June 22. 1916 
LAND 8c W A T E R 
11 
squadron inevitable ? The German could see nothing 
in speed but the capacity to strike a blow and run 
away before the counter -stroke could fall. It is a 
fatal misreading of theory. The value of speed in a 
fighting imit is proportioned not to its actual pace, but 
to the effectiveness of the lighting power that the speed 
delivers at the decisive point. If it dehvcrs the striking 
force at an indecisive point — namely, to bombard bathing 
machines — speed is a deception. It only helps you to 
nm away. It is the strategy of the gutter snipe. It is 
not magnificent ; neither is it war. But I am not at all 
certain that it is not failure to appreciate this curious 
(ierman perversion of sea doctrine, that explains much 
of the recent criticism of British strategy and tactics. 
The King's Verdict 
But whatever the origin of our doubts the time has 
surely come now when they can be laid to rest. Though 
we have not Sir John Jellicoe's dispatch, though the 
Admiralty is still silent, we have yet in the past week had 
one judgment on the battle — namely, the King's — 
which has a value quite apart from the fact that it is 
expressed after the fullest information that anyone can 
possess, and is the judgment of one trained "to dis- 
passionate impartiality. For in naval matters the King 
speaks witli an authority that is something more than 
Royal. All his early life was spent under the White 
Ensign, and since he relinquished active service in the 
ileet his interest in naval science has been as profound 
and sustained as his training was thorough. When 
then he has visited both sections of the British fleet, 
and expresses his judgment at the end of it, it is 
something more than phrases of ceremony that we hear. 
" Unfavourable weather conditions," His Majesty says, 
" and approaching darkness, prevented that complete 
result wliich you all expected. But you did all that was 
possible in the circumstances. You drove the enemy 
into his harbours and inflicted on him very severe losses 
and you added another page to the glorious traditions of 
the British navy. 
You could do no more, and /or your splendid work I 
thank you." 
Especially important are these words from the fact 
that the King himself adopts what those who had any 
belief in the navy might have guessed for themselves 
to be the true reason why the " major portion " — as the 
secretary of the Marincamt modestly said — of the 
(ierman forces regained their ports. His Majesty is 
-atisfied that it was only the ill fortune of a falling fog 
ihat saved the German battle fleet. Some critics have 
urged us not to excuse our ill success by pleading ill luck. 
Not this way, they teh us, lies the road to victory. But 
the manly thing is, seeing things as they are, totell the 
truth about them. And the truth of the "battle of Jutland 
is simple. Had the mist not intervened ten minutes after 
the Grand Fleet came into action, the German fleet, 
instead of being only defeated, demoralised and damaged, 
would have been utterly destroyed. 
The Fruit of Victory 
There is some disappointment that our victory has 
not yet resulted in some development palpably 
favourable to the Allied cause. As to this, two things 
may be said. First, there is nothing we can do now to 
embarrass our enemy that we have not always, since 
the first day of war, been perfectly free and able to do. 
Secondly, our disappointment is nothing at all compared 
with that of the Germans — who also, it must be remem- 
bered, have won the same battle. And now we should not 
have long to wait for the fruits of victory. For no less a 
person than Mr. Balfour has said that it is open to us to 
draw the lines of our blockade with greater stringency. 
It is a thing that certainly can be done with advantage. 
And if Mr. Balfour insists, it will be done. But need we 
have waited till we had beaten the German Fleet before 
doing everything that was possible ? As the American 
Note, pnblished last Monday, reminds us, we are not 
pretending to blockade even now. If a naval victory 
inspires the First Lord of the Admiralty to egg on the 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to a bolder course it 
will advance the final victory materially. But I must insist 
that it is not the military results of the Battle of Jutland 
that will have made the more effective policy possible. 
If the more effective policy follows, it will show that, for 
us, the moral effects of victory have been more im- 
portant. 
It has been understood that we have hesitated to 
use our sea power to the full, because it seemed better 
that the enemy should be rcvictualled than the neutrals 
offended. If the battle has sent down German stock 
and made ours soar, if it has turned the Foreign Office 
and the Quai d'Orsay into departments of war instead of 
conciliation, then we must expect great things to happen. 
There is nothing in Mr. Lansing's Note about the mails 
to make our statesmen pause if they are really contem- 
plating drastic action. For Mr. Lansing — -who wrote, 
remember, before the decisive battle was fought — in 
admitting the belligerent right to verify the bonii fides 
of all mail packets, as he does, brings back the actual 
discussion to what is the main point in all the previous 
American Notes, namely, the loss and annoyance which 
neutrals suffer, not from our right, but from our 
actual methods of exercising it. America has not yet 
admitted, and it is supposed will not admit, that ships 
with the hold-capacity of those of to-day simply cannot 
be searched at sea. When I say that they cannot, I do 
not mean that it is literally impossible, because if there was 
no other way of doing it, the investigation would have to 
be made, and made if necessary, in mid ocean. But it 
can only be done at an inconvenience to all concerned, at 
a loss of time infinitely greater than is caused by taking 
ships into port. There is besides the risk from sub- 
marines, which would be greater for the neutral ship 
under examination than for the cruiser ; for the cruiser 
will be armed. The issue between the Allies and the 
United States is not then really the sanctity of the mails 
any more than the real issue over the so-called blockade 
is our right to prevent goods from reaching Germany 
imder the admirable American doctrine of the " con- 
tinuous voyage." The issue is whether making neutral 
ships enter British ports to be searched is a justifiable 
application to changed conditions of rules that, though 
constantly questioned, were firmly established under the 
old conditions. No doubt this controversy presents 
serious difficulties and must be conducted on the Allies' 
side with skill and tact if strained relations with America 
are to be avoided. For strained relations — especially 
at election times — are quite conceivable even when there 
is no issue so paramount as questions of life and death, 
justice and humanity. On all such matters the record 
of the Allies is absolutely clean. So far as we are con- 
cerned the freedom of the seas from murder, torture, and 
outrage has been absolute. That in hitting at our enemy 
we have caused some neutrals severe damage to trade and 
property, it would be idle to dispute. But other neutrals 
— and of the same nationality as the sufferers from our 
interference — have done astonishingly well out of the Allies. 
Our command of the sea has created for the United States 
a foreign trade prodigious beyond all precedent and 
lucrative beyond all belief. If the total losses suffered by 
America are balanced against the total American profit, 
the net gain — which the citizens of the United States owe 
to the effective protection that the British Navy extends 
over their export trade — will be recognised as one of the 
most astounding of all the features of a war, each of whose 
features is without precedent. The present controversy 
is hardly one over which the pubhc will have to alarm 
itself, unless indeed, it becomes the interest of one of 
the contesting parties in America to make election capital 
out- of it. But as both Republicans and Democrats are 
commending their candidate on a programme of peace with 
honour, it seems unlikely that it would be the business of 
either to make a fighting issue of the war. 
Submarines Again ? 
There is far more likelihood that Germany will take 
advantage of the enthusiastic pacifism of the candidates 
to revive the submarine attack on British and neutral 
shipping. Von Koester and the Freisinnigc openly 
urge it. Indeed an attack of sorts on neutral shipping 
has already begun. Two Norwegian steamers were sunk 
by submarine on June 9th off the coast of Holland. 
One paper says six have been sunk in June. The Orkedal 
was bound from Rosario to Aalborg with a cargo of maize. 
Nothing more neutral can well be imagined. She had 
