Britain in Arms (L'Effort Britannique)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE WORK OF THE FLEET Some hypotheses IN this war, apparently, the value attached by the public to the achievements of the different fighting forces operating throughout the world is determined by the spectacular effect rather than by the real usefulness and permanent effectiveness of their achievements. Thus, while bestowing unstinted praise on certain heroic incidents in an attack, the public too readily forgets the daily sacrifice and uncomplaining self-denial of the men standing knee-deep in the mud of the trenches engaged in the essential task of defending the line. So with regard to the Fleet. I hear it said around me, by people who obstinately refuse to look at the course of events as a whole and only concern themselves with such immediate and obvious information as may be got from the official military communiques, that the English are doing nothing in this war, because they still occupy only a comparatively inconsiderable section of the Western front. They deliberately overlook the magnitude of -: - the part played by the British Grand Fleet. Even among those who do take some account of it I hear it asked: But what is the British Fleet really doing ? Such people seem to imagine that a fleet is only effectively performing its part when it can boast of having sunk a certain number of enemy ships and won on the high seas battles whose results may be stated in definite, concrete terms. Both alike fail to realise either the problems or the triumphs of the passing hour. They do not understand that each day that passes without the official communiques making mention of naval operations constitutes, in fact, a silent record of victory for the British Fleet, and testifies to the signal services rendered by it to the cause of the Allies. The more...