Book Review: Plotting for Peace: American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers and Britain at War, 1914–1917 by Daniel Larsen

Abstract

war was fought with renewed ferocity. The United States’ entry ended the debate on neutral rights, so tightening the blockade. American warships helped protect the sea lines of communication against U-boats long before American soldiers arrived in France. In short, Britain embraced both continental and maritime strategies, and it did so because it had little choice. Even Corbett’s ally at the heart of government, Maurice Hankey, although convinced that maritime strength would win the war in the end, knew that Britain might lose it in the short term if it did not also fight on land in support of its allies. There is, therefore, an unexpressed tragedy at the heart of Lambert’s book. Corbett’s influence depended on his relationship with Jackie Fisher as First Sea Lord, but Fisher himself undermined the maritime strategy which Corbett advocated. Despite Corbett’s wishes, he stoked the factionalism which divided the navy’s senior ranks. Corbett realised that the navy required its own staff but Fisher was determined to thwart its creation. Both before the war and, more importantly during it, Fisher refused to be sufficiently explicit about the Baltic plan which Lambert argues he and Corbett saw as the best option for a British maritime strategy. Fisher defended himself by saying that he did not trust the politicians not to talk to their wives. By not engaging in ‘conference’ as Corbett urged, the navy limited its own ability to shape strategy. Just as Corbett recognised the need to talk to statesmen, so he also acknowledged the need to talk to soldiers – including (as Lambert stresses) G.F.R Henderson, who taught the generals of the Great War at Camberley, where Corbett himself went to lecture. Fisher did not. Like Corbett, Fisher may have wanted to use the army as a projectile of the navy, but only after Fisher had left the Admiralty – and at the very last moment – did the navy begin to consider what vessels might be required for the conduct of amphibious operations. Both Lord Kitchener and Sir John French, the two most powerful army officers in August 1914, were as persuaded of the priority of army-navy cooperation and of the importance of long-term imperial security as Corbett was. If Fisher was so convinced of the rightness of what Corbett propounded, he did a bad job of selling it. Lambert describes Corbett’s final writings, the Naval Operations volumes of the official history, as the preliminary work for a new edition of Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. If, as he argues, Corbett realised that strategy is contingent, not constant, the FirstWorldWar left him with a lot of rethinking to do. By 1919 many of his fellow Liberal Imperialists had abandoned their faith in the British empire in favour of the United States as the main building block of a future global order. There is little sign that Corbett had done so – or that he appreciated how much maritime strategy had in fact contributed to the war’s final outcome.