28 OCTOBER 1916, Page 11

!if COLLIER'S WEEKLY " ON MR. CHURCHILL'S SEA POLICY.

(To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.") Sta,—I send an excerpt from Collier's Weekly.—I am, Sir, Ac..

Z.

" Winston Spencer Churchill's article, The War by Land and Sea,' in this number is remarkable because Churchill, for so long First Lord of the British Admiralty, is in a position to know exactly what he is talking about. And what he says is astounding. Substantially he tells us that the great •sea fight off Jutland, in which so much tonnage was sunk and over seven thousand lives lost, was -wholly unnecessary. It proved nothing. The British fleet, which is to the German as 16 is to 10, need not have fired a shot. That it did engage the Germans and lost three battle cruisers to the Germans' one, three armoured cruisers to one battleship and some light cruisers, and 6,000 men to 2,400, merely proves that even the greatest navy on earth can be foolhardy, and that to that extent the victory -was to the Germans. We note that neither Jellicoe nor -Beatty received any particular thanks for this British ' victory.' But for us in the United States there is an even greater moral. It is this: To the greatest navy is everything. To the lesser navy, how formidable soever, nothing. Unless we elect to have the biggest fleet on the sea, it behooves us to continue firmly our cordial relations with Great Britain."

[Could there be a better proof of the harm done to us by Mr. Churchill's tactless exhibition of ignorant egotism than this reading of his article I—ED. Spectator.]