SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent review.]
Kiel and Jutland. By Commander Georg von Hase. (Skeffington. 16s. net.)—The author was first gunnery officer in the Derffiinger,' one of Germany's best battle-cruisers. He begins with a long account of the visit of a British squadron to Kiel in June, 1914, and remarks that he himself had predicted war for the spring of 1915, when he had expected the Kiel Canal to be finished. He says that after the raid on Scarborough in December, 1914, the German light cruisers ran into our 2nd Battle Squadron, but escaped by making the British identity signal, which the commander had noted. The story seems improbable. He quotes in full an article on Jutland which appeared in the Spectator of June 9th, 1917, and then proceeds with his own detailed account, illustrated with two charts. He admits that Admiral Scheer was lucky in being able to escape. " Lord Jellicoe acted perfectly rightly in disengaging his fleet at nightfall and so skilfully leading his squadron away during the night that our destroyer flotillas, systematically searching the outlying areas of the battle, did not find them." " The battle of Skagerrak did not relax the pressure exerted by the English fleet as a ' fleet in being' for one minute." The author says that the Derffiinger's ' big guns were all out of action, and that she had two hundred men killed before she got away- It is clear that, for all his bravo words about renewing the action, he knew on June 1st that the German fleet had had more than enough. His account of what he saw from his own ship is worth reading, though some details are hard to reconcile with what we know already.
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