statistical department, continually investigating the causes and distribution of disease, and subjecting to expert criticism all public health measures before they are introduced in Parliament. Centrally administered also-preferably by the Ministry of Health, but possibly by the Local Government Board and other departments-we have Acts for the prevention of food adulteration, for notification of infectious diseases, regulation of sanitary conditions in factories, and other matters which should be uniform over the whole country. Locally, we have in each county borough a single health authority responsible for maintaining sanitary conditions within its area, and charged with the duty of providing for all classes of the community a medical service, including hospitals, sanatoria, treatment by general practitioners, lying-in homes, midwives, nurses, pathological laboratories, and other adjuncts necessary to secure treatment consonant with the present high level of medical science.

It has not been possible to give more than an outline of the above proposals, and the writer is well aware that they are open to adverse criticism in various directions, but no scheme can be suggested which is free from difficulties. The proposals here made seem to the writer those most calculated to reduce bureaucratic control to the minimum, and to give the people themselves a direct interest in improving local conditions. Sweeping reform of the public health services cannot be long delayed, for the paramount importance of securing a healthy population is now realised by all. But whatever scheme be adopted, let us beware of anticipating too much from mere administrative changes. The best medical service possible is but a palliative, and permanent improvement in the nation's health will only be achieved by destroying the great environmental causes of disease. We do not need a Royal Commission or Ministry of Health to tell us what these are. By far the most malign influence is overcrowding and bad housing in London and the large industrial towns. By all means let us have an improved system of public health services, but do not let us forget that no number of volumes of statistics or of hospitals and health visitors will compensate for lack of sunshine and fresh air in slums. A healthy people can only be bred in a healthy environment.

WILLIAM A. BREND.

THE WAR AND THE NAVAL OFFENSIVE

La Guerre Navale et L'Offensive. By CONTRE-AMIRAL DEGOUY. Paris Librairie Chapelot. 1917.

A

FTER more than three years of war at sea we are in

a position to estimate the amount of the success, or the depth of the failure, which has been the reward, or the punishment, of the use we have made of our naval resources. For a reason to be shortly stated in its proper place I do not say only the use we have made of our Fleet.' Yet the fleet goes in the forefront of the war. We see it plainly before us. We know that without it there can be no safety, and will be no victory. The question whether we have employed it to the best purpose stands as a preliminary in any attempt to make a survey of the war at sea so far. It is notorious from newspaper comment, parliamentary debate, and the freedom of private discussion that there are many who answer the question in the negative. Mr. Kennedy Jones spoke for no inconsiderable body of opinion when he asked a certain question and made a certain statement in the House of Commons during the debate on the adjournment for the Autumn Recess on August 16th last.

'Assuming Germany's determination to continue, do you believe, in the face of the submarine menace, that the passive pressure your Fleet now exerts is the best help it can give to achieve victory in a reasonable time? Is not some change in your present scheme of naval operations desirable? . . . Let me make my first question perfectly clear. At present the submarine has broken down our traditional naval strategy. The Fleet existed, as I conceive it, not merely to win battles. The ultimate purpose of the Fleet was to make blockade possible for us and impossible for the enemy. All that has gone. To-day we are in the position of a Power with overwhelming naval strength, unable to obtain that command of the sea which our preponderance ought to give us.'

Though there is no necessity to show that Mr. Kennedy Jones does not speak for himself alone, his statement of the case may be supported by a reference to a noteworthy article contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes' of July 15th by

the eminent French naval critic, Contre-amiral Degouy. He named it' Les Opérations Conjuguées.' The French admiral's purpose was to show that the 'passive pressure' now applied by the allied naval forces could not be relied on to reduce Germany by cutting off food and other necessaries soon enough to save the Allies themselves from being crippled by 'l'épuise'ment matériel' and 'l'abatement moral.' The British member of Parliament was content to pose the question, and wait for the answer which was not given. The French admiral pointed out what, in his opinion, would be a more excellent way, but did so in terms so vague that only a very indistinct impression of what it is he wished to see done was left on the reader's mind. A great ox treads on the tongues of British members of Parliament and French naval critics alike. Yet they make their meanings sufficiently clear. In their opinions enough has not been done with our fleet, and more remains

When such a belief prevails, and is avowed by responsible and competent voices, it is surely not superfluous to look behind us, and around us, for such evidence as we can find for our guidance before we make up our own minds.

Nothing in the conduct of discussion is more commendable, not even good humour and fair play, than to make the meaning of your questions and your statements clear. Indeed, there is no fair play when you fail to comply with that condition. The best security that you will succeed is to be very careful in using your terms in a definite sense, and always in the same sense. We shall clear the ground if we can decide what is meant by our 'traditional naval strategy,' which it seems has broken down. The much-employed word strategy, which, as it is now commonly used, came late from the land which 'produced one Kant with a K and the many cants with a C,' is not so true a term of art that it can be safely assumed to bear a definite meaning, and the same definite meaning, to all. I will predicate that it means-the use of our naval resources so as to develop their power to the utmost for the purpose of defeating that part of the enemy's power which it is most profitable for us to overthrow; so that it shall, either directly or incidentally, protect what must be safeguarded in the whole body of our national activity and possessions under penalty of crippling loss; so that victory shall give its full harvest; so that defeat in any particular operation shall not

VOL. 226. NO. 462.

of need amount to more than a check or temporary set back, and shall not entail disaster as its inevitable consequence. Since it is said that there has been failure, it is not irrelevant to try to show, in the fewest possible words, what has been done in former ages. When we have done that we shall be in a better position to gauge how far there has been a breakdown of our 'traditional strategy' in this war.

Well, to begin with, Englishmen have always understood that the most effectual way to prevent an enemy from damaging us by invasion, or otherwise, was to attack and destroy him wherever he could be found. The tendency, natural to human nature, to seize upon some particular man and deck him with the glory of creative wisdom-the tendency which made our fathers credit Alfred the Great with the foundation of the University of Oxford and the invention of the English juryhas misled some among us into seeing wonderful originality in the advice which Drake gave in the years before the Armada. Drake saw nothing which had not been as clear as the light of an unclouded sun to those Englishmen who in the reign of King John sailed with William Longsword to prevent Philippe Augustus from invading England by assailing and destroying his ships at Damme. The men of the Cinque Ports who, by the guidance of their mother-wit, saw instinctively that the most effectual way of making sure that Eustace the Monk should do no harm in their country was to fall on him and make an end of him before he got there, knew in 1217 the essentials of all that was known to Drake, to Hawke, or to Nelson. They manoeuvred to gain the weather gauge so that their arrows and the lime they threw in front of them should fly with the wind. They, in fact, made a rational estimate of the conditions in which they had to work, and having first calculated, they then bore down on the enemy with Upright Will and Downright Action.'

Individual officers and particular governments have failed, but the prevailing spirit has ever been that of William Longsword, of Hubert de Burgh, and of the men of the Cinque Ports. To destroy the enemy's forces wherever they could be reached was, save in stupid intervals, known to be the great point which carried the little points with it. How the work was to be carried out, with what wealth or lack of means, with what measure of continuity, and with what approach to

completeness, those were details which depended on the nature of the ship and the resources of the nation. The ship developed slowly through the centuries, and the nation grew from generation to generation and by degrees. But the principle was always the same, though the seamen of later times have been provided with instruments which allowed them to make an incomparably better application thereof than was possible in earlier ages. When the enemy could not be found and beaten at sea, or when though defeated he was not destroyed and might still be dangerous, then he must be watched and kept in port as closely as the sea-keeping powers of the ship of each age allowed.

Given that the great point has been achieved, then the little points have been incidentally gained. The free movement of our commerce is in itself a very great matter, but the task of giving it direct protection was a subordinate part of the Navy's work. The great fleets made it possible that the main streams of commerce should continue to flow, because by driving the adversary into port they prevented him from cutting a trade route permanently. At the same time, and incidentally, they blocked the road to the main streams of the enemy's commerce. It might creep along the coast from the protection of one battery to another, but it was suspended on the ocean save for some scattered and fortunate adventurers. Voltaire says in his 'History of Louis 'XV.' that French privateers were far more successful in taking English and Dutch vessels than their privateers were in taking the French-but then he goes on, there were far more English and Dutch merchant ships at sea than French to be taken. That is the whole Iliad in a nutshell. We drove French commerce off the sea. They vexed and injured ours, but without stopping its flow.

It is very necessary to bear this in mind when we are told that the successes of German submarines demonstrate the breakdown of our traditional strategy.' The implication is that in former times we escaped all such loss. Nothing is less true. We can put aside for a moment the question of the degree of our present loss and the reasons why it is greater than was the case in past times. The immediate point is that we always did lose in that way even when our + 'traditional strategy' was most successful. If command of