September 21, jqiG 
LAND & WATER 
11 
cruisers, fast light cruisers, destroyers, palrol boats, 
and auxiliaries, for the Royal Navy. The total ship- 
building capacity of the country has in past years shown 
itself to be equal to producing a million and a quarter 
tons of merchant shipping and over a quarter of a million 
tons of war shipping per annum. At war pressure, if 
the navy had no requirements at all, it could probably 
produce something between 180,000 and 200,000 tons 
of merchant shipping per month. It is only the con- 
tinued existence of the High Seas Fleet, and the con- 
tinued liberty of the German submarines, that makes it 
necessary for the Tyne and the Clyde to work almost 
exclusively for the Royal Navy. If the High Seas Fleet 
were sunk and the submarines restrained, the merchant 
ship losses both of the Alhe? and of the neutrals, could 
hd made good by British builders in less than a year. 
The reader may think that I am disputing Captain Sims' 
criticism with quite unnecessary particularity. The 
gallant captain, as we saw last week, had this criticism 
forced from him, not as a considered judgment on Briti.sh 
strategy, but as incidental to his defence of the type of 
ship tliat he wanted Congress to include in the naval 
programme. But I have pursued the subject for this 
reason. This chance observation of Captain Sims illus- 
trates better than anything I can remember the astonish- 
ing difference between the point of view of those who only 
talk and reason about war, and of those who are faced by 
its realities. It was our own fate before the war to have 
our naval policy limited by civilian comprehension of our 
necessities. Such naval officers as were consulted had 
to limit their arguments to the considerations politicians 
would understand. Is Captain Sims' report evidence that 
America is still in the same condition ? 
Frankly, I find it impossible to beheve that Captain Sims, 
had he been addressing a professional audience, would have 
used these arguments. For had he given any weight to the 
verj' obvious considerations which I have set out above, 
so far from saying that Sir David Beatty was not justified 
in risking the Battle Cruiser Fleet to bring on a decisive 
action — the charge is, as we have seen, quite imfounded, 
but let that pass for the moment — he w'oula, I think, 
have gone with me in saying that, could the destruction 
of the whole Battle Cruiser Fleet have ensured the total 
destruction of the German navy, it would have been Sir 
David Beatty's obvious duty to take the risk. And 
I am borne out in thinking this by one of Captain Sims' 
own phrases. " When for any reason," he writes 
" they (battle cruisers) are deliberately put against 
battleships, they must expect to suffer in proportion to 
the relatively small number of their guns and the relative 
lightness of their armour. It is the same with all other 
types of vessels. If in. this battle it had been considered 
necessary to laimch flotillas of unsupported destroyers 
against the enemy's battleships in daylight, and half of them 
had been destroyed, there would doubtless have been 
some arguments in opposition to building any more 
destroyers — and these arguments would have been precisely 
as sound as the popular arguments now current as a result 
of the sinking of the three British battle cruisers." Here, 
it seems to me, speaks the real sailor. Because, in this 
very Battle of Jutland, destroyers were launched, un- 
supported and against battleships, in broad daylight, 
and it was done by both sides again and again, a certain 
number of destroyers were lost. But no one squealed 
about the " rash impetuosity " of those who risked 
unarmoured destroyers against big guns, a single shot 
of which could blast them into scrap iron. And the 
result has not been made the occasion for decrying the 
building of destroyers, but an excuse for building more ! 
In the end, then, I find myself in exact agreement with 
Captain Sims, Destroyers — like all other forms of war- 
ships — have to be risked at times in unsupported attacks 
on vessels vastly more powerful than themselves. And 
when this occurs, such ships must at times be lost. We 
must not forget, however, that this is their destiny. And 
whether it is the two-and-a-half million pound battle 
cruiser, or the destroyer that represents less than a tenth 
of its value, the principle is the same. 
Battle Honours . 
At the end of last week was published, three 
and a half months after the action was fought, 
Admiral Jellicoe's second despatch, containing the 
Mr. Raymond Asquith 
THE Prime Minister, who has stood forth as the 
true representative of the nation from the hour 
when Germany rejected honour and trampled 
lionesty and good faith underfoot, has now had 
to make that great personal sacrifice which so 
many have been called upon to pay. The sympathy 
of the whole Empire will be with Mr. Asquith in his 
sorrow. He has never flinched from the heaviest burden 
of his high office through all these critical months, and 
grief will only strengthen his resolution and add new 
courage to a nature that has proved itself in different 
circumstances singularly courageous. 
The nation also feels that in the death of Mr. Raymond 
Asquith, it has lost one of its most distinguished sons— - 
a man singularly endowed by nature with uncommon 
gifts. He had abilities which carried everything before 
him at Winchester and Oxford. The academic honours 
which had covered his father's early years with dis- 
tinction were his also, but won with apparently less 
effort and in shorter time. And at the Bar he at once 
established a firm place for himself, proving that a clever 
father is not necessarily a clever son's worst obstacle, as 
is so often said. He had not entered the pohtical arena, 
but anticipated doing so just when the war began. Then 
he never hesitated, where his duty lay ; he applied at once 
for a commission ; and from the Queen's Westminsters 
was transferred to the Grenadier Guards; he fell 
mortally wounded leading his men into action, leaving 
a young widow and three children. 
The life and death of Lieutenant Raymond Asquith has 
that imperishable glory which only noble character 
can give. Here was a man who, so far as the world 
was concerned, could have done his duty as a soldier 
just as fully and easily in a Staff appointment as in the 
firing line ; he had only to ask for a safe job and it would 
have been found him ; and he could have excused his 
action to his own conscience by pleading his exceptional 
abilities which could be so profitably utilised after the 
war. But that was not the man. Of finely-tempered 
steel right through, he judged himself as he would have 
judged others ; he refused to take lesser risks than his 
own men, or to use one of his many advantages to shield 
himself from danger. He has fallen, but we beheve 
his name will endure, and that he will stand forth for all 
time as a representative of those noble sons of the British 
Empire — men who with everything to make life pleasant 
and easy, cast all on one side, chose their simple duty, 
and gave their lives freely in the execution of that duty. 
By his death Lieutenant Asquith consecrated a life of 
undimmed splendour to the highest service of his race. 
The Editor. 
names of officers " mentioned " for honours, com- 
mendation and promotion. One hundred and six 
are recommended for honours and ninety-eight ha^e 
received them. The Commander in Chief, very appro- 
priately, has been included by the King in the Order of 
Merit. Sir David Beatty is promoted one step in the 
Bath, so that he now is G.C.B. Admiral Burney, whose 
Flagship was torpedoed, receives a similar promotion in 
the Michael and George. Rear-Admirals Sir Evan 
Thomas and Pakenham receive the K.C.B., Vice-Admirals 
Sturdee, Jerram and Madden, the K.C.M.G. Thirty-three 
C.B.'s have been bestowed, of which twenty go to the 
Grand Fleet, and thirteen to the Battle Cruiser Fleet, 
the Light Cruisers and Destroyers attached thereto. 
Two C.M.G.'s also go to the latter force, and forty-two 
D.S.O.'s and thirteen D.S.C.'s are given, mostly to Sir 
David Beatty's command'— which after all saw most of 
the fighting. But first, perhaps in order of interest, are 
the three Victoria Crosses, to Commander Bingham, who 
is a prisoner of war in Germany, and to Major Francis 
Harvey, R.M.L.I., and to the boy Cornwell, both of 
whom died' in action. The Petty officers and men get 
