During this time France was again invaded by land. One of the authors of this book, at that time a young ensign, remembers a night in August 1914, when the landing party of his cruiser was rushed posthaste to Paris with its two machineguns—strong firepower for those days. Unlike the outcome in 1870, however, this time the capital was saved, by the victory on the Marne. The sailors rushed to the capital’s defense stayed on to constitute the famous marine brigade (Brigade des Fusiliers Marins) which distinguished itself for four years in some of the most hard-fought engagements of the entire land campaign. The same was true of a regiment of naval gunners which had been formed to man the 305-mm. (12-inch) naval guns mounted on railway carriages. One of the moving spirits in that naval railway battery was Lieutenant François Darlan—later to be Admiral of the Fleet.
At sea the war took on an entirely unanticipated aspect. The appearance of German submarines off the Pas-de-Calais, a hundred miles from their bases, seemed quite an event to the sailors of 1914. And at the beginning there was no effective weapon to combat these surprising undersea menaces. The man-of-war which saw a periscope—or thought it saw one—had no choice but to try to ram, or to grapple for the submerged U-boat with its anchors!
Despite the land armament again getting the lion’s share of the military budget, the French Navy, like the other allied navies, put forth an enormous effort in the manning and arming of more than a thousand patrol vessels and minesweepers, in addition to the regular men-of-war already in commission at the beginning of hostilities. Starting from zero, her naval air arm grew to a force of more than 2,000 planes by the end of the war—a war in which the French Navy lost 500 officers and 11,000 seamen killed or missing.
But escorting convoys and patrolling the sealanes, although arduous work, is not glamorous in the eyes of the civilians ashore. When peace returned, the Navy had the uncomfortable impression that its role in the national defense was again misunderstood and unappreciated by the general public.
It is true that had it not been for the heroic stand of the Army, the frontlines would have been broken—just as was to happen in 1940—and the war would soon have ended disastrously for France. But it is equally true that without the support of the innumerable men and the invaluable supplies safely transported from overseas to the European battleground, Germany could not have been checked, and ultimately defeated.
Displaying an understandable partiality, our allies from across the seas—England and the United States—were particularly concerned with the effective employment of the naval forces; to the French, the armies protecting their frontiers were of first importance. French naval officers accorded equal weight to land and sea—but for that very reason, their countrymen ashore saw them as a caste apart.
With the conclusion of hostilities, public opinion moved toward international limitation of arms. A conference was convened in Washington for the purpose of implementing Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which had partially disarmed Germany as precursor to parallel disarmament by the victors.
The French Government was successful in obtaining a decision that land and air armaments would not be discussed—arms in which France at that time had superiority. On the other hand, England and the United States, which were withdrawing more and more into their own spheres, one into its commonwealth and the other into the American hemisphere, were interested primarily in naval armaments. So doing, they were abandoning Europe more or less to French influence.
It is very difficult to reduce armaments, particularly through the establishment of an hierarchy between nations, if disarmament is not wholeheartedly desired by all.
Both England and the United States had seen that submarines constituted a threat to the usual control of the seas by the larger naval powers, and they proposed that their construction and use be prohibited. This met opposition from the second-rank naval powers, for whom the submarine was an instrument of pressure and thus a means toward equalization. France for one refused to do away with the submarine, thereby drawing sharp rejoinders from the British. And partly as a consequence, France found herself, along with Italy, forced to accept a capital ships tonnage ratio of 1.75 to 3 for Japan and 5 for the United States and Great Britain.
Justifiable or not, in time of peace the political power of a nation, and hence her influence in world affairs, is often measured by the relative strength of her naval forces. With this limitation on her battleship tonnage, the measure of naval might at that time, France was deeply humiliated by the ratios of the Washington Treaty.
True, these ratios were fairly in accord with the relative strengths of the various navies at the end of the war. But during the war, with the French Army given industrial priority, the construction of capital ships in France had been suspended; in other countries, which had not been invaded, naval construction had been expedited. Moreover, parity with Italy failed to accord with tradition, or with the respective obligations of the two navies, or with the relative political power of the two countries. Nevertheless the French Government accepted the Washington Treaty ratios for capital ships—designedly offensive weapons—though it refused to limit cruisers and lighter craft, which were generally considered defensive weapons.
In actuality the capital ship limitation did not injure the French Navy, for the naval funds allotted from the war-exhausted treasury would not have permitted much more construction than was actually undertaken. But the blow to French naval pride—a blow for which they held the British responsible—caused ill feeling that lingered on until 1938 and Munich, with its ominous shadow of World War II.
In the opinion of one of the French Ministers, why should the French Navy build new combatant ships, anyway, since there would never be another war? Accordingly some twenty submarines and torpedo boats taken from the Germans, plus some dozen torpedo boats built in Japan and a few English sloops and several American dispatch boats, were amalgamated with what remained of the French Fleet to form the postwar French Navy. It was a navy of highly irregular composition and appearance, to say the least. And while there were enough ships to conduct a training program for officers, there were not enough to interest them in naval careers. The naval academy consisted of nothing more than temporary barracks. Pay schedules were not adjusted to compensate for devaluation of currency. Many officers left the service, and there was a constant shortage of personnel.
Within that decrepit body, however, the soul of the Navy persisted, the survivor of many trials and of more misunderstandings, sacrifices, and unmerited criticisms than glorious victories. But adversity had deeply impressed its officers with the conviction that despite its checkered history, the French Navy had served as an elite corps—few in numbers but of homogeneous organization, aloof from politics, always an example of efficiency and devotion in the critical hours of the destiny of France.
1 Samuel E. Morison, “The Battle That Set Us Free,” in the Saturday Evening Post, July 7, 1956.
The Navy on the Eve of the Second World War
In 1914 the French Navy consisted of 690,000 tons of combatant ships in commission, with an additional 257,000 tons under construction. At the time of the Washington Treaty of 1922, the combat fleet totalled only 485,000 tons in commission and a mere 25,000 tons under construction—an obvious indication that even obsolete ships were not being replaced. All of the other principal naval powers had emerged from the conflict larger and more modern. The French Navy lost forty per cent of its fighting strength, and the remaining Fleet units were ill assorted and decrepit. Morale was low. Neither the Government nor the public seemed to have any interest in naval affairs.
Nevertheless
