LAND AND WATER. 
Augxisf 7, 1915. 
man to screw himself up to a high pitch and act 
the hero for a season. It is a totally different 
thing to enter upon a caEing that means a life of 
constant self-denial, of constant facing of danger 
and discomfort, of constant witness to comrades 
and messmates lost by the ordinary perils of the 
profession. The spiritual level to which armies 
are lifted by war is the necessary condition of the 
life of navies in peace. And if, in the Grand Fleet 
to-day, daily hardships, toils, and dangers are so 
cheerfully borne as to seem entirely without effect, 
it is largely due to the fact that the oiEcers of the 
Royal Navy have stipulated amongst themselves 
and created amongst those under them a standard 
of conduct and of character that makes heroio 
endurance both natural and easy. So much for the 
idleness of the Grand Fleet 1 
DOGGER BANK AFFAIR. 
Now for the Dogger Bank affair. It is clear 
from the fragments of Sir David Beatty's dis- 
patches which have been vouchsafed to us that it 
,was his opinion that "through damage to the Zzon's 
feed tank by an unfortunate chance shot we were 
undoubtedly deprived of a greater victory." The 
" greater victory," of course, was sinking one, 
two, or three oi the enemy's battle-cruisers — in 
short, chasing Admiral Hipper successfully. The 
sinking of the Blucher was not a great achieve- 
ment for five battle-cruisers. It is almost the 
iVice-Admiral's statement, then, that, compared 
,with what might have been done, success was not 
achieved. But this is not to say the Vice-Admiral 
failed. Indeed, it is perfectly obvious that, so far 
as there was a failure, the Vice-Admiral had 
nothing whatever to do vsdth it. It was about 
eleven o'clock when the Lion was stopped by the 
accident to her feed tank, just before enemy sub- 
marines made their appearance on the starboard 
bow, and the squadron turned to avoid them, 
almost simultaneously with the Lion being put 
out of action. The enemy, it is to be remembered, 
,were retreating at about twenty-four knots, and 
our ships were pursuing at a very considerably 
higher speed. If the action was to continue, it 
would have to continue without Lion's assistance 
or the Admiral's continuance in command. It was 
evidently the Admiral's intention that the action 
should continue. Some minutes before he had sent 
a specific order to Indomitable to finish oSBliicher 
.which by this time was in great difficulties, and as 
Lion turned out of line, he ordered the rest of the 
squadron to attack the enemy. This was his last 
action as Commander-in-Chief, before both the 
enemy and his own ships passed out of sight. 
In regard to this action generally, while it is 
cl^r that the result did not come up to what the 
Admiral believed it might have been, we have not 
Bulhcient information to enable us to form a clear 
stopped when L^on stopped, it is possible that 
so much time was lost that it was p^sically im- 
possible to bnng the Germans within range again 
before they reached the shelter of Heligo?and If 
Pnncess koyal. Tiger, and New Zealand lost ten 
minutes by stopping when Lion stopped the 
Germans would have added 8,000 yards to the 
8 000 yards could not have keen got rid of in less 
than an hour and a half. Supposing the lImZ 
Have been injured seventy miles from Heligoland, 
12 
the new chase would mean that the British ships 
would be only thirty miles from Heligoland when 
they got the enemy at the eleven o'clock range 
again. It may, therefore, have been physically im- 
possible to resume the action without running into 
mines, and things may have gone wrong only by 
the fleet interpreting the stopping of the 
Lion as an order to them to stop also. The 
Admiral's order to Tiger, New Zealand, and 
Princess Royal to attack the retreating enemy 
would thus have been one that could not have 
been carried out. Be this as it may, I interpret 
the Admiral's statement that the injury to Lion 
deprived them of a greater victory to mean, not 
that the Lion's guns would have turned the scale, 
but that the Admiral's being knocked out by 
the accident explained why the pursuit was 
unsuccessfuL 
GERMAN SUBxMARINE CLAIMS. 
Mr. Balfour has disposed of Count Revent- 
low very neatly. There is nothing on his main 
theses left to say. But there is something pathetic 
in the Count's insistence that the submarine war 
is having " a growing influence " on our economic 
conditions. And it is worth noting that it has long 
been apparent that the Germans would never get 
within measurable distance of realising their 
programme. This, it will be remembered, was to 
make a real blockade out of the submarine cam- 
paign. Every ship was to be stopped. .When it 
was first announced, I ventured to say no German 
sailor would vouch for any such thing being 
possible. There was good British authority for a 
view that trade was timid, and that a determined 
onslaught on merchant ships would frighten the 
rest off the sea. It is a view that experience has 
fortunately shown to be baseless, and it is not a 
little creditable to merchant seamen, and, for that 
matter, to the average civilian passenger, that 
there is no falling-off in the number of ships 
putting to sea, no disinclination of non-com- 
batants to travel, no reproach to the skipper if, in 
suitable circumstances, he elects to ram or run 
rather than to surrender. The campaign only had 
its " f rightfulness " to rely on. If trade did not 
stop out of fear, there was no other way. 
Count Revent low's letter follows on some 
very curious statistics published last week in 
Berlin for German and neutral consumption. It 
had recently been said in England that ninety- 
eight British merchant vessels have been sunk in 
the course of the blockade, and that ninety-five 
neutrals — so far as the Government knew — had 
been destroyed by German warships and mines 
in the course of the war. The Berlin statement 
evidently assumes Mr. Macnamara's figures for 
the neutrals to mean the number of neutrals sunk 
by submarines in the blockade, and it proceeds to 
set out the authentic figures. According to this, 
229 British vessels have been sunk, 30 Allied, and 
33 neutrals. I have been rather puzzled to recon- 
cile the first of these totals with the figures obtain- 
able here. It is easy to double the number of 
British victims if we include trawlers with the 
merchant ships. To be accurate, it will make 
the number of our losses 195 instead of 98. A 
great many other British ships have been attacked 
and, indeed, torpedoed, and have afterwards 
escaped. But they would not bring the figure to 
229. 
