“When Mr. Churchill, in the high tide of his optimism, addressed the House of Commons at the beginning of last year--he had the Falkland Islands and the Dogger Bank battles, the obliteration of the German ocean cruising force, the extinction of the enemy merchant marine, the security of English communications to his credit--he explained the accumulated phenomena of our sea triumph by the splendid perfection of his pre-war preparedness. The submarine campaign, the failure of the Dardanelles, the revelation of the defenceless state of the northeastern harbours, these things have somewhat modified the picture that the ex-First Lord drew. And, not least of our disillusions, we have all come to realize that in our neglect of the airship we have allowed the enemy to develop, for his sole benefit, a method of naval scouting that is entirely denied to us. That the British Admiralty and the British Fleet perfectly realize this disadvantage is the meaning of Mr. Balfour’s letter. He would not have told the enemy of our new North Sea arrangements had he not known that he could not be kept in ignorance of them for longer than a week or two, once they were made. The letter is, in fact, an admission that our sea power has to a great extent lost what was at one time its supreme prerogative, _the capacity of strategical surprise_. “But this does not materially alter the dynamics of the North Sea position, although it greatly affects tactics. The German official apologist will have it, however, that another factor has altered these dynamics. Admiral Jellicoe, he says, may be secure enough with his vast fleet in his ‘great bay in the Orkneys,’ and, between that and the Norwegian coast, hold a perfectly effective blockade line, but all British calculations of North Sea strategy have been upset by the establishment of new enemy naval bases at Zeebrügge, Ostend, and Antwerp. He speaks glibly, as if the co-operation of the forces based on the Bight with those in the stolen Belgian ports had altered the position fundamentally. This, of course, is the veriest rubbish. So far no captured Belgian port has been made the base for anything more important than submarines that can cross the North Sea under water, and for the few destroyers that have made a dash through in the darkness. Such balderdash as this, and that the German battle-cruisers did not take to flight, but simply ‘returned to their bases’ without waiting for the advent of ‘superior forces,’ imposes on nobody. It remains, of course, perfectly manifest that our surface control of the North Sea is as absolute as the character of modern weapons and the present understanding of their use make possible.