Another is because the British "handy man" can "turn his hand to anything"; though even his worst enemies can never accuse him of being "jack of all trades and master of none." He is the master of the sea. But he knows the ropes of many other things as well; and none of the strange things he is called upon to do ever seem to find him wanting. When a British joint expedition attacked St. Helena the Dutch never dreamt of guarding the huge sheer cliffs behind the town. But up went a handy man with a long cord by which he pulled up a rope, which, in its turn, was used to haul up a ladder that the soldiers climbed at night. Next morning the astounded Dutchmen found themselves attacked by land as well as by sea and had to give in.

One day the admiral (Sir William Kennedy) commanding in the Indian Ocean a few years ago heard that two Englishwomen had been left on a desert island by a mail steamer from which they had landed for a picnic. The steamer was bound to go on. The women were not missed till too late. So the captain telegraphed to the Admiral from the next port. The Admiral at once went to the island in his flagship, found the women with their dresses all torn to ribbons on the rocks, measured them for sailor suits himself, and had them properly rigged out by the ship's tailor, just like the bluejackets, except for the skirts—white jerseys, navy blue serge uniforms, with blue jean collars and white trimmings, straw hats with H.M.S. Boadicea on the ribbon in gold, knife and lanyard, all complete.

To beat this admiral in turning his hand to anything at a moment's notice we must take the bluejacket whom Captain Wonham saw escaping from a horde of savages on the West Coast of Africa during the Ashanti War of 1874. This man knew the natives well, as he had been the Governor's servant there for several years before the niggers swarmed out of the bush to kill off the whites. Every one seemed to be safe in the boats, when Captain Wonham suddenly spied Jack running for his life on top of a long spit of high rocks that jutted out like a wharf. The natives, brandishing their spears and climbing the rocks, were just going to cut Jack off when he, knowing their craze for the white man's clothes, threw his cap at them. Immediately there was a scramble which held up their advance. As they came on again he threw them his serge, and so on, taking a spurt after each throw. At last he took off his trousers, which set all the niggers fighting like mad round two big chiefs, each of whom was hanging on to one leg. Then he took a neat header and swam off to the boats, which had meanwhile pulled in to his rescue.

When the battleship Majestic was sunk in the Dardanelles a bluejacket ran along her upper side as she rolled over, then along her keel as she turned bottom upwards. Finally, seeing that she was sinking by the stern, and knowing both her own length and the depth of the water, he climbed right up on the tip-top end of her stem, from which he was taken off as dry as a bone. Meanwhile a very different kind of rescue was being made by Captain Talbot, who, having gone down with the ship, rose to the surface and was rescued by a launch. He had barely recovered his breath when he saw two of his bluejackets struggling for their lives. He at once dived in and rescued both at the very great risk of his own.

From East to West, from the Tropics to the Poles, the Navy has gone everywhere and done nearly everything that mortal man can do. Think of the Admiralty "rating" Newfoundland, a country bigger than Scotland and Wales put together, as one of His Majesty's Ships and putting a captain in command! Yet that was done in the early days; and it worked very well. Think of the naval brigades (that is, men landed for service ashore) which have fought alone or with the Army, or with many foreign armies and navies, all over the world for hundreds of years. Drake, as we have seen, always used naval brigades, and they have always been the same keen "first-class fighting men" wherever they went. The only trouble was in holding them back. At the siege of Tangier in North Africa in the seventeenth century Admiral Herbert "checked" Captain Barclay "for suffering too forward and furious an advance, lest they might fall into an ambush"; whereupon Barclay said, "Sir, I can lead them on, but the Furies can't call them back." A naval brigade man-handled the guns on the Plains of Abraham the day of Wolfe's victory, and took forty-seven up the cliff and into position before the army had dug itself in for the night. Nelson lost his right arm when leading a naval brigade at Teneriffe in 1797. Peel's naval brigade in the Indian Mutiny (1857-9) man-handled two big guns right up against the wall that kept Lord Clyde's army from joining hands with the British besieged in Lucknow, blew a hole in it, though it was swarming with rebels, and so let the Marines and the Highlanders through.

In Egypt (1882) Lord Fisher, of whom we shall soon hear more, rigged up a train like an ironclad and kept Arabi Pasha at arm's length from Alexandria, which Lord Alcester's fleet had bombarded and taken. Lieutenant Rawson literally "steered" Lord Wolseley's army across the desert by the stars during the night march that ended in the perfect victory of Tel-el-Kebir. Mortally wounded he simply asked: "Did I lead them straight, Sir?"

The Egyptian campaigns continued off and on for sixteen years (1882-1898) till Lord Kitchener beat the Mahdi far south in the wild Soudan. British sea-power, as it always does, worked the sea lines of communication over which the army's supplies had to go to the front from England and elsewhere, and, again as usual, put the army in the best possible place from which to strike inland. Needless to say, the naval part of British sea-power not only helped and protected the mercantile part, which carried the supplies, but helped both in the fighting and the inland water transport too.

At one time (1885) the little Naval Brigade on the Nile had to be led by a boatswain, every officer having been killed or wounded. In the attempt to rescue the saintly and heroic General Gordon from Khartoum, Lord Beresford rigged up the little Egyptian steamer Safieh with armour plates and took her past an enemy fort that could easily have sunk her as she went by, only eighty yards away, if his machine-gunners had not kept such a stream of bullets whizzing through every hole from which an Egyptian gun stuck out that not a single Egyptian gunner could stand to his piece and live.

Lord Beresford was well to the fore wherever hard work had to be done during that desperate venture; and it was he who performed the wonderful feat of getting the Nile steamers hauled through the Second Cataract by fifteen hundred British soldiers, who hove them up against that awful stream of death while the blue-jackets looked after the tackle. Beresford's Naval Brigade used to tramp fifteen miles a day along the river, sometimes work as many hours with no spell off for dinner, haul the whaleboats up-stream to where the rapids made a big loop, and then, avoiding the loop, portage them across the neck of land into the river again. Handling these boats in the killing heat would have been hard enough in any case; but it was made still worse by the scorpions that swarmed in them under the mats and darted out to bite the nearest hand. Beresford himself had to keep his weather eye on thirty miles of roaring river, on hundreds of soldiers and sailors, and on thousands of natives. Yet he managed it all quite handily by riding about on his three famous camels: Bimbashi, Ballyhooly, and Beelzebub.

But let no one imagine that dozens of joint expeditions ever make the Navy forget its first duty of keeping the seaways clear of every possible enemy during every minute of every day the whole year round. When the Russian fleet was going out to the Sea of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) it ran into the "Gamecock Fleet" of British fishing vessels in the North Sea, got excited, and fired some shots that killed and wounded several fishermen. Within a very few hours it was completely surrounded by a British fleet that did not interfere with its movements, but simply "shadowed" it along, waiting for orders. There was no fight; and the Russians were left to be finished by the Japanese. But the point is, that, although the British Empire was then at peace with the whole world, the British Navy was far readier for instant action than the Russian Navy, which had been many months at war.



THE HAPPY WARRIOR

Wordsworth's glorious poem is not in praise of war but of the self-sacrificing warriors who try to save their country from the horrors of war. No wise people, least of all the men who know it best, ever sing the praise of war itself. They might as well sing the praises of disease. But, while those who, like the Germans, force a wicked war upon the world are no better than poisoners of wells and spreaders of the plague, those, on the other hand, who, like the Allies, fight the poisoners of wells and spreaders of the plague are doing the same kind of service that doctors do when fighting germs. Therefore, as doctors to disease, so is the Happy Warrior to war. He no more likes war than doctors like the germs of deadly sickness; and he would rid the world of this great danger if he could. But while war lasts, and wars are waged against the very soul of all we hold most dear, we need the Happy Warrior who can foresee the coming war and lead a host of heroes when it comes. And leaders and followers alike, when faithful unto death, are they not among the noblest martyrs ever known? For greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be? —It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought: Whose high endeavours are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes his moral being his prime care; Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train! Turns his necessity to glorious gain; In face of these doth exercise a power Which is our human nature's highest dower; Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives: By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; Is placable—because occasions rise So often that demand such sacrifice; More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress;

* * * * * *

Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired; And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;

* * * * * *

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth For ever, and to noble deeds give birth, Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame, And leave a dead unprofitable name— Finds comfort in himself and in his cause; And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause: This is the Happy Warrior; this is He That every Man in arms should wish to be. —William Wordsworth.



CHAPTER XXIII

FIFTY YEARS OF WARNING

(1864-1914)

In 1864 the Fathers of Confederation met at Quebec, while the Germans took from the Danes the neck of land through which they cut the Kiel Canal to give the German Navy a safe back way between the North Sea and the Baltic. At first sight you cannot understand why Canadian Confederation and the German attack on Denmark should ever be mentioned together. But, just as the waters of two streams in the same river system are bound to meet in the end, so Canada and Germany were bound to meet on the same battlefield when once Canada had begun to grow into a nation within the British Empire and Germany had begun to grow into an empire for whose ambitions there was no room without a series of victorious wars. After beating Austria in 1866, to win the leadership of Central Europe, Germany beat France in 1870, took Alsace and Lorraine, and made herself the strongest land-power in the world. Even then two such very different Englishmen as Cardinal Newman and John Stuart Mill foresaw the clash that was bound to come between the new empire of the Germans and the old one of the British. But most people never see far ahead, while many will not look at all if the prospect seems to be unpleasant.

Thirty years before the war (1884) Germany began to get an empire overseas. Taking every possible chance she went on till she had a million square miles and fifteen million natives. But she neither had nor could get without victorious war any land outside of Germany where she could bring up German children under the German flag. Even including the German parts of Austria there was barely one quarter-million of square miles on which German-speaking people could go on growing under their own flags; while the English-speaking people of the British Empire and the United States had twenty times as much land, fit for whites, on which to grow bigger and bigger populations of their own blood under their own flags. This meant that the new, strong, and most ambitious German Empire was doomed to an ever-dwindling future as a world-power in comparison with the British Empire. The Germans could not see why they should not have as good a "place in the sun" of the white man's countries as the British, whom they now looked on very much as our ancestors looked upon the oversea Spaniards about the time of the Armada. "Why," they asked, "should the British have so much white man's country while we have so little?"

There are only three answers, two that the Germans understand as well as we do, and one that, being what they are, they could hardly be expected to admit, though it is the only one that justifies our case. The two answers which the Germans understand are of course these: that we had the sea-power while they had not; and that, because we had it, we had reaped the full benefit of "first come, first served." But the third answer, which is much the most important, because it turns upon the question of right and wrong, is that while the Germans, like the Spaniards, have grossly abused their imperial powers, we, on the whole, with all our faults, have not.

There are so many crimes for which the Germans have to answer that this whole book could not contain the hundredth part of them. But one crime in one of their oversea possessions will be enough to mention here, because it was all of a piece with the rest. In German South-West Africa the Herreros, a brave native people, were robbed if they worked hard for the German slave-drivers, flogged till their backs were flayed if they did not, and killed if they stood up for their rights. There are plenty of German photographs to prove that the modern Germans are very like the Spaniards of Philip II and utterly unlike the kindly modern French, Italians, Americans, and British. The world itself is witness now, and its conscience is the judge. So there we shall leave our case and turn to follow the ever thickening plot of coming war.

In 1889 Britain spent an extra hundred million dollars on building new men-of-war. Next year Germany got Heligoland from Britain in exchange for Zanzibar. Heligoland is only a tiny inland off the North Sea coast of Germany. But it was very useful to the Germans as one of the main defences of the great naval base there.

In 1897 the Kaiser said, "I shall not rest till I have made my fleet as strong as my army." A year later he said, "Our future is on the water." And in 1900 the German Navy Bill passed by the German Parliament began by saying, "The German Navy must be strong enough to endanger the supremacy of even the mightiest foreign navy." What "foreign navy" could that be if not the British? In 1908 the Kaiser tried to steal a march on the too pacific British Government by writing privately to Lord Tweedmouth, the feeble civilian First Lord of the Admiralty. The First Lord represents the Navy in Parliament; and Parliament represents the People, who elect its members. So when a First Lord is a real statesman who knows what advice to take from the First Sea Lord (who is always an admiral) everything goes well; for then Parliament and the Navy work together as the trusted servants of the whole People. But Tweedmouth, feeble and easily flattered, was completely taken in by the sly Kaiser, who said Germany was only building new ships in place of old ones, while she was really trying to double her strength. It was therefore a very lucky thing that the Kaiser also tried to fool that wonderful statesman, wise King Edward, who at once saw through the whole German trick.

Meanwhile (1898) the Americans had driven the Spaniards out of their last oversea possessions, much to the rage of the Germans, who had hoped to get these themselves. The German admiral at Manilla in the Philippines blustered against the American fleet under Admiral Dewey; but was soon brought to book by Sir Edward Chichester, who told him he would have to fight the British squadron as well if he gave any more trouble about things that were none of his business.

The same year the Germans tried to set the French and British by the ears over Fashoda. A French expedition came out of French Africa into the Sudan, where Kitchener's army was in possession after having freed Egypt from the power of the Madhi's wild Sudanese. French and British both claimed the same place; and for some years Fashoda was like a red rag to a bull when mentioned to Frenchmen; for Kitchener had got there first. Luckily he had fought for France in 1870, spoke French like a Frenchman, and soon made friends with the French on the spot. More luckily still, King Edward the Wise went to Paris in 1903, despite the fears of his Ministers, who did all they could to make him change his mind, and then, when this failed, to go there as a private person. They were afraid that memories of Fashoda and of all the anti-British feeling stirred up by Germans in Europe and America over the Boer War (1899-1902) would make the French unfriendly. But he went to pay his respects to France on his accession to the British Throne, showed how perfectly he understood the French people, said and did exactly the right thing in the right way; and, before either friends or foes knew what was happening, had so won the heart of France that French and British, seeing what friends they might be, began that Entente Cordiale (good understanding of each other) which our glorious Alliance in the Great War ought to make us keep forever. Paris named one of her squares in his honour, Place Edouard Sept; and there the wise king's statue stands to remind the world of what he did to save it from the German fury.

Next year Lord Fisher went to London as First Sea Lord (1904-10) to get the Navy ready for the coming war. He struck off the list of fighting ships every single one that would not be fit for battle in the near future. He put "nucleus crews" on board all ships fit for service that were not in sea-going squadrons for the time being; so that when the Reserves were called out for the war they would find these nucleus crews ready to show them all the latest things aboard. He started a new class of battleships by launching (1906) the world-famous Dreadnought. This kind of ship was so much better than all others that all foreign navies, both friends and foes, have copied it ever since, trying to keep up with each new British improvement as it appeared.

But the greatest thing of all was Fisher's new plan for bringing the mighty British fleets closer together and so "handier" for battles with the Germans. The old plan of posting British squadrons all over the world takes us back to the Conquest of Canada; for it was the work of St. Vincent, to whom Wolfe handed his will the night before the Battle of the Plains (1759). St. Vincent's plan of 1803 was so good that it worked well, with a few changes, down to Fisher's anti-German plan of 1904, about which time the French and British Navies began talking over the best ways of acting together when the Germans made their spring. In 1905—the centenary of Trafalgar—a British fleet visited France and a French fleet visited England. It was a thrilling sight to see that noble Frenchman, Admiral Caillard, whose example was followed by all his officers, stand up in his carriage to salute the Nelson statue in Trafalgar Square.

In 1908, when Canada was celebrating the Tercentenary of a life that could never have begun without Drake or been saved without Nelson, the French and British Prime Ministers (Clemenceau and Campbell-Bannerman) were talking things over in Paris. The result was that the British left the Mediterranean mainly in charge of the French Navy, while the French left the Channel mostly and the North Sea entirely in charge of the British. There was no treaty then or at any other time. Each Government left its own Parliament, and therefore its own People, whose servant it was, to decide freely when the time came. But the men at the head of the French and British fleets and armies arranged, year by year, what they would do when they got the word GO! At the same time (six years before the war) that the Prime Ministers were in conference in Paris Lord Haldane, then Secretary of State for War, was warning Lord French in London that he would be expected to command the British army against the Germans in France, and that he had better begin to study the problem at once.

A great deal of sickening nonsense has been talked about our having been so "righteous" because so "unprepared." We were not prepared to attack anybody; and quite rightly too; though we need not get self-righteous over it. But our great Mother Country's Navy was most certainly and most rightly prepared to defend the Empire and its allies against the attack that was bound to come. If France and Great Britain had not been well enough prepared for self-defence, then the Germans must have won; and wrong would have triumphed over right all over the world. There is only one answer to all this "Pacifistic" stuff-and-nonsense—if you will not fight on the side of right, then you help those who fight on the side of wrong; and if you see your enemy preparing to attack you wrongfully, and you do not prepare to defend yourself, then you are a fool as well as a knave.

All the great experts in statesmanship and war saw the clash coming; and saw that it was sure to come, because the German war party could force it on the moment they were ready. Moreover, it was known that the men of this war party would have forced it on at once if a peace party had ever seemed likely to oust them. The real experts even foresaw the chief ways in which the war would be fought. Lord Fisher foresaw the danger of sea-going submarines long before submarines were used for anything but the defence of harbours. More than this, ten years before the war he named all the four senior men who led the first British army into Flanders. In Lord Esher's diary for the 17th of January, 1904, ten years before the war, is the following note about Fisher's opinion on the best British generals: "French, because he never failed in South Africa, and because he has the splendid gift of choosing the right man (he means Douglas Haig). Then Smith-Dorrien and Plumer." In the same way Joffre and Foch were known to be the great commanders of the French. Again in the same way (that is, by the foreknowledge of the real experts) Lord Jellicoe, though a junior rear-admiral at the time, was pointed out at the Quebec Tercentenary (1908) as the man who would command the Grand Fleet; while Sir David Beatty and Sir Charles Madden were also known as "rising stars."

The following years were fuller than ever of the coming war. In 1910 the Kaiser went to Vienna and let the world know that he was ready to stand by Austria in "shining armour." Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece were all to be used for the grand German railway from Berlin to Bagdad that was to cut Russia off from the rest of Europe, get all the trade of the Near East into German hands, and, by pushing down to the Persian Gulf, threaten the British oversea line between England and Asia.

During the next three years the Italian conquest of Tripoli (next door to Egypt) and the two wars in the Balkans hurt Germany's friends, the Turks and Bulgarians, a great deal, and thus threatened the German Berlin-to-Bagdad "line of penetration" through the Near East and into the Asiatic sea flank of the hated British. With 1914 came the completion of the enlarged Kiel Canal (exactly as foretold by Fisher years before); and this, together with the state of the world for and against the Germans, made the war an absolute certainty at once. The murder of the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, was only an excuse to goad the gallant Serbians into war. Any other would have done as well if it had only served the German turn.

HYMN BEFORE ACTION

The earth is full of anger, The seas are dark with wrath, The Nations in their harness Go up against our path: Ere yet we loose the legions— Ere yet we draw the blade, Jehovah of the Thunders, Lord God of Battles, aid!

* * * *

E'en now their vanguard gathers, E'en now we face the fray— As Thou didst help our fathers, Help Thou our host to-day! Fulfilled of signs and wonders, In life, in death made clear— Jehovah of the Thunders, Lord God of Battles, hear! —Rudyard Kipling.



CHAPTER XXIV

WAR

(1914-1915)

No one who has had a look behind the scenes will ever forget the three War Wednesdays of 1914, the 22nd and 29th of July and the 5th of August; for during that dire fortnight the fate of the whole world hung trembling in the scales of life and death.

On the first the King reviewed the Grand Fleet, when twenty-two miles of fighting ships steamed by, all ready for instant battle with the High Sea Fleet of Germany: ready not only for battles on the water but under the water and over the water as well. No king, even of sea-girt Britain, was ever so good a judge of what a fleet should be as was King George on that momentous day; for, till the death of his elder brother made him Heir to the Throne, he had spent the whole of his keen young life as a naval officer who did his work so well that he must have risen to a place among the best of British Admirals. Just as it was a great thing to have had King Edward the Wise to make (as he alone could make) the Entente Cordiale with France, so it was a great thing to have had King George the Sailor standing by the helm of the ship of state when the fated war had come. British to the backbone, knowing the Empire overseas as no other king had known it, George V was born to distrust the Germans, being the son of the Danish Princess Alexandra, who had seen all the country round the Kiel Canal torn from the Crown of Denmark within a year of her marriage to King Edward. The Kaiser's lying letter to Lord Tweedmouth in 1908 was the last straw that broke King George's little patience with the German plotters headed by Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. "What," he exclaimed, "would the Kaiser say, if the King wrote a letter like that to Tirpitz?"

The chief kinds of fighting craft in the Grand Fleet can be told off on the fingers of one hand. First, the Battleships and Battle Cruisers. These are to our own fleets what ships-of-the-line-of-battle were to Nelson's, that is, they are the biggest and strongest, with the biggest and strongest guns and the thickest armour. The battle cruiser is faster than the battleship, and therefore not so strong; because to be faster you must thin your heavy armour to let you put in bigger engines. All the ships of this first kind were either Dreadnoughts or super-Dreadnoughts; that is, they were classed according to whether they had been built during the five years after the Dreadnought (1905-10), or during the five years just before the war (1910-14). Each year there had been great improvements, till ships like the Queen Elizabeth had eight gigantic guns throwing shells that weighed nearly a ton each and that could be dropped on an enemy twenty miles away.



The second kind is Cruisers, made up of Armoured Cruisers and Light Cruisers, the Armoured being the bigger and stronger, the Light being the smaller and faster, and both being too small for the line of battle. Cruisers are used in at least a dozen different ways. They scout. They attack and defend oversea trade. They "mother" flotillas ("little fleets") of destroyers, which are much smaller than themselves. They attack and defend the front, flank, and rear of the great lines of battle, clearing off the enemy's cruisers and destroyers and trying to get their own torpedoes home against his larger vessels. They are the eyes and ears, the scouts and skirmishers, the outposts and the watchdogs of the Fleet—swift, keen, sinewy, vigilant, and able to hit pretty hard.

Thirdly come Destroyers. This was the way in which they got their name. Navies had small gunboats before torpedoes were used. Then they had torpedo-boats. Then they built torpedo-gunboats. Finally, they built boats big enough to destroy gunboats, torpedo-boats, and torpedo-gunboats, without, however, losing the handy use of guns and torpedoes in vessels much smaller than cruisers. As battleships and cruisers are arranged in "squadrons" under admirals so destroyers are arranged in "flotillas" under commodores, who rank between admirals and captains.

A new kind of light craft—a sort of dwarf destroyer—grew up with the war. It is so light that it forms a class of its own—the featherweight class. Its proper name is the Coastal Motor Boat, or the C.M.B. for short. But the handy man knows it simply as the Scooter. The first scooters were only forty feet long, the next were fifty-five, the last were seventy. Everything about them is made as light as possible; so that they can skim along in about two feet of water at an outside speed of nearly fifty (land) miles an hour. They are really the thinnest of racing shells fitted with the strongest of lightweight engines. They are all armed with depth charges, which are bombs that go off under water at whatever depth you set them for when attacking submarines. The biggest scooters also carry torpedoes. The scooters did well in the war. Whenever the hovering aircraft had spotted a submarine they would call up the scooters, which raced in with their deadly depth charges. Even destroyers were attacked and torpedoed. One day a German destroyer off Dunkirk suddenly found itself surrounded by scooters which came in so close that a British officer had his cap blown off by the blast from a German gun. He and his scooter, however, both escaped and his torpedo sank the Hun.

Fourthly, come the submarines, those sneaky vipers of the sea that seem made on purpose for the underhand tricks of ruthless Germans. Deadly against unarmed merchantmen, and very dangerous in some other ways, the submarine is slow under water, no match for even a destroyer on the surface, and "tender" to attack by gunfire, to bombs dropped from aircraft, to "sea-quaking" depth charges, and, of course, to ramming. We shall presently hear more about these inventions of the devil.



Fifthly, come the seaplanes, that is, aircraft which can light on the water as well as fly. We began the war with a fair number of comparatively small planes and ended it with a great number of large ones, a few of which could drop a ton-weight bomb fit to sink most battleships if the shot went home. But these monsters of the air were something more than ordinary seaplanes. For out of the seaplane there gradually grew a regular flying boat which began to make it hot for German submarines in 1917. Commander Porte, of the Royal Navy, went on inventing and trying new kinds of flying boats for nearly three years before he made one good enough for its very hard and dangerous work. He had to overcome all the troubles of aircraft and seacraft, put together, before he succeeded in doing what no one had ever done before—making a completely new kind of craft that would be not only seaworthy but airworthy too. Porte's base was at Felixstowe, near the great destroyer and submarine base at Harwich on the east coast of England. Strangely enough, Felixstowe was a favourite summer resort of the Kaiser whenever he came to the British Isles. Felixstowe is within a hundred miles of the Belgian coast, where the Germans had submarines at Ostend and Zeebrugge. It is only fifty from the Dutch lightship on the North Hinder Bank, where German submarines used to come up so as to make sure of their course on their way between the English Channel and their own ports. The neighbourhood of this lightship naturally became a very favourite hunting ground of the new flying boats, which used to bomb the Huns whenever one of their submarines was sighted either on or below the surface. Forty flying boats were launched in 1917, and forty-four submarines were bombed. The "Porte Baby," as the flying boat of '17 was called, measured a hundred feet across the wings and carried a small aeroplane, complete with its own airman, on top. The "Porte Super-Baby" of 1918 could lift no less than fifteen tons and was easily the strongest aircraft in the world. The "Baby's" crew was four—pilot, navigator, wirelesser, and engineer. The "Super-Baby" carried more. Two gigantic Zeppelins and several submarines were destroyed by the "Babies." The "Super-Babies" had no proper chance of showing what they could do, as the Armistice came (11 November 1918) before they were really at work. Porte had many Canadians in his crews; and Canadians brought down the first Zeppelin and sank the first submarine.

But the five chief kinds of fighting craft are only half the battle. There are five more to be told off on the fingers of the other hand. First, the Auxiliary Cruisers, which are swift merchant liners quickly armed and manned by trained Reservists, who are mostly merchant seamen and fishermen in time of peace. These cruisers do scouting and escort duty, and sometimes have a hard fight with the enemy; though they are not strong enough for regular battles between great men-of-war. Secondly, the Supply Vessels of every size and every kind, which keep the Fleet supplied with food and fuel, munitions and repairs, and everything else a great fleet needs. So vast is British sea-power of every kind, compared with the sea-power of any other people, that foreign fleets and joint expeditions generally have to get British shipping to help them through their troubles when the British are either neutral or allied. The Russian fleet could not have gone to the Far East in 1904-05 without the supply ships of the British. The American fleet that went round the world in 1908-09 had to depend on British colliers. And over three-fifths of all the American soldiers that went to France to fight the Germans went in British transports. Transports are any ships that can be used to carry troops, horses, motors, stores, munitions, guns, and all the other things an army needs. They come third on this list. Fourthly, come those Merchantmen which are not used by the Army or Navy because they carry on the regular oversea trade as best they can. Fifthly, comes the Fishing Fleet, many of whose best men and vessels have to be used to fish for mines and submarines, but much of which must still be left to help out the food supply. The merchantmen and fishing craft which carried on their peace-time trade throughout the Great War had many an adventure quite as thrilling and many a hero quite as glorious as any in the fighting fleets. So there was no kind of British sea-power which did not feel the awful stress of war; and none, we may be proud to add, that failed to do its duty.

On the second War Wednesday (July 29th) the British Foreign Minister warned the German Ambassador that the British could not be so base as not to stand by their friends if Germany attacked them without good reason. All through that night the staff of the Foreign Office were wonderfully cheered up in their own work by looking across the famous Horse Guards Parade at the Admiralty, which was ablaze with lights from roof to cellar. The usual way, after the Royal Review that ended the big fleet manoeuvres for the year, was to "demobilize" ships that had been specially "mobilized" (made ready for the front) by adding Reserve men to their nucleus crews. But this year things were different. War was in the very air. So the whole fleet was kept mobilized; and the wireless on top of the Admiralty roof was kept in constant touch with every ship and squadron all round the Seven Seas. By Friday night, the 31st, the whole Grand Fleet had steamed through the Straits of Dover into the grim North Sea and on to Scapa Flow, where it was already waiting when, four days later, it got the midnight call to arms.

By the third War Wednesday (August 5th) the Germans had invaded Belgium and France; that great soldier and creator of new armies, Lord Kitchener, had replaced the civilian, Lord Haldane, at the head of the War Office; Lord French's immortal first army had just got the word GO! and a German mine-layer was already at the work which cost her own life but sank the cruiser Amphion.

Years before the first shot was fired the French and British Navies had prepared their plans for blockading the Austrians in the Adriatic and the Germans in the North Sea. The French were more than a match for the Austrians, the British more still for the Germans. But the Austrians had their whole navy together, while the Germans also had at least nine-tenths of their own. So the French and British, in their efforts to keep the seaways open for friends and closed to enemies, had to reckon with the chances of battle as well as with those of blockade. The Austrians never gave much trouble, except, like the Germans, with their submarines; and after the Italians had joined us (May 1915) the Austrian Navy was hopelessly outclassed.

But the Germans were different. By immense hard work they had passed every navy in the world except the British; and they were getting dangerously close even to that. Their Navy did not want war so soon; and no Germans wanted the sort of war they got. Their Navy wanted to build and build for another ten or twenty years, hoping that our Pacifist traitors (who were ready for peace at any price, honour and liberty of course included) would play the German game by letting the German Navy outbuild the British. Then Der Tag (the day) would come in the way the Germans hoped when they drank to it with shouts of Hoch der Kaiser! (which really meant, The Kaiser on top, the British underneath! though that is not the translation). To get this kind of Tag the Germans needed to strike down their victims one by one in three quite separate wars: first, France and Belgium, Russia and the Southern Slavs; a thing they could have done with Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey on their side and the rest of Europe neutral. Then, having made sure of their immensely strengthened new position in the world, Der Tag would come against the British Empire. Last of all, they would work their will in South America, being by that time far too strong for the United States. A nightmare plan, indeed! But, with good luck and good management, and taking us one by one, and always having our vile Pacifists to help them, this truly devilish plot might well have been worked out in three successive generations during the course of the twentieth century.

As it was, we had trouble enough to beat them; for they fought well by sea and land and air, though more like devils than like men. The charge of cowardice against our enemies, especially the Turks and Germans, is nonsense. Besides, it takes away our own men's glory if they had nothing more than cowards to put down. Of course the enemy had cowards, as other peoples have; but they had plenty of brave men too; and what, that unsurpassable hero of the air, McCudden, said of one brave German will do for many more. "I shall never forget my admiration for that German pilot who, single-handed, fought seven of us for ten minutes, and also put some bullets through all our machines. His flying was wonderful, his courage magnificent."

The Germans had not only the advantage of being able to mass nearly all their navy together but of training it all together on the same North Sea practice ground, and of building battle squadrons on purpose for one kind of fight close at home: a single tiger-spring and that was all. The British, on the other hand, had to build a good many ships "fit to go foreign" thousands of miles away, and so had to give up much space to the men's quarters and to fuel; while the Germans could save half this space for increased power in armour, engines, guns, and other things suited to one short cruise and tiger-spring near home. Not the least of the many British triumphs was winning against an enemy who was so brave, so skilful, so strong in many ways, and so very devilish in all.

Now that we know what we are about, let us clear the decks for action and go full steam ahead right through the fight at sea.

The British Navy had to help the British Army into France and take care that the Army's ever-growing forces there, as well as on a dozen different fronts elsewhere, always had the sea-roads kept open to many different bases over half the world. The Seven Seas are ten times bigger than the whole of North and South America. Yet the Navy watched or kept in touch with every part of all of them. So much for space. Now for time. Time was needed to get Kitchener's vast new armies ready. Millions sprang to arms. But it would have been sheer murder to send them to the front without many months of very hard training. So the enemy had to be kept at arm's length for a very long time—for the whole war, indeed, because reinforcements and supplies were always needed in vast and ever vaster quantities, both from the Mother Country and from the Empire, Allies, and Neutrals overseas. In addition to this the British oversea trade routes had to be kept open and the German ones closed; fisheries protected on one side, attacked on the other; and an immense sea service carried on for our Allies as well.

Some staggering facts and figures will be given in the chapter called "Well done!" Here we shall only note that the Navy, with all its Reserves and Auxiliaries, grew from two and a half million tons of shipping to eight millions before the war was over. This means that the Navy, in spite of all its losses, became bigger than any other country's navy, mercantile marine, fishing fleet, river steamers, and all other kinds of shipping, put together, since the world began. When we add the British mercantile marine, British shipbuilding, the British fishing fleets, and all the shipping interests of the Empire overseas, we shall find that British sea-power of all kinds equalled all the sea-power of all the rest of the world together. Destroy that sea-power and we die.

Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands off the north of Scotland was a perfect base for the Grand Fleet, because it was well placed to watch the way out of the North Sea through the two-hundred-mile gap between Norway and the Shetlands, and also because the tremendous tidal currents sweeping through it prevented submarines from sneaking about too close. Six hundred miles south-east was the German Fleet, near the North Sea end of the Kiel Canal. Between lay a hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles of water on which, taking one day with another the whole year round, you could not see clearly more than five miles. This "low average visibility" accounts for all the hide-and-seek that suited German tricks so well.

Within three hours of the British Declaration of War two British submarines were off for Heligoland, where they spied out the enemy's fleet. From that time on every German move was watched from under the water, on the water, or over the water, and instantly reported by wireless to the Admiralty in London and to the Grand Fleet based on Scapa Flow.

Then, when the first British army began to cross into France, the Fleet covered its flank against the Germans, and went on covering it for fifty-one months without a break, through cold and wet, through ceaseless watching, and through many fights.

The first fight was off Heligoland, when British light cruisers and destroyers went into the Bight on a scouting cruise planned by the Admiralty, not the Grand Fleet. The German destroyers fell back to lure the British within range of the enormous guns on Heligoland. That failed. But suddenly, out of the morning mist, came a bunch of German shells throwing up water-spouts that almost splashed aboard. Instantly the British destroyers strung out, farther apart, and put on full racing speed as the next two bunches crept closer in. Whirrh! went the fourth, just overhead, as the flotilla flagship Arethusa signalled to fire torpedoes. At once the destroyers turned, all together, lashing the sea into foam as their sterns whisked round, and charged, faster than any cavalry, straight for the enemy. When the Germans found the range and once more began bunching their shells too close in, the British destroyers snaked right and left, threw out the range-finding, and then raced ahead again. In less than ten minutes they had made more than five miles, fired their torpedoes, and were on their way back. Then up came the British cruisers and converged on the Mainz, which went down fighting. "The Mainz," wrote one of the British officers who saw her, "was immensely gallant. With her whole midships a fuming inferno she kept one gun forward and another aft still spitting forth fury and defiance like a wild cat mad with wounds." In the mean time Jellicoe, rightly anxious about leaving British light craft unsupported by heavier vessels so close to the German Fleet, urged the Admiralty to change their plan by sending on the battle cruisers. Then up came Beatty's four lordly giants—Lion, Queen Mary, Invincible, New Zealand—and the outclassed Germans retired.



The destroyer Defender, having sunk a German, had lowered a whaleboat to pick up survivors, when she was chased by a big German cruiser. So there, all alone, was her whaler, a mere open boat, on the enemy's part of the battlefield. But, through a swirl alongside, up came Submarine E4, opened her conning tower, took the whole boat's crew aboard, dived down again before the Germans could catch her, and landed safe home.

E9 crept in six miles south of Heligoland a fortnight later and sank the German cruiser Hela. But within a week the German von Weddigen had become the most famous of submarine commanders, for sinking no less than three British armoured cruisers with the loss of fifteen hundred men. The Aboukir, having been hit first, was closed by the Hogue and Cressy in order to save her crew. But they were themselves torpedoed before they could either see their enemy or save their friends.

Meanwhile the only German squadron overseas had been doing some daringly clever work under its first-class admiral, Graf von Spee. Leaving his worst vessels at Tsing-tao (the German port in China which was taken by the Japanese and British later on) he sailed into the vast Pacific with his seven best. On his way south he sent the Koenigsberg to raid the east coast of Africa and the Emden to raid the Indian Ocean. The Koenigsberg did a good deal of damage to merchantmen and sank the much weaker British light cruiser Pegasus, which was caught refitting at Zanzibar and was pounded into scrap iron with the loss of half her crew. But when the Koenigsberg made off, probably fearing the arrival of some avenging British, the Pegasus still had her colours flying, not from the mast, for that was shot away, but in the steadfast hands of two undauntable Marines.

The Emden was the most wonderful raider of modern times; and her captain, von Mueller, behaved much better than the general run of Germans. Arrived in the Indian Ocean he bagged six ships in five days, sending all the crews into Calcutta in the sixth after sinking the rest. But he soon beat this by twice taking no less than seven ships in a single day! Then he dashed into Penang and sank the unready Russian cruiser Jemchug on his way in and the ready little French destroyer Mousquet on his way out. The Mousquet hadn't the ghost of a chance. But she went straight for the Emden and fought till she sank; her heroic captain, with both legs blown off, commanding her to the very last gasp. By this time, however, the net was closing in; and twelve days later the big Australian cruiser Sydney finished the Emden on Cocos Island Reef.

Meanwhile von Spee's five cruisers had been pressed south by the clever network of Japanese warships working over the vast area of the Pacific under the orders of a staff officer watching every move from his desk at Tokyo. Sir Christopher Cradock was waiting to catch the Germans. But his slow battleship Canopus had not yet joined him when (November 1), with only three cruisers and one armed merchantman, he attacked them off Coronel on the coast of Chili; though they were very hard to see, being against the mountains, while his own ships were clearly outlined against a brilliant sunset. Ordering the armed merchantman away he began the fight between the armoured cruisers: Good Hope and Monmouth against Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The German ships were newer, faster, better armed, and the best shooting vessels of the German fleet. The first of their salvoes (volleys) to get home set the Good Hope blazing fore and aft. There was a gale blowing and big seas running; so the end soon came. Cradock's last signal was for the light cruiser Glasgow to save herself, as she could do no further service. But she stood by the Monmouth, whose own captain also ordered her away with the signal that, being too hard hit to escape himself, he would try to close the enemy so as to give the Glasgow a better chance. Suddenly, like a volcano, the Good Hope was rent by a shattering explosion. Then the Monmouth began sinking by the head, and her guns ceased firing. No boat could live in those mountainous seas. So the Glasgow, now under the fire of the whole German squadron, raced away for her life.

Von Spee then swept the coast; and British vessels had to take refuge in Chilean harbours. But Captain Kinnear, a merchant skipper, ran the gauntlet with a skill and courage which nothing could surpass. Off the dreaded Straits of Magellan a German cruiser chased him at twenty-one knots, his own Ortega's regular full speed being only fourteen. But he called for volunteers to help the stokers, whereupon every one of the two hundred Frenchmen going home to fight at once stepped forward, stripped to the waist, and whacked her up to eighteen. Yet still the cruiser kept closing up. So Kinnear turned into Nelson's Channel, the very worst channel in the very worst straits in the world, unlit, uncharted, and full of the wildest currents swirling through pinnacle rocks and over hidden reefs. The cruiser stopped, dumbfounded. The Ortega then felt her way ahead, got through without a scratch, and took her Frenchmen safe to France.

Von Spee presently rounded the Horn and made for the Falkland Islands, the British naval base in the South Atlantic. But, only a month after the news of Coronel had found Sir Doveton Sturdee sitting at his desk in London as the Third Sea Lord of the Admiralty, his avenging squadron had reached the Falklands more than eight thousand miles away. Next morning von Spee also arrived; whereupon Sturdee's much stronger squadron sprang out of Port Stanley and began a chase which could only have one ending. Von Spee turned to fight, with his two armoured cruisers against the two over-powering battle cruisers of the British, so that his three light cruisers might "star away" at their utmost speed, on three divergent courses, in an effort to escape. Vain hope! Sturdee's battle cruisers sank the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, while his other cruisers sank two of the three German cruisers. All the Germans went down with colours flying and fighting to the very last. Only the little Dresden escaped; to be sunk three months later by two British cruisers at Robinson Crusoe's island of Juan Fernandez, four hundred miles off the coast of Chili.

From this time forward not a single enemy warship sailed the outer seas. The Austrians were blockaded in the Adriatic, the Germans in the North Sea, and the Turks at the east end of the Mediterranean. Now and then a German merchantman would be armed in the German colonies or in some friendly neutral harbour and prey on British trade routes for a time. But very few of these escaped being sunk after a very short career; and those that did get home never came out again. So 1914 closed with such a British command over the surface of the sea as even Nelson had never imagined. The worst of the horrible submarine war was still to come. But that is a different story.

The joint expedition of French and British against the Turks and Germans in the Dardanelles filled 1915 with many a deed of more or less wasted daring. Victory would have meant so much: joining hands with Russia in the Black Sea, getting the Russian wheat crop from Odessa, driving the Turks from Constantinople, and cutting right through the Berlin-to-Bagdad line. But, once the Allied Governments had given the enemy time to hold the Dardanelles in full force, the only right way to reach Constantinople was the back way round by land through Greece and Turkey, combined with attacks on the Dardanelles. This, however, needed a vastly larger army than the Governments could spare. So, despite the objections of Fisher, their naval adviser, they sent fleets and armies to wear themselves out against the Dardanelles, till Kitchener, their military adviser, got leave to take off all that were left.



The politicians had blundered badly over the whole campaign. But the French and British soldiers and sailors, after fighting gloriously against long odds, managed their retirement in a way which might serve as the perfect model of what such retirements should be. The Turks and Germans, though eager to crown their victorious defence by smashing the fleet and army which had so long attacked them, were completely hoodwinked. The French and British kept up the cleverest show of force till the last streak of daylight had died away. Then, over the worst of broken ground, down terrific slopes, and across the puzzling beaches, the gallant armies marched, silent as the grave and regular as clock-work. The boats were loaded and taken off to their appointed places as skilfully as Wolfe's were brought down the St. Lawrence the night before the Battle of the Plains. Next morning the astounded enemy found an empty land in front of them; while the sea was swarming with crowded transports, safe beyond the retiring men-of-war.



CHAPTER XXV

JUTLAND

(1916)

At four o'clock in the morning of the 4th of August, 1914, Lord Jellicoe opened the secret orders appointing him Commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, which was then ready waiting in Scapa Flow, the great war harbour in the Orkney Islands off the far north coast of Scotland. Twenty-two months later, off the Jutland Bank of Denmark, he fought that battle of the giant navies for which the Germans had so long prepared. Of course the Germans did not want Jutland at the time it came. For, as we have seen already, they wished to have two quite separate wars, the first against the French and Russians, the second against the British; and, if the British had only kept out for as many months as the Americans did years, the Germans and their allies would certainly have won this first war, besides gaining an immensely better chance of winning the second war as well. Even as it was, they were not only very strong on land but also very strong at sea. They were easily the second sea-power in the world, in regard to both their navy and their merchant shipping. Moreover, they had many advantages, even over the British. This is so little known, and it is so important for a proper understanding of what took place at Jutland, that we must begin by looking a little more closely into the strong and weak points of the two great rival navies.



So far as fitness for battle depended on the officers and men of the Navy itself the Grand Fleet was as nearly perfect as anything could be. Sprung from the finest race of seamen in the world, trained for a longer time than any foreigners, and belonging to what everyone for centuries has known to be the first of all the navies, the British bluejackets formed the handiest crews you could have found in any age or country. Their officers knew how to handle men, ships, and fleets alike; and every one had been long "tuned up" for instant action. The gunnery stood every test, as the Germans know to their cost; and it actually got better as the fight grew worse, partly because the British keep so cool, and partly because length of expert training tells more and more as the storm and stress increase. It was the same in the engine room, the same in everything, right up to the supreme art of handling a fleet at racing speed in the midst of a battle on which the fate of freedom hung.

But when we come to those things that depended on the Government there is a very different tale to tell, because no government can get money for the Navy without votes in Parliament, and men cannot become Members of Parliament without the votes of the People, and most people will not spend enough money to get ready for even a life-or-death war unless they see the danger very close at hand, right in among the other things that press hard upon their notice. Looking after the country's safety needs so much time, so much knowledge, and so much thinking out that it has to be left, like all other kinds of public service, to the Government, which consists of a few leaders acting as the agents of Parliament, which, in its turn, consists of a few hundred members elected by the People in their millions. Whatever government is in power for the time being can, as the trusted agent of the People's chosen Parliament, do whatever it likes with the Army and Navy. The great soldiers and sailors, who know most about war, can only tell the Government what they think. The Government can then follow this expert advice or not, just as it pleases. Now, even in time of approaching danger, the trouble is that governments are always tempted to say and do what costs the least money and gives the least cause for alarm, because they think the People like that best. This was the case with the British governments in power during the fourteen years before the war, when Germany was straining every nerve to get the better of the British Navy. They were warned again and again. But they saw that most of the People, who were not watching the coming German storm, wanted most of the money spent on other things. So they did not like to hear the expert truth; they feared to tell the People; and they hoped the worst would never happen. But it did happen; and it found many a weak spot due to the Government; though not one that was due to the Navy itself. "Well, it's all going just as we expected," said Sir Charles Madden to Lord Jellicoe in the conning tower of the Iron Duke in the middle of the Jutland battle. So it did. Everything that really mattered was foreseen by the real naval experts. You never catch the Navy napping.

But you do catch governments, parliaments, and people napping very often. Yet here we should not be unjust either to governments in general or to those of our Mother Country in particular. Governments of free countries depend upon the People; so we must all take our share of the blame for what our own elected agents do wrong or fail to do right. And as for the Mother Country; well, with all her faults, she did the best of any. We cannot fairly compare her with the self-governing Dominions, like Canada and Australia, because she had so very much more to do. Her war work was more than twice as hard as theirs, even in proportion to her strength; and she led the whole Empire in making the greatest efforts and by far the greatest sacrifices. But we can compare her with our Allies; and, if we do, we shall find her stand the test. For if her Government made mistakes before the war, so did that French Government whose Prime Minister, Caillaux, had to be tried as a traitor during the war. So, too, did that party in Italy which favoured the Germans against the true Italian patriots. And how about the Peace Party in the United States that kept the Americans out of all but the end of the war, gaining a whole world of money and almost losing the nation's soul?

Great Britain gave the Navy what most voters think are needed for a war, especially such things as the papers talked of most, like dreadnoughts, guns, and torpedoes. But there was a lack of light cruisers and destroyers to fight off the same kind of German craft, guard the seaways, and kill the sneaking submarines. The docks in which ships are built and mended make little show for the money spent on them; so the Government never asked Parliament for enough till the war broke out, which meant that some dreadnoughts had to be more or less cramped so as to fit into the old-fashioned docks. The decks of the battle cruisers were not strong enough to keep out armour-piercing shells; so two of them were sunk at Jutland that might have otherwise been saved. The means of guarding the big ships against mines and submarines wore not nearly good enough at the start. There were fishing craft enough, and fishermen who were as good sailors as the world has ever seen, and dockyard hands enough to build new boats to fish for the deadly mines and spread the nets for nosing submarines. But they were not used in time.

Now look at the Germans. Their officers knew their navy had no chance in a fair stand-up fight with Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. But even these officers hoped that their mines and submarines, with a streak of good luck, might make the odds more even. Apart from their naval experts the Germans had no doubt at all. Their bluejackets and the German people as a whole thought everything German the best in the world; and long before the war the million members of the German Navy League had been persuading the people to vote most of the money the Kaiser wanted for his fleet. The Kiel Canal let the German High Sea Fleet play hide-and-seek between the North Sea and the Baltic without the slightest risk on the way. The British, on the other hand, could only get into the Baltic by going round between Denmark and Sweden, both being neutrals whose territories could not be touched. The way through is so narrow that the water is all "territorial," that is, it belongs to the countries beside it, and was, therefore, as neutral as they were. But even if Denmark and Sweden had let the Grand Fleet go through, it would have gone to certain defeat; for a weaker navy inside the Baltic could have crushed the British as they came through one by one—the only possible way.

Now look at the North Sea, which was the real battleground. The area is about a hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles. But the average distance you can see clearly, taking one day with another all the year round, is only five miles. This was very nice for lurking mines, sneaking submarines, and sudden cruiser raids against the British coasts. The coastline of the British Isles is more than twenty times as long as the North Sea coast of Germany, much easier to navigate and very much harder to defend—another advantage for the Germans. The Grand Fleet could not attack the German coast, which has only three good seaways into it, which has a string of islands off it, and which, difficult for foreign ships in time of peace, is impossible in time of war. The whole of the shore and off-shore islands were full of big guns in strong forts—and remember that you can sink a fleet, though you can't sink a coast—while the waters were full of mines and submarines.

Moreover, in destroyers, which are as dangerous out at sea as they are round a base, the German "High Sea Fleet" began with no less than eighty-eight against the forty-two in the British "Grand Fleet." The British had so many narrow seaways to defend that they could not spare Jellicoe nearly enough light cruisers or destroyers. It was only after Jutland that the Grand Fleet became so very much stronger than the High Sea Fleet. Before Jutland the odds in favour of the British battle squadrons were only about four to three; and the Germans had special advantages in searchlights that showed up everything except the position of the ships that carried them, in wonderfully bright and bewildering star-shells, in the gear for bringing all the quick-firing guns of the big ships to bear at once on light craft trying to torpedo them, and in very cleverly made delay-shells, which could go through all but the thickest armour and then burst inside the vitals of a ship. It was one of these shells that blew up the Queen Mary, the finest of all the British battle cruisers.

Then, as we have seen already, another German advantage, and a very great advantage, was that, while most British men-of-war had to be built for general service all round the world, the German High Sea Fleet (which meant nine-tenths of all the German Navy) could be built specially for one great battle close at home. Not nearly so much room was needed for the men to live in, because they were always near the naval barracks at Wilhelmshaven; and not nearly so much space was required for fuel. The weight and space saved in these two ways could all be used for extra shells, thicker armour, and other kinds of special strength. Thus the Germans were even stronger than the number of their men-of-war would lead you to think; and they were strongest of all for battles at night or in misty weather near their own base. The battle of Jutland seemed to have been made on purpose to suit them.

In 1914 the Germans had been very much encouraged by the sinking of the three British cruisers, Hague, Cressy, and Aboukir in the North Sea, by the Emden's famous raid in the Indian Ocean, by von Spee's victory at Coronel in the Pacific, and by the way the Kaiser and all the German papers boasted. In 1915 they were encouraged by the French and British failure against the Turks and Germans at the Dardanelles. In 1916, however, they began to feel the pinch of the British blockade so badly that they were eager for a sea-fight that would ease it off. If they had the finest navy in the world, why didn't it wipe the Grand Fleet off the North Sea altogether? At the same time the British public and the Allies wanted to know why the Grand Fleet didn't wipe the Germans off.

We have just seen why the Grand Fleet could not force on a battle round the German base. But the reason why the Germans could not try to snatch a victory out of some lucky chance at the beginning of the war, when the odds were least against them, was of quite a different kind. The fact was that thousands of their trained seamen were hopelessly cut off from Germany by the British Navy. Nearly every German merchant ship outside of the North Sea or the Baltic was either taken by the British or chased into some neutral port from which it never got out. The crews were mostly reservists in the German Navy. They were ready for the call to arms. But they could not answer it. So new men had to be trained. Meanwhile the one good chance slipped away; for by the time these recruits had been trained the Grand Fleet had grown much stronger than before.

On the 31st of May, 1916, Jellicoe's whole force was making one of its regular "drives" across the North Sea in two huge but handy fleets. The Battle Cruiser Fleet under Beatty was fifty miles south of the Battle Fleet, which was under Jellicoe himself. Jellicoe and Beatty, the chosen leaders of the greatest fleet of the greatest navy in the greatest war in the world, had long been marked men. They were old friends, having fought side by side against the Boxer rebellion in China in 1900, the year the German Navy Bill was passed by the German Parliament on purpose to endanger the "mightiest" of foreign navies—that is, the British. They had both been wonderfully keen students of every branch of naval warfare, from the handling of a single gun or ship to the supreme art of handling this "mightiest" of fleets; and both they and Sir Charles Madden, the Chief of Staff, were looked upon as being the very fittest of the fit.

But even the best of men and ships will not make the best fleet unless trained and "tuned up" to act together; and here, in its combined manuoeuvres, lay the crowning glory of the vast Grand Fleet. One day a visitor was watching it fight a sham battle against an enemy firing big guns at long range, when up came a real enemy, in the form of a German submarine, much closer than the sham. Of course the visitor turned his glasses on the "sub" and on the destroyers racing after it, like greyhounds slipped from the leash. But when, a few minutes later, he looked round at the fleet, he could hardly believe his eyes; for there it was, moving, mile upon mile of it, in a completely new formation, after a sort of magic "general post" that had made light craft and battle-line entirely change places, over an area of a hundred square miles, without a moment's slackening of speed. Hundreds of vessels had been in the best formation to fight each other on the surface. Now they were in the best formation to fight submarines. Then came four of those "sea-quakes" that make you feel as if your own ship had been torpedoed, but which really were depth-charges dropped round the submarine. Then an anxious pause, quickly followed by "all clear," and that by another fleet order which changed the whole formation back again as easily as if the lines of wheeling ships had been a single piece of clockwork and their two million tons of steel had simply answered to the touching of a single spring.

First Round of the Great Fight: 2.30 to 4.38 P.M. Beatty and Hipper with their Battle Cruisers.

At noon on the fateful 31st the Grand Fleet turned north and the German Fleet turned south, each having come to the end of its "drive," and neither knowing that the other one was there. The weather had been very warm and fine; but the North Sea mists had risen in time to veil the fleets from Zeppelins and other aircraft. Jellicoe's Battle Fleet was going north within a hundred miles of southern Norway, and von Scheer's Battle Fleet was going south within a hundred miles of the Jutland coast of Denmark, when the two Battle Cruiser Fleets under Beatty and von Hipper suddenly saw each other's smoke, half way between Jellicoe and Scheer, and a hundred miles west of the Skager Rack. Jellicoe and Scheer were then more than a hundred miles apart. But the Galatea's wireless report to Beatty, that there was smoke to the eastward, was caught by the wireless receivers aboard the Iron Duke, Jellicoe's flagship; whereupon Jellicoe ordered steam to be raised for full speed.

Beatty at once turned east and made straight for Hipper, to cut him off from his base, force him to fight, and lure Scheer back to save him. This would give Jellicoe time to come up and get in the knock-out blow for which he prepared by ordering the Battle Fleet to clear for action at 3.10. At 3.30 a British seaplane, sent up by Beatty, and flying within two miles of the nearest German craft, reported five battle cruisers steaming south. At the same moment Jellicoe thrilled his own command by signalling that a battle was expected. Hipper was hurrying to join Scheer's battle fleet, which now was racing north as Jellicoe's was racing south. Beatty then formed his six battle cruisers in line-ahead ("follow-my-leader") while his four fast Queen Elisabeth battleships followed as hard as they could. He thus had ten dreadnoughts to fight Hipper's five. But he and Hipper were racing south toward Scheer and away from Jellicoe. Yet that could not be helped. Hipper must not be allowed to escape; and Scheer must first be found and then lured on toward Jellicoe.

At twelve minutes to four both sides began firing at a range of eight miles and a speed of nearly thirty (land) miles an hour. Jutland was a gunner's battle, just as the naval experts had foretold; though torpedoes played their part. It was much too fast and furious for submarines; and the thickening mist made aircraft useless. Hipper's five ships hit hard at Beatty's six; and one big German shell reached the vitals of the Indefatigable, which blew up like a mine. There was a shattering crash, an enormous spurt of flame, a horrid "flurry" on the water; and ship and crew went down. That left five all. But, after the battle cruisers had been at it for twenty minutes, the four Queen Elizabeths (that is, battleships of the same kind as the "Q.E.") began heaving shells from eleven miles astern. Ten minutes later the central German dreadnought turned out of line a mass of seething fire. But, after five minutes more, the magnificent Queen Mary, Beatty's champion shooting battle cruiser, was simply torn in two by the explosion of her magazine. This left four all in battle cruisers, with the four fast British battleships straining their last turn of speed to come up.



Meanwhile fifteen German and twelve British destroyers charged out together to try their torpedoes, met in the middle, and had a fierce fight. Two Germans went down; but the British formation was broken, and only three closed the German battle cruisers, which received them with a perfect hurricane of shells from their quick-firing guns, sinking one, disabling another, and forcing the third to retire. Commander Bingham, who won the V.C. by leading this skilful and gallant attack, had his destroyer, the Nestor, sunk under him. But he was saved, as if by a miracle, and taken prisoner aboard a German man-of-war.

Second Round: Beatty luring Scheer and Hipper on towards Jellicoe: 4.38 to 5.50 P.M.

Commodore Goodenough's splendid light cruisers went scouting ahead till they met Scheer racing north. Then they turned north themselves, under a tremendous outburst of fire, to rejoin Beatty, who now, changing from pursuer to pursued, also turned north to join Jellicoe. The Germans, with their twenty-two dreadnoughts, now hoped Der Tag had really come for Beatty's eight. But Beatty hit hard and drove a German battle cruiser out of the line very badly mauled. Shortly afterwards the destroyer Moresby fired a torpedo which hit a German battleship. There was a tremendous burst of steam and smoke; and, when this had cleared off, the German was seen to be on fire. But Beatty's strong point was speed. His battle cruisers and four fast Queen Elizabeth battleships could do a good bit more than the slowest Germans; and as the Germans now had to keep together, in case Jellicoe came up, their whole line could go no faster than its slowest ship. Starting with a lead and putting on a spurt Beatty turned gradually more to the eastward, that is, toward the German line, which then had to turn and keep parallel or else let him cross its T. If you will separate the crosspiece from the upright of a T—for big ships fight some miles apart—you will see quite plainly that ships in a line like the upright of the T have no chance at all against ships in a line like the crosspiece of the T. The crosspiece line can converge all its broadsides on the leading ship of the upright, smash it utterly, and then do the same to the next, and the next. So the Germans, having to keep together and having to keep parallel to Beatty, were gradually forced eastwards, which would give Jellicoe the best chance to come into line against them.

The Third and Greatest Round: Jellicoe forms his Victorious Line of Battle: 5.50 to 6.38 P.M.

For three hours and a half Jellicoe, with his twenty-four dreadnought battleships, had been racing south to reach the scene of action. He had gained at first, when Beatty was going east to find von Hipper. He had lost when Hipper and Beatty were racing south to meet von Scheer. But now the whole battle was coming north to meet him. As the battlefield kept shifting about, and the fortunes of the fight kept changing, he shaped his course accordingly. But he never slackened speed, racing along under every pound of steam the straining ships could carry, thanks to the skill of those quiet heroes of the engine-room, who, seeing nothing of either friend or foe, never know anything of either defeat or victory, life or death, till all is over either with the battle or themselves.

As the great Battle Fleet came rushing from the north every eye was strained to catch the first sight of Beatty and the Germans. The thunder of a thousand guns rolled far across that summer sea. It was heard along the coast of Jutland a hundred miles away; and the main body of the Grand Fleet knew The Day had come long before they reached the battlefield. Presently the flashes began sparkling into view; and then the ships themselves loomed up, dimly made out through mist and smoke.

Jellicoe did not yet know exactly where the Germans were, and Beatty could not tell what they would do now Jellicoe had come. But Beatty turned sharp east immediately he sighted Jellicoe, and the Germans soon turned too, fearing to have him cross their T while Jellicoe was rounding on them. They wanted to escape, seeing the fight was hopeless. But they could not take the quickest way, that of turning all together—each ship turning right round where she was and making off as hard as she could—because this would have changed the places of the admirals and put the battle cruisers in the rear as well. Nor could they safely turn right back on their course, while keeping the same line-ahead, because some ships would then be masking the fire of others till the whole line had been reversed; and they sorely needed every gun they had. So the only way left was to keep parallel with Beatty till a chance came to turn sharply enough to get away, but not sharply enough to mask any of their own fire.

Imagine the whole enormous battlefield as something like a target, with the Germans circling round the bull's-eye, Beatty round the inner, and Jellicoe just coming into the outer. From Beatty's reports and his own observation Jellicoe could not know even that before six. So he sent out his own battle cruiser squadron under Admiral Hood to lengthen Beatty's line and overlap the Germans. Hood then sent one of his light cruisers, the Chester, speeding ahead to scout. But three German light cruisers held her up in a furious fight of twenty minutes. The Chester fought desperately, losing more than half her men, but getting her scout work done in spite of the fearful odds against her. How well she fought may be found out from the story of Jack Cornwell; for he was only one of her many heroes. Ship's boy, first class, and sixteen years of age, Jack Cornwell would have been the youngest V.C. in the world had he lived to wear it. With every man in the gun's crew round him dead or dying, and with the gun-shield shot away, he stood there, under a terrific fire, mortally wounded, with the receivers at his ears, reporting exactly what had happened to everyone except himself, and calmly waiting for orders how to carry on.

When the battered Chester told Hood he was too far south-east he turned back north-west till he sighted Beatty coming toward him at full speed. On Beatty's orders he then carried out Jellicoe's plan by turning back so as to lengthen Beatty's line of battle cruisers at the forward end, thus overlapping the Germans. This splendidly skilful and most daring move so alarmed the Germans that they trained every gun they could on him in a furious effort to wipe out the deadly overlap. He led the gallant line, "bringing his squadron into action ahead in a most inspiring manner, worthy of his great naval ancestors." (He was the great-great-grandson of the Lord Hood whom Nelson always called the best of naval officers.) His flagship, the Invincible, hit back with all her might, helped by the ships astern. "Keep it up," called Hood to his gunnery officer, Commander Dannreuther, one of the six survivors, "every shot is hitting them." But the converging fire of a hundred giant guns simply smashed the Invincible from stem to stern. At last a huge shell reached her magazine, and she blew up like a volcano; sheets of flame leaping higher than her masts, boats and loose gear whirling higher still, like leaves in an autumn gale, and then one sickening belch of steamy smoke to tell that all was over. After this Hood's two remaining battle cruisers took station astern of Beatty's four.



Meanwhile another light cruiser of Hood's, the Canterbury, was trying to protect three destroyers, led by the Shark, that were fighting German light cruisers and destroyers. Hipper and Scheer were doing their very utmost to keep Beatty and Jellicoe at arm's length till they could complete the German turn round the bull's-eye and make an effort to get off the deadly target altogether. For if Jellicoe could range round the inner, at higher speed and with an overlap, they would certainly be rounded up and crushed to death. The German light cruisers and destroyers therefore attacked the British light craft with the greatest fury, hoping to destroy the screen behind which Jellicoe would form his line of battle in safety from torpedoes. As the Shark charged down at the head of her line she suddenly found two lines of German destroyers charging towards her. Nothing daunted, she went straight on, her pulsing engines making her quiver with the thrilling race for life or death between them. Once abreast of them she fired her guns and torpedoes right and left, sinking two German destroyers, one on each side, and giving the rest as good as she got, till, hit by torpedoes on both sides together, she sank like a stone. Her commander, Loftus Jones, was awarded the second posthumous V.C. for the wonderfully gallant way he fought her till she went down with colours flying. Her last torpedo, when just on the point of being fired, was hit by a German shell and exploded, killing and wounding everybody near. Then another shell took Jones's leg off. But he still fought the one gun left in action, firing its last round as the waters closed above him.

About the same time the destroyer Onslow made for a German light cruiser that was trying to torpedo Beatty's flagship, Lion. Hitting the light cruiser with every gun at short range she then passed on to try her own torpedoes on the German battle cruisers, when a big shell scooped out most of her midships above the water-line. Retiring slowly she again met the light cruiser and this time finished her with a torpedo. Finding he had two torpedoes left Commander Tovey then made for the German battle line with the last ounce of steam the Onslow's engines could work off. He fired them both, and probably hit the dreadnought that was seen to reel out of line about three minutes later. The Defender, though herself half wrecked by several hits, then limped up and took the Onslow in tow till one o'clock the next afternoon, when tugs had come to the rescue.



The strongest of all the lighter ships that cleared the way for Jellicoe's battle fleet were the armoured cruisers, which are about half way between the light and battle cruisers. Sir Robert Arbuthnot's First Armoured Cruiser Squadron, speeding ahead of Jellicoe, swooped down on the German light cruisers in grand style, sank one, lamed two, and was driving the rest before it, helter-skelter, when, without a moment's warning, the huge hulls of the German battle line loomed out of the mist at almost point-blank range! In his eagerness to make short work of all the German light craft in the way Sir Robert had lost his bearings in the baffling mist and run right in between the two great battle lines. Quick as a flash he fought the German giants with every gun that he could bring to bear while turning back to take his proper station on the flank. But he was doomed and knew it. Yet, even at that fatal moment, his first thought was for the men whom, through no fault of his own, he had led into this appalling death-trap; and besides the order to turn back he signalled the noble apology to all hands under his command: "I beg your pardon." The end came soon. A perfect tornado of gigantic shells had struck his flagship, the Defence, at the very first salvo. She reeled under the terrific shock and had hardly begun to right herself before her sides were smashed in by another. At the third she crumpled up and sank with every soul aboard of her. Her next astern and second, the Black Prince, and the Warrior, managed to crawl away under cover of the mist. But both went down; though the battered Black Prince survived to be sunk by German battleships during the night.



About this time, just after six, the fight was at its very fiercest, especially between the opposing light craft. It was a question of life or death for the Germans to keep the British light craft away and use their own to the utmost while their battle line was turning toward the west in a desperate effort to keep ahead of Jellicoe. This was not cowardice, but a desire to save the German fleet from utter ruin once victory was seen to be impossible. Not all the brave deeds were on one side. How much the Grand Fleet's honour would be dimmed if its opponents had been cowards or if its own commander had failed to give the enemy his due! "The enemy," said Jellicoe in his dispatch, "fought with the gallantry that was expected of him, and showed humanity in rescuing officers and men from the water. I particularly admired the conduct of those on board a disabled German light cruiser which passed down the British line under a heavy fire that was returned by the only gun still left in action." But of course this was well matched by many a vessel on the British side, in a fight so fierce and a turmoil so appalling that only men of iron training and steel nerves could face it. Light craft of all kinds were darting to and fro, attacking, defending, firing guns and torpedoes, smashing and being smashed, sinking and being sunk, and trying to help or hinder the mighty lines of battle whose own gigantic guns flashed and thundered without a moment's pause.

As Jellicoe closed in to get the strangle-hold his mighty battle fleet had, in very truth, to go through fire and water: the racing ships, their slashing bows and seething wakes; the pall of smoke, stabbed by ten thousand points of fire, together making the devil's colours—yellow, red, and black; the leaping waterspouts thrown up by shells that missed; the awful crashings when the shells struck home; the vessels reeling under well-aimed, relentless salvoes; the ships on fire beyond the reach of human aid; the weirdness of the mist that veiled these dreadful horrors, or made them ghastlier still, or suddenly brought friend and foe together either to sink or swim; the summer sea torn into the maddest storm by ships and shells; while, through and round the whole of this inferno, there swelled and thundered the stunning roar of such a giant fight as other navies had never seen or even dreamt of. So deafening was this roar, and so absorbing were the changes of the fight, that when a ton-weight shell swept overboard every atom of the bridge aboard the leading ship of a flotilla—with compass, chart-house, engine-room-telegraph, steering wheel, and every soul on duty there—the men on "monkey's island," just above the bridge, never knew their ship was even hit till she began to run amuck and rammed another British vessel!

This was the battle into which Jellicoe had to fit his own vast force of twenty-four dreadnoughts without checking Beatty, without letting the Germans get a clear run home, and without risking the loss of his own best battleships by making one false move. At four minutes to six Jellicoe sighted Beatty. Five minutes later he asked him for the position of the German line. Nine minutes later he asked again. The smoke and mist were so bad at first that it was not till 6.14 that Beatty could say exactly. At 6.16—just two minutes later—Jellicoe's plan was made and his orders had gone out. There, in the conning tower of the Iron Duke, within those two short minutes, he had calmly thought out every chance and change and way of going into action under conditions which could not have been worse for him or better for the Germans.

His twenty-four battleships were in six divisions, side by side, each division in line ahead, and all numbered off from port (left) to starboard (right). The leading ship of the 1st, or port wing, division was the King George V. The leading ship of the 6th, or starboard wing division, was the Marlborough. His own flagship, the Iron Duke, led the 3rd division.



The supreme moment had now arrived. There was not a second to lose; for the fleets were covering more miles in an hour than armies do in a whole day. But if he formed line on the starboard wing, the nearer to the Germans, he would have had to wait some time till Beatty's battle cruisers had drawn clear. During this dangerous pause, while his own fire would have to be blanketed by Beatty, the German battle line would have had a double British target to make hits on, and the German light craft would have had the best chance of catching him with their torpedoes while he was in the act of forming line. Moreover, the German line might have concentrated on the starboard wing before the port had taken station, and might have overlapped the whole line afterwards. Jellicoe therefore decided to form on the port wing, giving his own line the chances of the overlap, and then fit in astern of Beatty. But, being ready by the time Beatty's battle cruisers were drawing ahead, he fitted in his own line between these and the four fast Queen Elizabeths that formed the rear of Beatty's line. Thus, in the very worst of this gigantic battle, the twelve miles of the final British line were formed. Three battle cruisers had been sunk: the Indefatigable, Invincible, and Queen Mary. One fast battleship, the Warspite, had fallen astern with a damaged helm. But six battle cruisers still led the van. Twenty-four fresh battleships followed. And three fast Queen Elizabeths brought up the rear. Jellicoe then personally commanded a single line-ahead twelve miles long and dreadnoughts all. Every part of every change was made as perfectly as if at the King's review. You could not have made the line straighter with a ruler, nor placed it better if the Germans had been standing still. For as Beatty's overlap kept turning them from north to east and east to south, to save their T from being crossed, Jellicoe's whole line had now worked to the landward side of them, that is, between them and their great home base on the German coast.

Fourth Round: Jellicoe Victorious: 6.50 to 9.00 P.M.

Driven to desperation by being overlapped and turned away from Germany, the Germans made a supreme effort to escape toward the south-west, thus completing their circle round the bull's-eye, as Jellicoe began to round them up from the inner. Their destroyers spouted forth an immense grey smoke screen; the mist helped them to hide; and the sun went into a bank of clouds. As they ran they fired shoals of torpedoes, which are much deadlier for the chasers, who go toward them, than for the chased, who go from them. The battleship Marlborough, flagship of Sir Cecil Burney, Jellicoe's Second-in-Command, was hit and began to list over. But she was so strong and so well handled that within ten minutes she was at it again. She had already fought two battleships and a cruiser while the British line was forming. Now she caught another German battleship with fourteen salvoes running and drove her out of line.