27 OCTOBER 1917, Page 2

Admiral W. H. Henderson. writing in Thursday's Deify Mail on

the loss of the convoy, declares that " we have not yet found a /11811 or a not of men at the Admiralty with the instinctive genius for carrying on our naval share of the war, and making use of the splendid fighting spirit of the officers and men and the very great preponderance of the naval forces of the Allies." He says that the battle of Jutland was indecisive because at a critical moment the whole Fleet changed course to avert a threatened torpedo attack on the rear squadron. He recalls the fact that Calder was tried by Court-Martial after his indecisive action off Finisterre In 1805. The loss of the convoy sixty miles from the Shetlands allows, in his view, " the lack of instructed imagination at head- quarters." Criticism of this sort from a competent naval source cannot be ignored, but we are inclined to pay more attention to the remarks about the battle of Jutland than to any generalization from a minor mishap about which we do not yet know all the twits. We hear nothing or the many raids that fail.