental rivalries, Britain remained a European state. Political events on the great landmass across the twenty miles of water that separated Dover from Calais were of more importance to Britons than what happened in Brazil.

  By 1897, Europe was divided into two alliance systems: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy confronted France and Russia. England had taken no position and, under Lord Salisbury, her Prime Minister, did not intend to do so. This policy of aloofness Lord Salisbury had called "Splendid Isolation."

  England's enemy since the Middle Ages had been France. Through the wars of the Plantagenets, against Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Napoleon, this had not changed. "France is, and always will remain, Britain's greatest danger," Lord Salisbury had said in 1867, and he clung to this view during his three terms as Prime Minister. France posed a multiple threat: to the British Isles directly across the Channel, and to the imperial lifeline as it passed through the Mediterranean. At a dozen spots around the globe, French and British colonies rubbed against each other uncomfortably.

  Britain's other traditional enemy was Russia. Although the two nations had fought only once-and then awkwardly, in the Crimean War-the size and expansionist tendencies of the Russian Empire gave off a sense of menace. Russia might not reach the British Isles, but pushing down through Constantinople towards the Mediterranean, or thrusting over the roof of the world through the Khyber Pass onto; the plains of India, or pressing from Manchuria against Britain's commercial monopoly in the Yangtze valley and South China, Russian policies seemed threatening. Britain's Director of Military Intelligence warned in 1887, "The countries with which we are most likely to go to war are France and Russia and the worst combination which we have any reason to dread is an alliance of France and Russia." In 1894, precisely such an alliance was signed and the dreaded became reality.

  In the same month as the Diamond Jubilee Review, June 1897, two men were appointed to important offices in Berlin. Bernhard von Bulow, an ambitious career diplomat serving as German Ambassador to Italy, was promoted to State Secretary for Foreign Affairs-in effect Foreign Minister-of Imperial Germany. A week later, Rear Admiral Alfred Tirpitz, possessor of the most original mind and strongest will in the German Navy, became State Secretary of the Navy. Their assignments, although in different spheres, were linked. Kaiser William II wished his country, already the strongest in Europe, to advance beyond its Continental predominance to world power (Weltmacht). Bulow was to further this policy through diplomacy; Tirpitz was to provide the instrument by building a German battle fleet. William's interest in the sea and ships came in part from his English ancestry-his grandmother was Queen Victoria- but it had been profoundly stimulated by Mahan's book. "I am just now not reading but devouring Captain Mahan's book and am trying to learn it by heart," the young Kaiser wrote to a friend. "It is on board all my ships and [is] constantly quoted by my captains and officers."

  Having grasped the importance of sea power and seeking to advance Germany's influence beyond Europe, William and his advisors confronted a dilemma: either Germany could accept British supremacy at sea and work within this framework, or it must challenge British supremacy and build a fleet powerful enough to wrest the trident away. Experience recommended the former course: in the 1880s, Germany had acquired colonies five times the size of the German Empire in Europe-and this had been done with British encouragement and assistance. The German merchant navy, the second-largest in the world, used British harbors and depended on British naval protection around the globe. German naval officers had grown up on British-built ships, burning British coal, using British techniques and tactics. British and German officers looked on each other as brothers. One choice, then, was to build on this relationship, reinforce and solidify it, looking to the day when Germany and Britain might act, in Europe and the world, in partnership, perhaps even in alliance.

  The appointment of Admiral Tirpitz signalled that the opposite choice had been made. Why, the German Kaiser and millions of his people asked, should England, simply because it was an island and possessed an empire, claim to command the sea as a right? At any moment, the British Navy could blockade the German coast, bottle up German ships in harbor, and seize German colonies. Why should the German Empire exist on British sufferance? Why should German greatness come as a gift from another people?

  Geography dictated confrontation. Germa
n merchant ships, leaving the Baltic or the North Sea harbors of Hamburg or Bremen, could reach the Atlantic and other oceans of the world only by steaming through the Channel or around the coast of Scotland. A German Navy strong enough to protect German merchant shipping in these waters and guarantee unimpeded passage to the oceans meant, in the last resort, a German fleet able to defeat the British Navy. This Great Britain would never permit, for it meant also a German fleet strong enough to screen an invasion of England, to sweep from the seas all British merchant shipping, to strip Britain of her colonies and empire. Thus, the goal of the German Navy-to protect German commerce on the high seas-was wholly incompatible with the interest of British security. What one power demanded, the other was unwilling to concede. The threat posed to German security by the British Fleet, so British diplomats argued, was significantly less. Repeatedly, in the years ahead, British statesmen and diplomats attempted to impress this point on their German counterparts; always the German reply was that German warships posed little threat to Britain and that the German Empire had the same right as the British Empire to build whatever warships it chose.

  For a number of years, the Kaiser and his ministers, certain that the most effective way of turning a neighbor into a friend was to frighten him, cherished the belief that they could both build a powerful fleet and draw Great Britain into an alliance. The Kaiser believed-and Tirpitz said he believed-that once Britain saw and accepted the formidable nature of the German Fleet, Britain would respect Germany and offer friendship-a friendship in which Germany would become the dominant partner. This proved a catastrophic misunderstanding of the psychology of Britons, to whom command of the sea remained a greater necessity than any Continental alliance.

  As the century turned, the Diamond Jubilee and its great naval review; would be seen as the high-water mark of British naval supremacy. Soon, the strains on British power would begin to tell. The empire; was stretched too thin; even with the navy, Britain could not meet its commitments. German shipbuilding would be met by British shipbuilding, but a change in British policy was necessary. Britain could not afford to be left to face single-handed a power which dominated Europe and might acquire control of all the fleets of Europe. To throw its weight against the dominance of one power or group of powers which might threaten her existence had for centuries been the basic foreign policy of Great Britain. Now, as Britain began to fear the German Fleet, it feared also that the greatest military power in Europe would not aspire to become a great naval power unless it wished to dominate the world.

  And so Britain began to shift. Splendid Isolation was re-examined. As the danger across the North Sea grew, enmities were composed, old frictions smoothed, new arrangements made. Britain became, if not a full-fledged ally, at least a partner of her erstwhile enemies, France and Russia. The alienation of Britain from Germany, the growing partnership between Britain and France and Britain and Russia, were caused by fear of the German Fleet. "It closed fthe ranks of the Entente," said Winston Churchill. "With every rivet that von Tirpitz drove into his ships of war, he united British opinion… The hammers that clanged at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven were forging the coalition of nations by which Germany was to be resisted and finally overthrown."

  Saturday, dawn broke low and gray and heavy mists still hung over the Solent. The sun rose at three forty-seven a.m., obscured by masses of soft, gray clouds. The air was sultry. From shore, the lines of ships could barely be discerned. The fleet became more visible at eight a.m. when, on signal from the flagship, the whole of the lines broke out in a rainbow of colors as each ship dressed itself in bunting from the bow, over the top of the masts, down to the stern. By noon, the weather improved, as the sun burned off haze and mists. A breeze blew out the flags and bunting, and covered the sea with small whitecaps that changed in color and shade with every shadow that crossed the surface of the water.

  Through the morning, pleasure boats and sight-seeing craft had swarmed through the lines. Then, near two p.m., as the hour of the review approached, all private and commercial boats were shooed away and the columns of warships lay in silence. Except for swooping gulls, snapping flags and bunting, the sunlight and shadows rippling over the water, there was no movement; it became a fleet of ghostly mammoths, five walls of long, black hulls, standing majestically and silently on the pale-green water, stretching down the Solent as far as an eye could see.

  Onshore, all was noise and tumult. The Southwest Railway Company had promised to dispatch forty-six trains from Waterloo Station to Portsmouth between the hours of six-thirty a.m. and nine-thirty a.m. on Saturday morning. Trains ran every five minutes from Waterloo, arriving in Portsmouth and pouring their human cargo, slung with field glasses, cameras, and guidebooks, onto the cobblestones of the station square. From there, rivers of people flowed through the town to piers and beaches. Every roof and window looking out to sea was occupied; the piers, Southsea Beach, and every little rise on the Hampshire plain were dense with spectators.

  At twelve-twenty p.m. the first of two royal trains bearing the reviewing party from Windsor Castle arrived at the Royal Quay in Portsmouth Harbor. It carried the Dowager Empress Frederick of Germany. Named Victoria after her mother, she was the Queen's eldest child and the mother of the German Emperor, William II. Her younger brother Arthur, Duke of Connaught, wearing the scarlet uniform of a colonel of the Scots Guards, gave her his arm and conducted the Empress immediately on board the royal yacht, Victoria and Albert, which lay beside the quay. As she mounted the gangplank, the gold and black German Imperial Standard soared up the mainmast. Forty minutes later, a second royal train arrived and the familiar rotund figure of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the central figure of the day's events, descended. The Prince would take the review while his mother, fatigued by her six-mile drive on Tuesday through the streets of London, surrounded by a million Britons cheering themselves voiceless, spent the day quietly at Windsor. With the Heir to the Throne were his wife Princess Alexandra, his brother, Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and his son, George, Duke of York. The Prince was wearing the dark-blue and gold uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet. So was his brother, Alfred, who, until he had assumed the family duchy and moved to Germany in 1893, had been titled Duke of Edinburgh and had served as Commander-in-Chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet. Prince George, too, was in blue and gold and had earned his rank of Captain on active service. As the Prince and his party boarded the Victoria and Albert to join his sister for lunch, the Royal Standard of Great Britain ascended the mainmast to fly beside the German Imperial Standard, and the guns of Nelson's Victory boomed in salute.

  At- two p.m. precisely, the Victoria and Albert cast off her lines from tie Portsmouth quay and her paddle wheels began to turn. Steamihg out of the harbor, the royal yacht flew five huge flags, each the size of a baronial tapestry. Atop her foremast stood a dark-red banner with an anchor in yellow, the emblem of the Lords of the Admiralty. At the peak of her mainmast flew the Royal Standard of Great Britain, golden lions and silver unicorns on quartered fields of red and blue, and the German Imperial Standard, a black eagle on gold. At the mizzenmast floated the Union Jack and from the stern waved the White Ensign of the Royal Navy. Behind the yacht followed a procession of ships, large and small, carrying special guests. Immediately astern was the pale-green P & O line Carthage, her deck ablaze with the colorful uniforms and flashing jewels of foreign and Indian princes. Their guide was Captain Lord Charles Beresford, hero of the naval service. The Admiralty yacht Enchantress came next, bearing the Lords of the Admiralty and their guests. Next came the Danube, freighted with members of the House of Lords. She was followed by Wildfire, carrying the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, surrounded by the prime ministers and governors of the colonies and territories which made up the British Empire. Near the end, steaming very slowly "lest she tread on the toes of some of the little ones," came the huge Cunard liner Campania, biggest and fastest of Britain's transatlantic greyhounds, her immense bulk dwarfing even the battleships'. Ste
aming down from Southampton, where she had embarked 1,800 passengers-the members of the House of Commons and their friends and relations-the Campania had followed in the wake of the much smaller Danube, carrying the Lords. At one point in this passage, John Burns, a Radical M.P., had quipped with a smile that if the Campania's master would increase speed, many constitutional questions between Commons and Lords would be settled permanently. Last in line was the Eldorado, which bore the foreign ambassadors accredited to the Court of St. James's.