New-York tribune., 1918-11-22
The Won 1irpitz Mirage

-. German sea power was practically
: sextinguished yesterday when ten German
Sx,battleships, five battle-cruisers and six
: light cruisers were surrendered off the
Firth of Forth to the Allies.
"Germany's future lies on the sea-"
2 said William II some years ago IN one
:. of his magniloquent moods. He was mere
. jy echoing Grand Admiral Won Tirpitz.
But he and TirpiN were wretched read
ers of the future. They were also in
sfantile strategists. Germany's future rs
a military power could not lie upon the
wseas. Her only hope of victory IN a
European war was to win on land. The
vast naval adventure into which Tirpitz
and the Kaiser led her people was only
"A milestone about their necks IN the
hour when world power and downfall
were in the balance.
:, Germany has virtually no navy now.
She would have been better off from
August, 1914, to November, 1918, if she
! had had no navy then. The insensate
/ naval policy of Won Tirpitz was the
/ rock on which German fortunes were
!: wrecked. For it forced the United
States into the war and it brought all
; the neutral nations eventually to the
! side of the Allies.
! Tirpitz, obese, whiskered, promoter
and politician rather than a seaman, was
Germany's most conspicuous evil genius.
He fomented for years the threatening
German naval programmes which
..;aroused British antagonism and put
Britain ON her guard He drove Great
Britain into the Triple Entente. He
made British neutrality impossible in a
war between the Teuton Alliance and
France and Russia.
built at SO enormous a cost was useless
in war, except in the limited field of
ssubnrarine attack (and the submarine
development was really war after
thought). The Tirpitz surface fleet had
/ IFS only real test in the Battle of Jut-
land. 1t failed there completely. 1t
was saved from destruction only by the
saccident Of low visibility conditions and
by the excellent Judgment Of Admiral
won Scheer, its commander in chief
J.: Captain Persius's recent revelations
are conclusive on this point. This able
naval critic exhibited throughout the
war a certain professional integrity
which distinguished him from the rur
of German military critics. He be
stfayed his restiveness under censorship
demands. 1t must have been an intel
1ectual satisfaction to him to expose al
last the fatal blunders of sthe Tirpit7
programme.
a The Allies greatly overrated Ger
ssfsaany's naval strength. 1t was init
mated in the first years of the war that
.@the Germans had guns on their bigge,
sships which outranged Allied fire. This
Captain Persius says was a mistake
~He admits that the German muteyie
was inferior. Recognizing this, the Ger
'snan Admiralty began to scrap the feet
At the beginning of 1915 twenty-thret
battleships were disarmed and the
metal on them began to be taken fo,
the construction of submarines. An tn,
pre-dreadnoughts-built from 1897 t,
1906-had been destroyed by January
1918.
80, Germany was left with only he,
newer capital ships and her U-boats
The capital ships were self -interned
And there were never enough sub
marines. Captain Persius says that ther
were 128 U-boats in April, 1917, an,
l4o in October, 1917. In February
1913, the number had dropped to 49,
and in June, 1913, to 113. Hardly NOR
than II per cent Of these were O,
active service at any one time Thi
strikingly confirms Admiral Sims
recent statement that hardly more tha
q dozen submarines were ever cruisin
at one time in the North Atlantic Sc
lanes.
Tirpltz and his successors Ia tn
Admiralty grossly deceived the Ge,
anlan public about the extent and eff
seacy Of the submarine campaign.
failed largely because submarine cor
,9truction started too late
~. The German sea venture was fror
.'beginning TO end fatal blunder.
asound military policy would have RI
nounced the sea. Prussia won the war
ssof 1866 and 1870-'71 without nav,
The surrender Of the German feet ma
sbe CALLING to German pride. But it
mo real military loss. 1t merely shatter
an illusion of sea powe4 which the &c,
man fmagination had foolishly cherished