New-York tribune., 1920-03-13
Naval Concentration

Naval Concentration
1t is now known that during the
spring and carly summer of 1917 the
German su6marine campaign sue
ceeded in cutting the lines Of COM
munieatiou of the Allies.
Had the Allies been defeated. the
great German feet would have been
liberated and Germany would prob
ably have come into possession of the
t,il greater Allied fleets. With
oddsofer three to one against it, our
tieei ould have been swept from the
as and we should have faced in
sion or capitulation-with pros
pects of paying a vast indemnity to
Germany. Such are some of the in
ferences which flow from the facts
now coming out in tie Senate COM
mlttee's investigation of the conduct
Of the Navy Department. In the
summer of 1917 all depended on
maintaining the supplies to the AL
lied armies, and that depended on
naval concentration against the suh-
marines.
Admiral Mahan, recognized by all
nations as the greatest expounder
of maritime principles, declared a
decade ago:
In any military scheme that
comes before you, let your first oues-
ton to yourself be, Is this con-
sistent with the requirement of con-
centration? Never attempt to strad-
die, to do two things at the same
time, unless your force is evidently
SO supreme that you have clearly
more than enough for each" Naval
Strategy, p. 43.)
But with the fate Of all freedom
loving nations depending on obtain,
ing negation of the submarine CAM
palgn, and the entire navy of the
United States suddenly available, in
theory, how did our Navy Depart
ment act? In his report Admiral
Sims says that thirteen months after
we entered the war
II was still urgently recon-
mending an increase of forces-still
trying to convince the department
that the war was in the eastern At
lantic, that the United States naval
front was off the European coast and
not off the United States coast.
During the most critical months
OF the enemy's submarine campaign
against the Allied lines Of COM
munication the department violated
the fundamental strategical prin-
clple OF concentration of maximum
force in the critical area OF a con-
f1jct."
OF the two million soldiers we sent
to Europe only about three hundred
thousand went in the first twelve
months of our participation; so dur
ing the earlier period the demands
for convoy duty we're light. Yet our
navy comprised thirty-five battle
ships, forty cruisers, seventy-four
destroyers, nineteen torpedo boats
and sixty-six submarines. Though
the situation cried loudly for instant
concentration, not until nearly
month after we entered the war did
our first f1otilla of but six destroyers
sall Tor anti-submarine duty. Why
had they waited nearly a month?
Why did our sixty-eight remaining
destroyers and our nineteen torpedo
boats continue to wait?
Admiral Sims was forced to ans
peal to Ambassador Page, who
cabled on April 27 that "there is rea-
son for the greatest alarm about the
issue Of the war, caused by the in
creasing success OF Germany's SUBJ
marines" At that time, having de-
cided to send six of our seventy-four
destroyers to British waters, Secre-
tary Daniels was proposing to send
Tour more and four patrol boats to
the Arctic Russian waters! He was
"straddling." Does such Grass viola
ton of the first principle Of warfare
-concentration-give any evidence
that the Navy Department had any
war plan" in April, 1917, or had the
slightest definite idea as to what it
wanted to do about the war?
The days Of Mr.. Daniels as Secre-
tary Of the Navy are numbered. to