We trust that the Admiralty will reconsider its surprising and
regrettable decision not to publish the official account of the Battle of Jutland, which a Committee of naval officers has been compiling. Sir James Craig in the House of Commons on Wed. nesday made the excuse that an account based on British official evidence alone would be one-sided and that a forthcoming volume of Sir Julian Corbett's Naval History of the War would deal with the battle as illustrated by the official evidence. The excuse is wholly unconvincing. Sir Julian Corbett's views will be most interesting, but the country has a right to know what the Admiralty itself thinks about the battle, now that all the available facts are before it. The suggestion that the official account should be withheld in order not to compete with a semi-official publication, for which the Admiralty takes ne responsibility, is untenable. If it be true that certain distin- guished officers cannot agree as to what happened, they should all be given full opportunity to state their views in appendices to the Admiralty's account. The Service will not gain by any attempt to suppress these differences of opinion about the greatest battle in its long history.
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