# Heresies of Sea Power/Part 2/Chapter 7

VII
SECRECY AND SEA POWER
In the modern philosophy of Sea Power secrecy is coming to bulk more and more largely, and indications are not wanting of a tendency, in the mere exercise of the means, to lose sight of the ends which it is supposed to attain.
Secrecy, though the fact is generally unperceived, is on the same plane as 'evasion,' and may indeed be termed the mother of evasion. A fleet anxious to evade can do so only by the exercise of the greatest possible secrecy, and the failure of evasive tactics is usually brought about through a failure in secrecy of movement.
Evasion is the handiest weapon of the weaker. That 'evasion' cannot win a campaign is a commonplace so general that it scarcely needs discussion. The mere act of evasion is only another form of flight, the evading fleet is for all practical purposes running away, and seeking to stave off that defeat which on account of its inferiority looms ever over it.
Of course there is evasion of a more logical nature than that which is generally understood by the ​term—for instance the evasion of two inferior squadrons attempting to form a combined fleet. The needs of secrecy in evasions so designed are too obvious to need discussion, since it is evident that A seeking to avoid the superior C till he has joined B, will be destroyed by A should his whereabouts be known. Secrecy on such lines is perfectly intelligible. It, however, by no means covers the general modern application of secrecy—a growing official tendency to shroud everything under the mask of 'strictly confidential.'
Examples of this are on every hand. For instance, the British battleship Dreadnought was made a confidential construction. Newspapers were requested to publish nothing in the way of descriptions of the vessel and the public generally was kept quite in the dark about her. The intention was excellent enough—to keep rival powers from building something of the same sort at the same time. Yet it needs a very robust faith to believe that the secret was really kept from those most interested in knowing all about the matter. On the other hand the curiosity of rivals was deliberately excited, and it is difficult to imagine that any real result was obtained beyond enabling a certain number of Admiralty officials to experience that sensation of security enjoyed by the pursued ostrich when its head is hidden in the sand.
France with her submarines made frantic efforts after secrecy. The mere photographing of the exterior of a submarine was made a penal offence, and ​every possible precaution was rigidly adopted. To a certain extent temporary success was obtained; but there is now every reason to believe that the mere fact of the secret submarines reacted disadvantageously on their possessors. From observing the secrecy to believing that mechanism so jealously guarded must be very near perfection was no very long step, and after five years of the system the French submarine service awoke to the fact that in contemplating its own perfections it had forgotten the progress of rivals; while it was also suspected that the jealously guarded secrets had leaked out one by one and been so improved upon by rivals that the originals were no longer of much value.
Germany became a convert to secrecy with her 1905-6 naval programme. Previous to 1905, though the destined names of ships were secrets locked in the Kaiser's heart, everything else was made public. In 1905 it was decreed that no details of new ships should be made known until the vessels were launched—a replica of the British Dreadnought case. The net result must stifle that public interest in the Navy which German policy had for so long laboured to create. Public interest in things naval always centres in the latest new ship and rarely survives her launch.
The country par excellence for naval secrets is or was Russia. Russian secretiveness has been known to go the length of keeping guns covered in the presence of foreign ships and the rigging up of dummy ​armour to batteries when foreign officers were visiting on board. This was actually done on board the Rossia when she was a comparatively new ship. No civilian Russian ever took interest in the Navy—to have done so even in a general way would almost have risked his liberty. The Navy was a secret machine; and the war with Japan very clearly indicated that secrecy had been a splendid cloak for incompetence.
Other instances could be cited, but these suffice. The trend of official ideas everywhere is to 'secrecy,' and the advocates of this particular panacea invariably cast their eyes upon the Press as the chief obstacle between them and their desires.
At frequently recurring intervals, notably in such cases as that of a paper by Lord Ellenborough at the Royal United Service Institution, on the possibility of our fleets and harbours being surprised, and the subsequent discussion on it, very great prominence is given to the subject of the Navy and the Press. At the lecture in question speaker after speaker devoted his attention to the probability of the enemy being assisted unintentionally by learning in newspapers of projected movements. This opinion, sometimes veiled, was in other cases openly enunciated, and a wealth of compliment passed upon the Japanese press laws. Some law to muzzle the British press was advocated, as it has been advocated elsewhere.
The case for it may be briefly put as follows. ​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 ​have been lost, because it would have been impossible to conceal so momentous an event.'
So far so good. It is possible, though not very probable, that non-concealment of the loss of the Yashima might have caused some abstentions from a Japanese Loan, but it is absolutely certain that no war gains resulted from it. The Russians were perfectly aware that the ship was hors de combat if not sunk, and if the concealment had any military value at all the Russians were the gainers, since they may well have argued that the secrecy was an effort to hide from them that they were getting the better of the naval war. Certainly it could never have conveyed to them the impression that they were being worsted.
It was no benefit to Japan for her people to feel that they were told only of victories and nothing of defeats—the logical result of rumours which could not be suppressed. In the case of Japan such suppression seems not to have been actually injurious, though the public disappointment at the peace terms which manifested itself in some rioting, may suggest that Russia was popularly supposed to be more crushed than was actually the case. A press ignorant of the exact progress of the Japanese arms was perhaps by its comments the first cause of the riots.
The ill results of secrecy were, however, in this case not really serious to Japan; but suppose her to have suffered serious reverses and other losses which were concealed, sufficient, let us say, to make it necessary ​for her to take the first chance of peace at almost any price. In such a case the policy of press-muzzling during the war might have had very serious results indeed, for how could a public fed on long tales of victory have been induced to accept the consequences of defeat?
Coming nearer home it is easy to see both sides of the question in bolder relief. The Japanese navy neither in size nor importance can be compared with the British or American navies. The number of people directly interested in the fleet in England is very much larger—at least a million people coming under the heads of relatives or close friends of naval men. The operations of a Press Censorship would seriously affect this considerable section of the community were the censorship anything but a sham. Any official censor of news may be depended upon to go on the principle 'When in doubt cut out.' 'Newsy scraps' and excellent stuff for headlines mean nothing to him, nothing has any meaning except that should anything but the baldest and most useless information leak out he is likely to get into trouble over it. Hence many of the censor's vagaries. His superiors behind him have probably an inherent dislike for publicity of any sort, at any rate for that publicity which is attained through being criticised. The whole training of an admiral—the most necessary training in all probability—is to place him on a pedestal even to himself, and criticism of any kind, merited or unmerited, strikes him as pure ​impudence or something on a par with blasphemy. The average admiral has this feeling not only as regards himself but also as regards all his brother admirals. Once the principle of a Press Law is established it may be taken for granted that the nation will have the foggiest notions as to what is going on.
This, we may be assured, will be resented by the million already referred to, and the question might quite possibly become a political one. Becoming that there are ample probabilities that the censorship might be suddenly abolished; with the result that a tale of losses, natural and incidental to a naval war would come upon the public with cumulative and unreasonably depressing effect.
This, of course, is an extreme case, purposely put—selected on that very account. A far more probable result would be a lack of public interest in the war—about as fatal a thing as can well be conceived. And just as the Russians at Port Arthur knew quite well about the lost Yashima, so probably the enemy would have full cognisance of every disaster that it was sought to keep secret.
Real secrecy, indeed, is probably an impossible thing. It is doubtful whether the 'confidential secrets of any navy, jealously guarded from all save a few officers concerned, are not as good as public property in every possibly hostile navy. The British public, and most of the British Navy also, are quite ​unaware of the exact abilities of British submarines, but probably the Germans know everything there is to know for practical purposes; and can assess the fighting value of them to a nicety. Similarly there are plenty of jealously guarded German secrets that are common knowledge in the British Navy. Ordinary naval secrets are indeed more suggestive of the hidden head of the ostrich than aught else; and it may be taken for granted that the concealment of losses or blunders in war will be impossible where the enemy is concerned. It may be successful at home; but such methods of bolstering up the leader who is a failure (for in sum that is what it amounts to) can never win wars and may conceivably help to lose them.
Of course the hypothetical press muzzle would chiefly be used (in theory at any rate) to conceal movements and prevent the enemy discovering the whereabouts of the fleet. This was done by the Japanese; who saw nothing ludicrous in the intelligence that 'a certain squadron left a certain place on a certain date to arrive at a certain place at a certain date, as "prearranged.' Such a policy may do for a time; but the resulting loss of public interest in a war is a heavy price to pay for it. Wars are won by the fittest to win, by the fitness of the nation rather than by the fitness of a few individuals; and a nation that is bored over its war news is not well in the way to exhibit those staying qualities so necessary for the successful conduct of a great war. Here is the crux of ​the whole question—the man in the street at home does contribute to victory or defeat. His letters to his friends who are righting, the tone of the newspapers which reflect his thoughts, the effect of his determination to go on fighting or not—all these things are inseparably connected with the results in the fighting line.
In the past secrecy has rarely led to any definite results. Old time leaders were wont to send out trusted agents with misleading reports, a system much used by Nelson in the Mediterranean in the great French war. But Nelson at one and the same time diligently studied French and Spanish newspapers to glean intelligence, without—so far as we can gather—reflecting that other newspapers were carefully supplied by him with false news of his own movements and intentions. He employed secrecy also when he joined his fleet before the battle of Trafalgar, ordering no salutes to be fired lest the enemy should suspect his arrival. Here he had a definite object in view, his desire was for Villeneuve to come out and be beaten, and he imagined, rightly or wrongly, that the knowledge that he was in command would keep the enemy in harbour. But even here it is permissible to wonder whether containing the enemy in harbour, as Cornwallis did off Brest, would not really have been a sounder step. Due allowance must be made for the moral effect of a glorious victory upon both the victorious and vanquished sides; but even when that is ​considered, the bloodless victory is possibly the more economical and more scientific exercise of power.
Supposing Nelson to have joined his fleet heralded by all the usual signs of a new admiral's arrival, and supposing this to have detained the French in harbour; there would have been no Trafalgar. There would, however, have been forced and fatal inactivity on the part of the Franco-Spanish fleet at no cost of British ships and lives. An exercise of secrecy produced Trafalgar, it gave us dramatic results at a certain cost. To estimate exactly after the lapse of a hundred years whether this was a best possible is a task beyond human power, because completely accurate data are not available as to whether an indefinite blockade could have been maintained. In a general way we can surmise, but beyond surmise we can hardly go. We cannot say exactly how far the question of maintaining the blockade entered into Nelson's calculations; and so here the matter must be left, since it is only in flights of imagination that we can conceive of the ideal war in which every man is so perfect that the enemy is brought to his knees without a single battle.
Supposing secrecy, or rather, strivings after it, to be abolished, it in no way follows that ideal war will be produced. Indeed, paradoxical as it may seem, real secrecy is probably only to be found in the abolition of secrecy. For instance, it is relatively easy to conceal any particular detail when there is a general show of ​publicity of hundreds of other details. When there is apparently nothing to find out, curiosity is disarmed, and of half a dozen conflicting reports any one may be true or false. If a fleet puts to sea in war time, it is the simplest thing in the world to conceal the actual destination and allow everyone to mention the goal that he happens to believe in. In a multiplicity of destinations the right one may be given, but there will be nothing to indicate that it is correct. Similarly, the policy—till recently pursued by the British Admiralty and the American Navy Board—of allowing everything in the dockyards (with reservations) to be public property was an essentially sound idea. Ideal secrecy is not to be decried or disputed, for it is the duty of every fleet to neglect nothing that may contribute to victory: the deleterious secrecy is that which is apparent rather than real, and effective only with those who are not possible enemies.
The advantages to be gained from secrecy of the ideal sort in certain cases are too obvious to need dwelling on and the fact that they are not mentioned here in detail is not to be construed as an ignoring of their existence. But unnecessary and superfluous secrecy whether on small issues, such as that which by labelling certain works 'strictly confidential' prevents naval officers from studying the subjects dealt with, from such as this to larger issues as exemplified by the theatrical secrecy employed by the Japanese in their war with Russia are to be condemned. The gain ​at the best is slight; but far other than slight is the loss in public interest, in the necessary stimulation of public effort, in confidence, and in half a dozen other things essential to victory in war. Irritating as half-informed press criticism upon war events may be to the principal actors concerned, it is, however bad, an earnest of that public interest which is an absolutely essential concomitant to a successful national war. And it is difficult to lay a finger on any form of secrecy that can be found entirely free from an official desire to avoid criticism.
Criticism of individual leaders is, however, more altogether bad than aught else. It is bad, because the effect upon a fleet of reading hostile criticisms on its admiral can only be deleterious, can only tend to shake confidence without supplying any substitute. This was just the one thing that the much-admired Japanese Press Laws failed to touch. When Kamimura was unable to find the Vladivostok cruisers in a thick fog, Tokio criticisms ran high and violent. Kamimura's house was either actually burned, or threatened to be burned, by an angry mob, and the news of such a proceeding cannot have fortified the confidence of his men in him. Again, because the Japanese were Japanese, no very serious danger resulted—but it might have. Partially informed civilian criticism is in this respect a grave possible danger, and a law forbidding criticism of admirals until some while after the event might prove very ​advantageous—the most dangerous criticism being ever that which is based on a bald knowledge or results without any information as to details and special circumstances.
On the other hand it is well to remember that the dread of hostile criticism is always a safeguard against an incompetent man becoming a leader in war, and to take a case bristling with suitable points,—the British Press and the Boer War—we find that, despite the absence of restrictions, criticisms on 'regrettable incidents' were in the main moderate, restrained and such as exhibited a sound grasp of the main necessities. 'You must either succeed or make way for a man who can' was the gist of what the British Press hurled at defeated leaders in that not very glorious campaign.
Let us now turn to another campaign still more inglorious, still more plentifully scattered with 'regrettable incidents'—the Russian part of the Russo-Japanese war. Most things point to Kuropatkin as an able man swamped by incompetent inferiors about him. A Russian press free to speak its mind would probably have laid its hand on that sore. To some degree despite all censorship it did, but only to a very curtailed extent and carpet warriors held the destinies of the nation—to be more correct failed to hold them. Is it not probable that a free Press would have made for valuable reforms—too late to achieve victory, perhaps, but certainly not too late to better things? ​Would not a free Press have voiced that large section of Russian opinion which—despite the pro-Japanese revolutionary element—did, (so those who know Russia best all assure us,) hold the view of that 'We must muddle it through,' which saved England in the S. African war.
In contemplating the victorious Japanese we are apt to forget that only in defeat can the real strength of a nation be assessed. Only an unrestricted press can show the nation what its real sentiments are, and this fact is a heavy thing to put in the scales against the palpable enough dangers of having leaders who have failed criticised to the men under them. Really perhaps the answer rests with 'Fitness to Win.' If Fitness to Win is a matter of leaders only, then a muzzled press is desirable; but if it be an affair of all the nation, of the nation as a whole, then freedom of the Press despite all the obvious disadvantages in specific cases is surely more desirable. Just as, whatever advantages Protection may convey, a Free Trade nation exposed to fierce competition must of necessity have a hardier trade, so the protection afforded by muzzling the Press is apt to produce 'hot-house' leaders. Terrible though the responsibility on an admiral in war may be, greatly as this may be increased by his being the target for half-informed and at times perhaps unjust criticism, a strong man is likely to be all the stronger for having to weather the additional storm. In all public careers such storms ​have to be weathered to the advantage of the man who succeeds and to the strengthening of his followers. The weaker go to the wall thereby, but that is the best place for the weaker to go to in any affair of life or death.
There is danger, of course, that admirals inclined to play to the gallery may be evolved by unlimited Press freedom, but playing to the gallery is an evil that can be overrated. Nelson undoubtedly did it; but his own ships' companies were part of the gallery and their devotion to him served to make his deeds possible. Togo the Silent by his very silence did something of the same sort, though the Japanese Press Laws rendered such action unnecessary. 'Playing to the gallery' is after all only another way of expressing a man's becoming a vivid reality to his nation and to the men of his fleet; and the gallery which will applaud an actor who successfully plays to it, will hoot him quickly enough if his performances are not equal to his promises. And finally, whatever Nelson accomplished, it is hardly possible to deny that had he not been a popular figure, had a Press law been able to muzzle all popular comment, he would have had to pay for a certain early laches to the extent of never rising above the rank of captain. There is surely no doubt that some of his superiors would have broken him had convenient Press laws enabled them to do so without publicity. Whether Collingwood could have won Trafalgar is perhaps a moot point, but it is clear ​that he could not have won it as Nelson did by 'personality.'
And so, obvious though the advantages of secrecy and a muzzled Press may be in certain cases, it is hard to believe that these can outweigh the less obvious but far more weighty advantages that come from an unmuzzled Press and throwing upon the nation itself the responsibility for successful war. Togos may be produced by the first system, so may Collingwoods; but never Nelsons or Hannibals. On England's fitness to win Nelson flew from victory to victory, while because Carthage was unfit to win, its unmuzzled opinion led to the neutralising of all Hannibal's successes. Had he and his supporters possessed a means of muzzling hostile opinion in the Carthaginian senate it is possible that Hannibal might have carried his victories further. He might even have taken Rome. But the lack of fitness to win in Carthage itself would still have borne its fruit, despite all the efforts of perhaps the greatest man who ever lived. Had Carthage been fit to win, its own public opinion would soon have made short work of Hannibal's detractors and party opponents. No muzzling of opinion will ever keep the unfit long in power, and there is only one fate deserved by the unfit nation. Victory by Press laws can never be achieved, and it may even be argued with some show of plausibility ​that every effort after secrecy is a symptom of decaying fitness. Possibly, indeed, it may be said that (for reasons indicated earlier in the chapter, or as a sequence to those reasons) Japan's relative failure against Russia at the last was partly due to the fact that its Government feared to take the nation into its confidence.
This however is carrying the argument farther than is necessary. The point is that every war should be an absolutely national affair, conducted by strong men who have forced their ways to the top in face of everything and who hold their positions by the confidence of the nation—a war of All for All. Press muzzling laws do not contemplate war on such lines, they contemplate wars conducted by a committee sitting in camera. If two nations otherwise equally fit come into conflict, surely the national determination to win will lie with those who are All for All. The men at home in England surely contributed to the victory of Trafalgar just as those in France contributed to its failure. So far as a muzzled or unmuzzled Press had to do with the course of events, it was Napoleon who best understood the art of muzzling the Press.
More than this it is difficult for one in the ranks of Journalism to say, lest he be suspected of special pleading. Yet no special pleading is intended or desired; the case resting rather on the fixed conviction, emphasised throughout this book and indeed its very raison d'être and its main 'heresy' against conventionally ​accepted 'axioms of Sea Power,' that victory rests with the nation rather than with any individual. Press muzzling must rest upon the opposite conviction—that victory depends upon individuals and not upon the nation as a whole. The general conviction of the individuals concerned is that this is so, but the fact of the conviction is not proof of its correctness.
At the same time it may be well to record the opinion that press correspondents should be absolutely barred from accompanying fleets in war time. The reason lies not with the risks of movements being prematurely disclosed and all the other stock arguments, but with the fact that 'incident' is the breath of life to the journalist, whereas absence of incident is probably the more essential to successful naval war. Those weary days of the endless blockade without any incidents to relieve broke the back of France in the Great War against Napoleon. The recording of such weariness may be the means of transmitting a similar weariness to the nation.
* ↑ Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, July 1905.
* ↑ Compare Nelson, Laughton, XI. pp. 209-211, where the wonderful effect of Nelson's personality is very clearly set forth.