THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND.* CAPTAIN BELLAIRS has written a spirited
book on the battle of Jutland' with the object of showing that the result
confirmed his adverse criticisms of the Admiralty before the war. The Navy, he says, was dominated by the " material school " as opposed to the " historical school " ; it had not thought out the problems of modern naval warfare, and therefore when " The Day " came it misused a great opportunity for destroying the enemy's fleet. " The Navy suffered from no unseen Hand but from an Unseeing Brain." It was controlled by men who had had great experience at Whitehall and little experience at sea. The Lords of the Admiralty were not in close touch with the actual working of the Fleet, and had little respect for the opinions of the officers afloat on vital matters such as gunnery, the torpedo, or the submarine. Lord Jellicoe is cited by the author as a typical example of the officer who knew more about Departmental routine ashore than about the command of a battle-fleet. Further, the Admiralty was, says Captain Bellairs, wedded to a fatal defensive theory of war. It was firmly persuaded that the British Navy must take no risks, inasmuch as the command of the sea could be secured by merely containing the enemy and might be imperilled as the result of a naval battle. Mr. Churchill at one time used to expound this theory, which is plausible but essentially unsound.
The author then proceeds to examine the battle of Jutland in detail, or rather to assume the character of prosecuting counsel in a Court-Martial on Lord Jellicoe. The tone of criticism may be judged from the following quotation :—
" What the weather gage was to the sailing Navy the advantage of speed is to the steam Navy. To the weak it is an opportunity to escape, and to the strong to force the battle. At Jutland, owing to the presence of the German pre-Dreadnoughts, Lord Jellicoe had a 3-knots advantage in speed over his enemy and an even greater advantage if he had availed himself of his preponderance of strength in order to shed some of his slower battleships. To a flying enemy, to shed a ship is to lose a ship, as the Germans found with the Bliicher at the Dogger Bank action ; but to the pursuers it is merely a delayed reinforcement which by wireless can he directed to finish off the damaged ships of the enemy. Lord Jellicoe elected not to use the extra speed because he wished to have it in hand to avoid the tor- pedoes. His conduct now as in all his measures on the afternoon and night of May 31 to the final loss of the enemy on the morning of June 1 was governed by defensive considerations. He deployed his fleet away from the enemy when he formed his line, partly because of the torpedoes and partly because of a supposed gunnery disadvantage. He thereby enabled the enemy to get over the first shock of surprise at his arrival. He then, at later stages, twice allowed his whole fleet, with the exception of Sir David Beatty's inferior battle-cruisers, to abandon the action, because of destroyer attacks. From first to last he fought a defensive battle. And why ? His actions have got to be sifted and explained. They are in the same class as the failures of Byng and Mathews, which resulted in courts- martial. They differ from Calder's battle in 1805, which achieved far better results in that Calder was able to plead to the court- martial, which severely reprimanded him, that though his force was of inferior strength he had captured two enemy battleships. No such plea could be advanced by Lord Jellicoe. His force was overwhelmingly superior in gun-power. The alleged inferiority in destroyers has not been substantiated. Tho inferiority of British shells in penetrating armour, for which Lord Jellicoe's administration at the Admiralty must bear a large share of responsibility, was only discovered weeks after the action an a result of investigation carried out on the insistence of Sir David Beatty. This drawback, therefore, had no influence on his mind on the day of battle, and he himself has stated that he was unaware of the loss of the British battle-cruisers until the day after the battle."
Captain Bellairs Makes very light of the enemy's torpedo attack, and argues that as only one German torpedo out of the fifty fired at our battleships made a hit—on the Marlborough '—the danger from them was trivial. Lord Jellicoe's defenders would of course reply that the peril was minimized by the Commander-in-Chief's own action, but that it existed none the less. Captain Bellairs repeats the story, or legend, of the signal said to have been made by Admiral Beatty about half-past seven o'clock " imploring the van of the Battle Fleet, led by the 'King George V.' (Admiral Jerrarn), to follow him, cut off and surround the enemy." The author says that " it is a matter of common knowledge throughout the Navy that a signal of this nature was made and logged." But Lord Jellicoe does not mention it in his despatch. At ten minutes past eight o'clock the King George V.' was ordered 4. (1) The Battle of Jutland : the Sowing and the Reaping. By Commander Carl yon Bellaire, M.P. London : Hodder and Stoughton. I12s. net.l- (2) La Bateilie Navale de Jutland. Far Capitaine de Fregate de Parses al. Pails : rayot. Rfr. 50e.) to follow the battle-cruisers, but they were out of sight. Before basing any theory on that alleged signal, we should like to
know whether it was made; and, if so, when and by whom it was received. Captain Bellairs insists also that our destroyers at Jutland were greatly superior to the enemy's light craft., and thatathey were not used to the fullest advantage. He shows how much we, and the Allies, should have benefited by a decisive victory at Jutland, which would have simplified the task of dealing with the U '-boats, and would have made a vast difference to Russia, since we could have entered and dominated the Baltic from June, 1916.
Captain Bellairs, we think, rather underrates the effect of the North Sea mists on the battle. His many interesting diagrams tend to obscure the issue for the layman, just as the fog obscured the issue for the combatants. If each of the navigating officers in the many great ships, that were steaming fast and continually changing course through those evening hours, could have ascertained his exact position at any given moment, and trans- mitted the fact with certainty to the other ships, the battle would have ended differently. But the mist and the currents made it very difficult for any Captain to know precisely where he was on the chart. As Captain Bellairs refers so often to Calder's action off Finisterre, we may remind him that that engagement also was fought in a sea-fog, and that Calder was rebuked, not for his spirited conduct of the action but for his decision not to engage a superior enemy again next day. We do not quarrel with Captain Bellairs's main conclusion that the battle was unnecessarily broken off through fear of torpedoes, but we could wish that his tone did not sometimes suggest that he fails to be judicial. He might have emulated the dispassionate tone of the first French
study of the ,battle, written by Capitaine do Parseval.1 The French expert states the facts clearly, though in a few details he may be subject to correction, and he sums up temperately. " The result shows that the British, in order not to take an unjustifiable risk, did not take a necessary risk." Again, Capitaine do Parseval would not have had the Grand Fleet engage at close range, regardless of torpedoes, but ho thinks it undeniable that the peril from the enemy torpedoes was overestimated. His little book is well worth reading, for it gives light without heat.
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