May 31, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
Jutland : Twelve Months After 
By Arthur Pollen 
^SM 
I Have just been reading in the May number of the 
Proceedings of the U. S. Naval Institute, an interview 
given on April 12th to a representative of the Associated 
Press by the First Sea Lord. I do not know whether this 
interview has been published in England. If so, I have been so 
unobservant as te miss it. If it has not, it should be, for though 
exclusively addressed to our Allies across the Atlantic, it con- 
tains agreat deal of matter ourBritish public might very profit- 
ably chgest. Not its least remarkable feature is its frank- 
ness and detachment. You would Kardly tielieveia reading it 
that the First Sea Lord of to-day was Second Sea Lord for the 
twenty months preceding the war. Fftr at least one crucial 
omission of our war 'preparation is set out with a luminous 
candour hardly to be expected in these circumstances. I 
hope on a future occasion to deal fully with other points that 
the interiview rai.ses, but writing on the eve of the anniversary 
of the battle of Jutland, I propose to-day to confine myself to 
the reflections which the date suggests, and to certain lights 
which this interview throws upon the strategy and tactical 
ideas that led up to, and were illustrated by, that very 
tremendous event. 
I think anyone who reads the newspapers of June 2nd, 1916, 
and the si.\ following days, and bears in mind the while the 
fuller information we now iiossess, botli about the actual 
happenings at Jutland and about the strategy and tactics 
that inspired the various commanders on the two sides, can 
hardly fail to be struck by certain truths which may pardon- 
ably have escaped him when he read them for the first time 
a year ago. What surprised me most is the curious fact 
that neither of the original official communiques claimed a 
victory. The British version said that a naval engagement 
had fakai place on the 30th May, that " the brunt of the 
lighting " tell on the Battle Cruiser Fleet, that'the " German 
•fleet avoided prolonged action with our main forces," and 
returned to port. There was no word of victory or even of 
success. The obvious inference was that there had been 
failure, but a failure not without excuse. The <ierman version 
said that the Higii Seas Fleet — while on " an enterprise 
directed towards tlie* north," — " had met a considerably 
superior portion of (our) main battle fleet " and that a number 
of "severe, and, for us, successful engagements de\'eloped " and 
continued all night, and it ended with the significant admission 
that " the High Seas Fleet returned to our harbours in the 
course of " June 2rtTl. Here, too, the inference was obvious, 
the " enterprise " had failed — but not without at least tactical 
and moral mitigations. Both sides in short seemed to be 
making the best of a bad job. 
The British Admiralty was severely criticised at^ the time, 
for its intolerable dwelling on the ships sunk, when so little 
was told us of the fighting or its purpose. There were ten 
paragraphs in the communiques, and no less than five dealt 
with losses of the British fleet. Three only told of the damage 
we iioped we had inflicted on the enemy. The Germans re- 
versed the procedure. There were eight paragraphs in the 
German statement, of which four dealt with British losses 
and only two with the German. The ctmtrast did not end 
here. In the paragraph in our version dealing with the de- 
stroyers sunk, five were mentioned by name and it was stated 
that six others had not been heard of. It turned out later that 
three of these six returned safely to p<irt, so that our total 
losses were but eight. The version therefore suggests that 
the losses might be considerably greater than they were. The 
Germans, on the other hand, were silent as to the sinking of 
the Lutzme, Roslok and Elbing. and made no pretence to" 
enumerate the lost destroyers. The three ships named were 
admitted later. But no full statement of the German losses 
has ever yet been officially published and no one beUeves that 
those admitted exhaust the tale. -Whether the event was a 
success or a failure then, our Admiralty made no effort to 
minimise the price paid. And we gained something in inter- 
national prestige by our brutal frankness. 
The Making of a Victory v. 
The conversion of Jutland into a British victory was i;eally 
the work of the Press. N.^val writers were put into a difficulty 
by the Admiralty. The oflicial story as it siood on the evening 
of Friday, June 2nd, and even as amended on the morning of 
Saturday — when somewhat wider claims to damage inflicted 
on the enemy were put forward— suggested , as we have seen, a 
failure rather than a victory, and for that matter, a failure 
that was very inadequately explained. It was known that 
contact between the main forces had certainly been made, for 
it stated that the enemy received severe damage frorrf our 
battleships. The vessels of the. Grand Fleet were certainly 
not inferior to their Gerrpan opponents in speed. Once 
in contact, then, it looked as if the Germans should certainly 
not have escaped, and low visibility seemed an insufficient 
reason for their doing .so. It looked, in short, as if the enemy 
could not have broken away unless his escape had been per- 
mitted. In other words, either the battle plan was faulty or 
it had miscarried gravely. This, I say, was. on the wording of 
the dispatch, the natural conclusion at which to arrive. But 
how could any writer put atisuch a conclusion forward, when 
the announcement itself contained no word of blame or 
criticism ? Had there really been a failure, was it not clearly 
the Admiralty's business to say.at least, that the circumstances 
were being investigated ? 
The sijence of the authorities and the gathering chorus of 
the German Press left us, I think, no alternative but to put 
the most favourable possible meaning on the facts conveyed 
to us. They were, after all, consistent with our fleet having 
been merely unfortunate in being robbed of a Trafalgar by the 
weather. Hence there were many voices, first on Saturday 
morning and then on Saturday evening — and they gained in 
unanimity arid volume as the days went by — all speaking of 
the event as a victory ; until before the week was out this 
verdict came to be generally^accepted ; and finally got a kind 
of half-hearted official endorsement from the First Sea Lord 
at the Admiralty. The point to note is, that for eight days after 
the battle there was no official statement issued from Whitehall 
that put any, interpretation whatever upon the events of 
May 31st.. If seemed clear then that Mr. Balfour, in speaking 
on June 31st, was following and not creating public opinion in 
the matter. 
The thing became a victory in Germany with far greater 
rapidity ; but here too we shall find the professional men speak- 
ing in" terms very different from those of the joumahsts and 
politicians. Admiral Stebbinghaus announced the event in the 
Reichstag on June 2nd — the day when the communique was 
published — and on the whole he kept to its language 
and put his claim no higher than that the engagements 
. had developed successfully for the German force, that the 
greater portion of the fleet had returned undamaged to har- 
, hour, knd^that the total losses could not yet be ascertained. 
The Presicfent of the Reichstag thereupon spoke of it as "agreat 
and splendid success," but even he did not use the word 
"victory." • This was left to the Press, and the King of Saxony 
and — three days later — the Emperor in the course of a long and 
bombastic speech to his seamen, told the world that ' the 
British fleet was beaten" and that " the first great hammer blow 
was struck " and that " the nimbus of British worldsupremacy 
has disappeared." Mr. Balfour followed him two days later 
at the Cannon Street Hotel. He did not put our title to victory 
very high. The battle had been indecisive in the sense that 
the G^rnhan fleet was not destroyed, but as showing that the 
German'^fteet could not fight ours on an equality, it had been 
. anything .but indecisive." The victory," he. added, " is not 
merely a victor j' on paper, in which the side which drives the 
other off the field of contest into defeat, with justice claims 
to be the victor. It is more than that." This was the first, 
and so far as'I know,the only occasion on which any spokesman 
of Whitehall used the word. And he was not speaking for 
the Board. The letter of approval published with the 
Commander-in-Chief's dispatch uses no such expression. 
Was the Communique Right After All ? 
Undoubtedly what led the writers on naval questions to take 
a more heady view of 'the event than the truth perhaps 
justified, was the enthusiasm created by the magnificent 
leadership of the Battle Cruiser Fleet, and the preposterous 
criticism of the Vice-Admiral's " rash and impetuous " tactics 
which our heavy, but accidental losses provoked. To have 
questioned too much would have seemed ungracious in view 
of the heroic sacrifices that had been made. At that 
stage the event had to be treated as a whole. And there was one 
good reason at least why we could not Jae intelligibly critical. 
