August 9, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
Naval Review of the Year 
By Arthur Pollen 
THE third year of the war opened with the public 
complacently content that all was well at sea ; 
and there was nothing at that moment to suggest 
that it would not so remain. We were still in high 
spirits as to Jutland ; we were still buoyed up by the 
belief that just as we- had beaten the submarine in the 
autumn of 191 5 and in the spring of last year, so could we 
defeat it again if the enemy chose to repeat an experiment 
that had failed so often before. We had, in short, estab- 
lished our sea command so far as surface ships win it. We 
had no reason for supposing that the U-boat could take 
that command from us. Our complacency and our confidence 
were destined to be somewhat rudely shaken. 
First, in August, September and October came the first 
questionings as to the 
policy our Higher Com- 
mand was shown by Jut- 
land to have evolved and 
imposed upon the fleets 
at sea. Until a year ago 
those whose business it 
Was to interpret the nai^al 
war to their lay country- 
men had accepted the 
official verdict on the 
events of May 31st as 
final. The dispatches had 
thrown no new light on 
the disposition, the deploy- 
ment or the evolutions of 
the Grand Fleet in the 
critical hours between 6 
and 8.30 p.m. The Admir- 
alty.to whom alone all the 
facts were known, had 
expressed an unquaHfied 
approval of the whole pro- 
ceedings, and the pubhc 
accepted the view, first, 
that all it was possible to 
do in the search for deci- 
sive victory had been done, 
and secondly, that it was 
the thick weather, and 
the thick weather only that 
had saved the enemy from 
annihilation. Besides, on 
two important asjjects of 
the thing the more we 
•earnt of the battle the 
more satisfactory did our 
.'esults appear to be. Our 
losses, though heavy, and 
possibly heavier than the 
enemy's, were not to be 
explained by any superior 
gunnery skill on his part. 
The three battle cruisers 
were known to have fallen 
each to single lucky hits. Not one of them had been over" 
whelmed by gun fire, or shot to pieces. It was not the 
Ughtnessof tiieir armour that explained their fall, it was just a 
defect, and an accidental defect, in their construction that 
explained each catastrophe. 
The British gunnery- might not have been the best conceivable 
in method, but it was something that such evidence as was 
available showed that the enemy's was certainly not better, 
and probably not so good. In the other matter, no comparison 
between the two fleets was possible at all. At every stage 
of the action, whether it was when Engadine sent up the sea 
plane to scout for von Hipper, and the scouting had to be 
done at short range and at less tlian 1,000 feet elevation ; 
or when Bingliam with Notnail, Nestor and A'icalor led the 
attack on .Sheer's line, wiien tiie two, German fleets joined 
up ; or when the destroyer attack was delivered previous to the 
appearance of the Grand Fleet, or when Arbuthnot led down 
on the head of the German line ; or when Goodenough, Sinclair 
and the other squadron and flotilla leaders pushed their 
reconnaissance and attacks right home to close quarters 
and in broad daylight, in innumerable instances the British 
Fleet had shown daring, a fighting spirit and a seaman-like 
quality of which the* enemy gave no examples at all. Finally, 
it was for a third time proved that in the Admiral of the 
battle cruiser fleet the British navy possessed a sea leader 
of the highest quality. And it was quite in the tradition 
of the British Navy at its best that the Commander-in-Chief, 
himself shut oft from playing the great r61e of victor, should have 
borne so generous a testimony to the glorious work of his 
more fortunate subordinates. So that, although we had, 
of course, been disappointed that Jutland had not resulted 
in the uttw annihilation of the enemy's main forces, it had yet 
given solid grounds for high satisitaction. If the enemy 
had any ulterior object in venturing out on the 31st May. 
this purpose had been thwarted, and thwarted finally. 
He hacl been proved incapable of fighting the Grand Fleet 
to a finish ; he had shown no superiority in fighting methods ; 
he exhibited no paraUel to the fighting spirit of our men. 
We had, then, every right 
to be proud and no reason 
for being critical. 
But during the next three 
months our contentment 
underwent a process of 
gradual disintegration. A 
former First Lord of the 
Admiralty let a startled 
world into the unpleasant 
secret that Whitehall had 
gone to war and kept at 
war in the belief that, as 
we could enjoy aU the 
fruits of victory without 
being victorious, and as 
we could not fight out a 
battle to the end without 
risking ships, it was mere 
common sense to avoid 
close action and, therefore, 
in thick weather to aban- 
don the only hope of vic- 
tory, and for the exceUent 
reason that victory was 
unnecessary, and the loss 
of ships might be fatal. 
It had, of course, often 
been said that for years 
past the strategic ideas 
of oMi Higher Command 
had been entirely defen- 
sive, where attack should 
have been our chief pre- 
occupation, and offensive 
only in the field of war in 
which our overwhelming 
interests lay in the evolu- 
tion of protective measures. 
We had built, equipped, 
armed and trained our 
fleet on the principle that 
if it were only large 
enough it would never 
have to fight. Our only aggressive policy has been in 
developing the submarine, for which if our hypothesis 
is right, we would have no targets to attack. Mr. 
Churchill not only gave substance to all the old doubts; 
he made it appear that it was on the purely defensive principle 
that Jutland had been fought. We were at once laid open to 
the charge that the enemy had challenged us to fight and that 
we had not dared to accept the challenge. It was made to 
look as if " Safety F'irst " had been the slogan of Whitehall. 
It is not surprising that we found the process of this dis- 
illusion disi)iriting. What made this process all the harder 
to bear was that it was during these months that, for the 
third time, the spectre of the submarine rose in formidable 
shaj^e before our eyes. At this time a year ago we believed 
implicitly that the 1915 campaign had ended because we had 
discovered the formula by which the underwater attack on 
trade would be brought to defeat. The five weeks campaign 
of March, April and May, of the spring of last year, did not 
undeceive us. Ostensibly, the Germans had abandoned their 
effort because Washington had sent thexultimatum, but most 
of us, 1 think, supposed that, in yielding to America, Berlin 
was assuming a virtue imposed by necessity. Nor was it 
altogether unreasonable that we should take this view. For 
a week or two things bad looked extraordinarily black. 
Elliot and fry. 
The Right Hon. Sir Eric Geddes, K.G.B. 
