Lord Jellicoe
THE future Admiral of the Fleet Earl Jellicoe joined the Navy as a cadet on July 15th, 1872. He was then twelve years old. Forty-two years later, almost to a month, he found himself in command of the Grand Fleet, bearing on his shoulders a responsibility as great as has ever fallen to any man. What was it that brought this officer into this high position? He had no• outside influence. No opportunities for .spectacular service at sea occurred in those years until he became a captain, and by then his qualities had already asserted themselves. His appointments differed in no essential fashion from those of many of his contemporaries. During his service as a lieutenant he passed seven out of the ten years in that rank in gunnery establishments on shore, which, while it affords opportunity to show great capacity in that branch of naval work, does not necessarily demonstrate a fitness for high command. Jellieoe's personality was the key to his advance. There were in him certain great elements. He had a passion for hard work and efficiency—his own efficiency and the development of the efficiency of whatever fell within his charge. His energy, both in work and in play, was unbounded. To add to this he possessed a natural and simple charm of manner of which one outstanding manifesta- tion was a great sympathy and consideration for others. "He was one of the most simple and modest men I ever came across," said General Smuts ; and the -truth of those words stands out in every page of Admiral Bacon's biography. It shows itself in the pain le suffered when he was ordered to supersede his old friend and commander on the outbreak of war ; in the unstinted care he devoted towards the comfort and happiness of all under his command in the long and dreary days at Scapa Flow ; in all his work as Governor- General of New Zealand, and, not least, in the memorandum • of discipline which he wrote for the Government of Canada.
Lord Fisher, under whose notice Jellicoe had come when a young lieutenant, had marked him for eventual high command as early as 1910. "My sole object," he wrote in December, 1911, "was to procure Jellicoe to be Commander-in-Chief on December 19th, 1917." That intention was not fulfilled, but when war threatened in July, 1914, Jellicoe was sent north as second-in-command to Sir George Callaghan, a step followed immediately by his appointment to the chief command. To change the Commander-in-Chief at that moment was infinitely distressing to both these great officers, and no praise can be too high for the manner in which both acted. That it was also dangerous "owing to the difficulty of getting into touch with everything at notice" was recog- nised, as it could not fail to be, by Jellicoe : for if von Tirpitz had had his way the war at sea would have been opened with a fleet action, before which the British Commander, however great his capacity, might not have had time to impress his tactical doctrines upon his command.
The situation created by the insecurity of the base against flotilla attack, described by Lord Jellicoe himself in The Grand Fleet 1914-18, is retold by Admiral Bacon. We, who today are witnessing the development of that new form of bomb attack from the air on fleets in harbour, may well read the story of the grave situation in which Sir John Jellicoe found himself on the outbreak of war. Owing to the neglect to provide suitable defences it was deemed necessary to with- draw the fleet further to the north and west. Though the safety of the ships was thus ensured, those Channel communi- cations which it was its function to defend were thereby most dangerously exposed.
Admiral Bacon describes the principles which governed him in his command at Jutland, and his reasoning is clear and free from that personal bias which has marred so grievously almost, if not indeed all, of the many discussions of that battle. No one will pretend that the last word has been said of the tactics of Jutland—the book recently published by Commander Frost, for instance, comes to conclusions different from those of Admiral Bacon—but Admiral Bacon's contribu- tion to the study is one which cannot fail to command attention and respect even by those who may question some of his pre- mises. Thus Admiral Bacon lays it down that "it is an axiom of naval tactics "—the italics are his—that a modern action must be fought in single line. If an axiom be an undisputed truth the principle of the single line cannot be called " axiomatic " ; it was not so accepted by Togo. Nor is it easy to reconcile the conclusions that a decisive victory would have brought so little advantage to the allied cause with the earlier, statement that "the release of the auxiliary forces for trade protection might have left us worse off rather than better off."
These, however, are obviously matters of opinion on which dogmatism is out of place. What is important is that we have a closely reasoned and clearly expressed description of the battle, which will bring home to all its readers an under- standing of the multitude of difficulties and considerations which were bound to affect the action of the man responsible for the foundation-stone upon which success in the War rested.
Admiral Bacon stresses with what energy Sir John Jellicoe took in hand the problem of the submarine campaign, and explains the doubts . and difficulties attendant upon its adoption- Here, too, his reasoning is close. In summary, his.conclusion is that it was not an inherent disbelief in the efficacy of the measure, though of that there were doubts, but a. conviction that the forces available were not sufficient to put it into execution. • Apart from• these polemical matters, and outstanding in importance, is the picture which Admiral Bacon gives• of the man himself, the nobility of his character and the confidence which he inspired in his comrades at sea.
H. W. RICHMOND.
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