very narrow fronts. A fence of mines less than three
hundred miles long and two hundred feet deep would, for example,
completely bar their exit through the North Sea. The U-boats run the
gauntlet of that long narrow sea and pay a heavy toll to it. If only our
Admiralty would tell the German public what that toll is now, there
would come a time when German seamen would no longer consent to go down
in them. Consider, however, what a submarine campaign would be for Great
Britain if instead of struggling through this bottle-neck it were
conducted from the coast of Norway, where these pests might harbour in a
hundred fiords. Consider too what this weapon may be in twenty years'
time in the hands of a country in the position of the United States.
Great Britain, if she is not altogether mad, will cease to be an island
as soon as possible after the war, by piercing the Channel Tunnel--how
different our transport problem would be if we had that now!--but such
countries as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, directly they are
involved in the future in a war against any efficient naval power with
an unimpeded sea access, will be isolated forthwith. I cannot conceive
that any of the great ocean powers will rest content until such a
tremendous possibility of blockade as the submarine has created is
securely vested in the hands of a common league beyond any power of
sudden abuse.

It must always be remembered that this war is a mechanical war conducted
by men whose discipline renders them uninventive, who know little or
nothing of mechanism, who are for the most part struggling blindly to
get things back to the conditions for which they were trained, to
Napoleonic conditions, with infantry and cavalry and comparatively light
guns, the so-called "war of manoeuvres." It is like a man engaged in a
desperate duel who keeps on trying to make it a game of cricket. Most of
these soldiers detest every sort of mechanical device; the tanks, for
example, which, used with imagination, might have given the British and
French overwhelming victory on the western front, were subordinated to
the usual cavalry "break through" idea. I am not making any particular
complaint against the British and French generals in saying this. It is
what must happen to any country which entrusts its welfare to soldiers.
A soldier has to be a severely disciplined man, and a severely
disciplined man cannot be a versatile man, and on the whole the British
army has been as