26 
LAND & WATER 
December 7, 1916 
more than ever, the main instrument of this country's 
policy. So far from the matter of its command being 
one of indifference, it is by all odds the most responsible 
and the most arduous that any subject can bear. Its 
right employment depends first, on the Government, 
which must define its mission, and next, the success of 
this mission must depend primarily on its Commander- 
in-Chief. And its mission is not limited to maintaining 
itself intact. It is a force brought into existence and 
kept in existence, not only as a constant and instant 
threat to the German Fleet, but as the main cover of 
every other form of naval action that can be taken 
against the enemy. And that the war has been con- 
ditioned from the first bv naval action is, as we have seen, 
already admitted by "all. Finally, navies and pre- 
eminently their main units exist only to fight. 
Grand Fleet 
The control of the Grand Fleet in whatever inission is 
given to it by the Government, is now in Sir David 
Beatty's hands. It is, as has been said, a weighty task 
and a great responsibility and yet, as it seems to mS, if 
the burdens of the new Commander-in-Chief and of the 
new first naval adviser of the Government are compared, 
it is the task of the former that will be the easier. It 
will be easier for three reasons. First the man who shoulders 
it has had a long experience of command and all the 
experience that anyone can have had of modern fighting. 
Both in peace and war, in action and in preparing for it, 
he has exhibited an aptitude for leadership unexcelled, 
60 far as contemporaries can judge, by any seaman in 
history. From the beginning of his first engagement at 
Heligoland to the final and disappointing end to his 
third, off Jutland, his strategic insight, his tactical 
mastery, his genius for leading — amply proved by the 
fact that in so many instances, his subordinates, as the 
despatch tells us. kept anticipating his wishes — and what 
better proof can there be of good leading than that the 
following should be instinctive ?— this unfiawed career of 
success makes it as certain as anything human can be 
that, in taking over the combined fleet, the slower and 
stronger division, together with the fast ai vision, he is 
undertaking a task to which he is manifestly equal. 
Secondly let it be made clear at once that it will be an 
easier task for him than it was for his predecessor. The 
teaching of history is conclusive on the point that, for 
victory to be decisive at sea, there must be a right con- 
centration of force at the right point. Concentration 
of force is not merely an affair of how ships are grouped 
or formed. It is far more an affair of their being brought 
into battle at the right moment. And to create a right 
moment and to seize it, are matters of co-ordinated move- 
ment. Jutland in this only confirmed the lesson of all 
previous battles. Now Sir David Beatty has commanded 
the Battle Cruiser Fleet for eighteen months in peace 
and for twenty-eight months in war. He has created 
that fleet as an organisation ; he has made it a weapon 
exactly adapted to his own methods of fighting, and there 
is no commander of any force in any field of war who 
knows, with more exact precision, what to ask of it 
and what to expect of it. No man then, can know 
better how to support it and how to complete this work. 
It is no disparagement of his predecessor to say that 
this must be an easier task for the new Commandcr-in 
Chief. Of all the twenty-eight anxious, wearying, and 
distracting months, during which Sir John Jellicoc had 
the Grand Fleet under his vigilant and imperturbable con- 
trol, there were but two and a half hours during which his 
ships were within action range of the enemy. And of those 
two and a half hours, the periods during which action of 
any sort was possible, were measured by minutes only. 
In this matter, the fortune of war was far more generous 
to Sir David Beatty. His fighting experiences may not 
equal those of Nelson when he first attained to a chief com- 
mand, but it is something that they are the most varied 
and the most prolonged of any flag officer afloat. He may 
not know all that there is to know about how to fight 
a battle ; but it is certain that he must know more than 
anyone else, if his talent for war is rightly gauged, and if 
that talent has been, as it should have been, developed 
in the only school where right development is possible. 
It would seem, then, if we assume that the Battle Cruiser 
Fleet is led in the future by those who understand Sir 
David Beatty's tactics, by those, who, like the cniisor 
leaders on May 31st, do not need orders because they can 
anticipate the wishes of their Chief, then it would seem, 
as if. so far as leadership is concerned, the whole main 
fleet, in Sir David Beatty's hands, can be confidently 
expected to be used with a rapidity and certainty and, 
therefore, with a finality hardly attainable by any other 
command. 
Two difficulties might be thought by some to stand ir. 
the way of this most happy consummation. Admit+ed 
that Sir David Beatty has 'handled his fleet of battle 
cruisers with consummate skill, should we not remember 
that war supplies innumerable cases of men most ad- 
mirably successful when commanding small forces, yet 
failing altogether in larger and more complicated opera- 
tions ? Next, is it humanly possible for any commander- 
in-chief to handle so vast a force— the combined Battle- 
ships and Battle Cruiser Fleet — with the precision and 
exactitude with which a lesser force can be controlled ? 
'rhe answers to these two questions seem to me to be 
simple. Sir David Beatty is not promoted from the com- 
mand of a small force to the command of a large one. 
I do not pretend to know the total number of ships under 
his direct control at Jutland, but 1 should not be surprised 
if I were told that, reckoning the nine battle cruisers, 
the four battleships of the Fifth Squadron, the squadrons 
of light cruisers and all the flotillas of destroyers, with the 
Engadine and other auxiliaries, that his force was actually 
more numerous than that under Sir John Jellicoe's com- 
mand on that great day. The problems presented by large 
combinations are not. then, new problems to the new Com- 
mander-in-Chief. He may have to extend his admirable 
staff to deal with the greater numbers. But the extension 
in itself should present no problem that is either in- 
soluble or even puzzling, 
And there is a further reason why this should be so. 
He inherits, as the main constituent of his n^w combined 
force, a fleet that for the last two and a quarter years 
has been brought to a point of flexibility in organisation 
and of keenness of military preparedness, unexampled in 
the history of fleets. It is not for nothing that it has, 
for all these months, been under the command of the 
ablest naval administrator of our time. And it is perhaps 
the best measure of the wonderful success of that com- 
mand that, in placing this finely tempered weapon in his 
successor's hands. Sir John Jellicoc is bequeathing to him 
a mission far less burdensome than that which he 
discharged himself. 
Our Chief Weapon Still 
It seems to me a matter of the very first iinportanc: 
that the country, and the Government, shoul • 
realise how crucial a matter it is that the first and 
immediate result of the naval changes is, that it 
gives us a fleet more efficient for its work, because united, 
and more likely to use the opportunity of doing its work, 
should opportunity offer, because the unified fleet is 
under the command of the man to whom the fortvme of 
war has given the widest experience of fighting. And it 
is crucial that this should be realised, because the onlv 
simple and final solution of all our sea problems is to be 
found in decisive battle, and because — and deriving from 
• this truth— it should be the first object of our poHcy to 
impose such disadvantages upon the enemy that he' can 
find no solution of them except in battle. The new First 
Lord will have to tackle many problems now he is at 
Whitehall, and to the average man the one that seems 
most obvious will also seem most important. It is. of 
course, the urgent necessity for some abatement of the 
submarine nuisance. Through his submarines the enemy 
is attempting a blockade, not only of these islands, but 
of all the Allies. But the first problem is not defensi\e. 
It is to hit back harder than ever. 
To what extent is our own blockade as effective as it 
can be ? We are assured that the last turn has been 
given to the screw. It is a statement we should find it 
easier to believe if a war trained seaman, who knew tho 
facts, could assure us that he was satisfied as to ii.^ 
exactitude. If, when he comes to know the facts, Sir 
John Jellicoe is not satisfied on this point, then the 
qualms of the diplomatists and the trepidations of traders 
must be put on one side, and our counter-stroke made a: 
rigid and as ruthless as sea power can make it. Ow 
