January 4. iQi? 
LAND & WATER 
seemingly prohibitive. In ottier words, all that we can 
deduce for a certainty from the German sti'atcgy and 
tactics on the 31st May is that Admiral Scheer was./ 
willing to risk meeting the Grand Fleet because he could 
hold over it such a threat of torpedo attack as would 
make closing impossible. The German argument evidently 
was that if the weather conditions at five continued till 
seven, a decisive result could only be obtained if the 
British fleet brought about a short range melee— a thing 
on which no admiral who realised the enormous importance 
of the Ch-and Fleet to the Alliance would venture, for the 
simple reason that, in a melee, the losses of each side 
would not necessarily be proportional to the opposed 
numbers, but might be determined by pure chance. 
If this is all Jutland tells us about the German con- 
ceptions of strategy, it is almost all it tells us about 
British policy also. For it is clear from the known cir- 
cumstances and, indeed, from the quite frank state- 
ments in the despatch, that from the lirst moment of con- 
tact between the battle fleets, effective long range 
artillery duel was out of the question and that in the 
■prevailing condilions, the Commander-in-Chief could not 
seek close action. 
German writers have made a great deal of play during 
the last six months with the argument that their fleet 
was built on the " risk " principle. It was a force, that 
is to say, which the strongest sea power in the world 
would not dare to attack, not because it could not ex- 
pect victory, but because it could only expect victory 
at a price that would bring it to so low a level as to put 
it at the mercv of naval powers originally inferior and 
still neutral, the suggestion, therefore, is that the reason 
we did not fight Jutland to a finish was that, had we 
done so Great Britain would have been left with a battle- 
ship force inferior to that, say, of America, Japan, France 
or Italy. And, while these arguments have been doing 
duty in Germany, the British public has been told that 
the Grand Fleet was quite right not to seek decisive 
action because all the fruits of victory Ci3uldbe obtained 
without it ! But surely both groups of writers are 
altogether wrong. For the only conceivable explanation 
of the German fleet's escape is that, in the conditions 
that prevailed, the only tactics that would have made a 
decision possible would necessarily have been very far 
from making it certain. 
Why Defensive Theories Exist 
It is then nothing but a libel on the nerve and courage 
of the British Commander-in-Chief to suggest, as the 
Germans do, that close action was avoided because he 
was afraid of paying the price of victory. And it is 
nothing but a libel on his military intelligence to suggest, 
as Mr. Churchill did, that close action was avoided because 
victory, whatever its. costs, was both unnecessary and use- 
less. At the same time, there is some excuse to be made 
for those who maintain that the role of the Grand fleet 
should be purely defensive, who think, that is to say, 
that its first duty is to keep intact, that it should face no 
risks from torpedoes or mines and should engage only 
when it can bring its vastly more numerous battery 
to bear in the most favourable artillery conditions. 
But the excuse does not lie in any military principle, 
nor in the peculiar nature of modern weapons. The 
excuse is that the true character and right methods of 
use of these weapons had not been thoroughly mastered 
before war began. Take the matter of torpedo risk. 
Until the battle of Jutland all our experience went to 
show that a torpedo hit was almost necessarily fatal. 
Indeed only two ships, the Cicrman battle cruiser Moltke, 
and the British armoured cruLser Roxburgh, were known 
to have been hit and to have survived. But at Jutland 
twelve hits were made and only one ship sunk, and since 
tliat day three battleships and three cruisers have been 
torpedoed, and only two of the smallest cruisers ha\'e 
been sunk, and they needed seven torpedoes to do the 
business. The torpedo danger, then, has been ex- 
aggerated ; but it needed experience" to show that modern 
construction had so greatly lessened the danger ; and that 
experience was not available on the 31st of l\Iay. But 
once more it must be remembered that at Jutland it 
cannot have been primarily the risk of torpedoes, but 
the uncertainty of \ictory in the thick weather, that 
prevented closing. Still, there was reason for saying. 
in May ii)i6, that a fleet that got within torpedo range 
was risking the existence of some or many of its units. 
The Failure of Naval Gunnery 
The second excuse for those who argue for a defensive 
role is quite different. It is to be found in the really 
astonishing revelation, given by the three chief actions 
of the war, of the inefficiency of modern long range 
gunnery. At the Falkland Islands it took sixteen JZ- 
inch guns five hours to sink two armoured cruisers, 
neither of which, it would ordinarily have been supposed, 
could have survived more than a single hitting salvo at the 
mean range — ele\en thousand 3'ards — of that action. 
Again, at the affair of 'the Dogger Bank, Lion, Tiger, 
Princess Royal, New Zealand and Indomitable were in 
action for many hours against three battle cruisers and 
an armoured cruiser, and for perhaps half the time at 
ranges at which good hitting is made at battle practice, 
and although two of the enemy battle cruisers were hit 
and seen to be in flames they were able, after two and a 
half hours engagement, to continue their retreat at un- 
diminished speed, and only the armoured cruiser, whose 
resisting power to 13.5 projectiles must ha\e been very 
feeble, was sunk. 
The lesson of Jutland is still more striking, and it is 
possible to draw the moral with a little greater precision 
since it has been officially admitted in Germany tha,t 
Ltitzow, Admiral von Hipper's flagship, the most modern 
of Germany's battle cruisers, was destroyed after being 
hit by only fifteen projectiles from great guns. It iB not 
clear from the German statement whether this means 
fifteen 13.5's and omits to reckon 12-inch shells, or whether 
there were fifteen hits in all, some of the one nature and 
some of the other. The latter is probably the case. ■ F'or 
we know from Sir David Beatty's and the Gernian 
despatches that it was the Invincible s salvoes that finally 
incapacitated the ship and compelled von Hipper to 
shift his flag. Lutzow was always at the head of the 
German fine and so was exposed to the fire of our battle 
cruisers for nearly three hours. If we assume that she 
was hit by ten 13.5's and five 12-inch ; if we further 
assume that the effect of shells is proportionate to their 
weight; if we take the resisting power of British battle 
cruisers, German battle cruisers (which arc more heavily 
armed), and all battleships to compare as the figures 2, 3 
and 4 respectively ; if we further assume that the Fifth 
Battle Squadron did not come into effective action till 
the second phase began, and went out of action at 6.30, 
and that the battle cruisers were in action for three hours 
and omit Hood's squadron altogether, we get the following 
results. 
Five German battle cruisers were exposed to severtty- 
two hours of 13.5 gun fire and to twenty-four hours of 
12-inch gunfire, and five German battleships were ex- 
posed to forty-eight 15-inch gun hours. Similarly — 
omitting Queen Mary, Indefatigable and Invincible, 
seemingly destroyed by chance shots and not over- 
whelmed by gunfire — four British battle cruisers were 
exposed to thirty-seven 12-inch and sixty ii-inch gUn 
hours, and the Fifth Battle Squadron was exposed' to 
one hundred and eighty 12-inch gun hours. Had both 
sides been able to hit at the rate of one hit per hour per 
gun, the Germans, roughly speaking, should have sunk 
six British battle cruisers, and the four ships of the Fifth 
Battle Squadron nearly twice over ; the Fifth Battle 
Squadron should have sunk four German battle ships, 
and the British battle cruisers seven German battle 
cruisers ! The number of hits received by the British 
fleet has not been published, but it is probably safe to 
say that the Germans could not have made a quarter of 
this number of hits, nor the British ships more than a 
third. It would seem, then, that at most we made one 
hit per gun per three hours, and the Germans one hit 
per gun per four hours. 
Battle Practice contrasted with Battle 
At no time, throughout such parts of the action as wc 
are considering, did the range exceed 14,000 yards, and 
at some periods it was at 12,000 and at others at 8,000. 
In battle practice, not only in the British fleet but in 
all fleets, hits at the rate of one hit per gun per four 
minutes at 14,000 yards liave constantly been made. 
