[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTLTOR."] SIR,—It took Captain
Harper and his assistants (of whom the writer was one) seven months to reconstruct the Battle of Jut- land, working continuously within the Admiralty, and having access to all the available data, including the ships' logs. It is impossible to reconstruct it in the correspondence columns of the Spectator without diagrams, however long-suffering the Spectator might prove as regards space. Lord Sydenham says he cannot follow my account, an inability I feared when I wrote it. My letter was not intended to be an exhaustive account of the battle, but merely a correction of an error that had crept into the Spectator's article of December 25th, in which it was stated that Lord Beatty was to the right of Lord Jelliooe, and the enemy to the right of Lord Beatty. In actual point of fact Lord Beatty was ahead of the 'Marlborough,' steering across her bows, with the enemy steering approxi- mately a parallel course to, and beyond, him. Under these circumstances, for the `Marlborough' to have led straight on (as in deployment) would have entailed her running at right angles into the German Fleet, which emphatically would have meant Admiral Scheer crossing Lord Jellicoe's " T." Had she then swerved to starboard on sighting the enemy right ahead, the fleets would have passed on opposite courses—the most inde- cisive form of engagement—and the British Fleet would have been left, as regards the German, on the side remote from Heligoland. Had she swerved to port, she would have thrown the whole line of battle into an impossible " U" formation even more disastrous than the crossing of the "T." The result of Lord Jellicoe's deployment on the wing division nearest to Germany and ahead of the High Seas Fleet is most vividly portrayed for Lord Sydenham in German Plan VI., "Diagrams of Important Phases," No. 5, showing the positions of the two fleets at 8.35 P.M. German time (6.35 Greenwich), just at the completion of the British deployment, and bears out quite dramatically my statement that the Grand Fleet was between Germany and von Scheer, and will also suggest to the distinguished General what I meant by " the whole of the British Fleet's broadside bearing on the leading ship of the Germans." That several ships were unable to fire owing to low visibility was a local misfortune, but leaves the element of the deployment tactics unaffected. As regards the turn-away, Admiral Kerr's figures are from the Fleet, and his views on them those of a practised seaman. Lord Sydenham cannot find the smallest evidence in support of them : the answer would appear to be that this evidence lies mostly out of sight of land. In conclusion, may I say that if the torpedoes played so dis- appointing a role in the Battle of Jutland, this was due to Lord Jellicoe's adroit side-stepping to avoid them? Because a fencing-master avoids his adversary's point is no proof that the sword is not a lethal weapon. Because he falls back a pact before his adversary's lunge is not a reason for imbuing him with grotesque mental images, nor for an exclusive cry of
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