14 
LAND 61- WATER 
July 13, 1916 
enabled him to extend the crumpling process, actually 
applied to the leading ships of the hue, to all the ships 
in succession had the eneiiiy attempted his rctrcat sooner 
than he did. It is the first exemplification, and a 
curiously luminous one, of the tactical advantage of a 
23 to 36 percentage superiority in speed. But it is to 
be noted that when it came to the actual point of pushing 
this movement through, the 25-knot speed of the Queen 
Elizabeths did not suffice to enable them to keep station 
with the battle cruisers. 
One cannot help speculating as to the might have 
beens. Sir David Beatty, on this occasion, had under 
his immediate command only six of the battle-cruisers. 
Hood's — the Third Squadron — was, for some reason or 
other, with the Grand Fleet. Again the Fifth Battle 
Squadron was short by the name ship of the class ; 
and the Second Battle-cruiser Squadron was short of 
Australia. No fleet, of course, can keep at sea and be 
continuously carrying out gunnery and torpedo prac- 
tices and the other innumerable exercises necessary for 
efficiency, without occasional alterations in the disposi- 
tions of the ships, and without involving an enormous 
wear and tear of machinery, fittings, etc., which make 
it almost inconceivable that, at any one moment each 
admiral should have under his command ail the ships 
that .nominally' make up his total force. In the affair 
of the Dogger Bank, it will be remembered, Sir David 
Beatty had to go into action without Queen Mary, the 
best gunnery ship in his squadron. On the 31st May, 
he started on this great adventure with four battle- 
cruisers and one battleship short of the force that might 
have been under his command. He had, that is to say, 
ten ships instead of fifteen. What would have been the 
course of the action had he been fifty per cent, stronger 
than he was ? Up to the junction with von Hipper, the 
course taken by the German would probably have been 
the same as it actually was. But it is unlikely that the 
fortunes of war would have led to the loss of two ships 
from the English side without a far greater loss on the 
(ierman. What would Admiral von Scheer's choice 
have been, had he found himself at a quarter to fi\e 
faced by thirteen ships instead of eight, and reinforced by 
perhaps three ships instead of possibly five ? Would 
he with sixteen battleships and three of four battle- 
cruisers — some of them damaged— have been anxious 
to engage eight battle-cruisers and five Queen Eliza- 
beths ? And, on the other hand, would Sir David, at 
this point, have drawn northwards or felt justified in 
seeking close action with the German Fleet ? Had von 
Scheer shown no sign of following to the north, it can, I 
think, be taken for granted that they would have been 
forced to fight their way back to Heligoland. 
Navies Exist to Fight 
There is a high desirability that the full stories of the 
doings of the light cruisers and destroyers should be 
given to us, if possible, in the seamen's own unexpur- 
gated words. There seems to be no militarv reason 
against it, and one very imiwrtant military reason in 
its favour. It is this. The original reception given to 
the news of the Battle of Jutland is a final proof that 
there still lingers in man}' minds— and not all of them 
lay minds — a theory that it is not the primary object 
of fighting ships to fight. The Jellicoe and Beatty 
despatches are, from first to last, a counterblast against 
this curious theory. Had it not been held, we should not, 
just bebause three battle-cruisers and three armoured 
cruisers had been lost, have had it hastily explained to us 
that we owed the " grievous " blow to the rash im- 
petuosity of a too daring leader. It would have been 
taken for granted that as ships are built to fight, and it is 
impossible to fight without taking risks, losses would be 
inevitable. We shoud not have looked on the result 
in terms of losses bein^ equivalent to defeat. I ventvre 1 
a month ago to say that the critics would be silenced ani 
the fighting men vindicated when the truth was known. 
And the truth has been published and duly accepted 
by all fa~ more quickly than was to be expected. 
But this truth- t le most vital of all naval doctrines — 
the most splendid possession of all the riches bequeathed 
to us by Hawke and Nelson, manifested as it is in all the 
main operations of our great victory, is still more strik- 
ingly taught b.v the light craft. Both admirals pay 
ungrudging testimony to this effect. Napier, Good- 
enough and Sinclair " used their f6rces to the best 
possible effect," because invariably "they anticipated " 
the admiral's wishes. How did they do this ? By 
closing with the enemy's scouts, often when odds as in 
the case of Chester, were three or four to one, and when 
in spite of odds, it was necessary to fight ; or as in the 
case of Goodenough, when it was necessary to ascertain 
the movements of the German Fleet, he deliberately put 
his flagship within the zone of fire of all the leading 
enemy Dreadnoughts, so as to be sure of tactical in- 
formation which though only momentarily true, might 
have been of vital import to his admiral. The day and 
night destroyers' stories tell all the same tale. And their 
teaching is of such enormous importance in giving a 
right turn to thought on naval affairs that I venture to 
urge the authorities to give us the fullest possible reports 
with the least possible delay. 
The Submarine Liner 
The arrival in an American port of a German submarine 
with a load of merchandise, has been saluted in the Press 
with such a display of headlines as is usually reserved 
for some great military event or at least a sensational 
murder. It is really a very trivial affair indeed. The 
boat itself, so far from being the alleged submersible 
liner, the predecessor of an under water fleet that was 
to replace Germany's lost argosies, turns out to be a 
submarine of the ordinary naval type minus its fighting 
equipment, and probablj' w^ith engines of lower power. 
Not otherwise could the weights be sufficiently reduced 
to carry any useful amount of cargo. But even a few 
hundred tons of dyes are a valuable freight, though only 
one straw taken off the back-breaking load of our enemy's 
credit in America. The singular thing is not, of course, 
that the thing is done, but that it has not been done 
regularly. It is difficult to believe that Americans or 
Englishmen would not have broken blockade with 
raiders and got into regular communication with 
the outside world through submarines, from the very 
beginning, had people of our race been in the 
German position of the last two years. Gambetta 
escaping from beleaguered Paris in a balloon was ob- 
viously a far greater achievement. For his presence 
gave new life to the French armies in the South, and this 
imdoubtedly affected the terms of the final surrender. 
Had Germany been able to send a capable general to 
F2ast Africa or used the submarine in any other way to 
affect the fortunes of the war, the event might have had 
some importance. As it is, it is only worth notice be- 
•:ause of the exaggerated notice it has already excited, 
and the excellent evidence it affords that the fight off 
Jutland has not improved Germany's sea position. 
Arthur Pollen 
More Minor Horrorx, by A. E. Shipley, Sc.D., (Smith, Elder 
and Co., is. (kl. net) deals in entertaining fashion with the 
habits of cockroaches, mosquitoes, rats, and one or two other 
pests which the war has brought into prominence. It con- 
tains a good deal of valuable information, and is distinctly 
a useful addition to the literature on insect life and ways. 
When the author passes from study of insects to that of rats 
and mice, he has few remedies to suggest for their extermina- 
tion, but the book contains some useful hints for those troubled 
by mosquitoes, flies, and certain other pests that make 
life troublesome at times. 
First-hand impressions of the effect of the first months of 
the war on Hungarian folk arc provided by >ome Experiences 
in Hungary, by Mina Macdonald. (Longmans, Green and 
Co. 5s. 6d. net) Miss Macdonald was a governess in a 
Hungarian family, and she records the suppression of bad 
re.vs, the childlike faith in " Willy " of Potsdam, the pro- 
Russian attitude of the Slavs, and all the rest of the things 
she saw and heard in a way that is forcible by reason of its 
simple directness. Eighteen months have passed since the 
end of the time that this book describes, so that the book 
cannot be counted as a picture of to-day. It is, nevertheless, 
a very interesting study of the effects of war on a village in 
the White Car-^athians, giving an insight to the conflicting 
racial sentiments animating the different peoples of this 
httlc known land. 
