Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

ever, ruled the course of the battle, and saved the German Fleet at the most critical moment. The issue was predetermined, and some of Mr Churchill's criticisms go wide of the mark. He dwells on what he regards as three lost opportunities, and among the purple patches such an appalling sentence as Three times is a lot' comes as a shock.

[ocr errors]

A difference of reckoning between the Grand and the Battle Cruiser Fleet, amounting to 11 miles,* and lack of precise information-due mainly to want of systemplaced Admiral Jellicoe in a dilemma when actual contact with the High Seas Fleet was imminent. Mr Churchill critically discusses the deployment, completed at 6.38 p.m., by which time Admiral Scheer had turned his command 'together' and was retiring, and he explains at length the advantages of a different evolution. The real mistake was, however, that the cruising formation of the Grand Fleet was maintained far too long.† An earlier deployment, bringing that fleet into order of battle with its scouts and flotillas in their proper positions, might have provided the first of Mr Churchill's chances.' As carried out, the deployment of the battleships was in part under fire. There was local bunching,' and much disorder of the scouting forces, leading to considerable losses. There was no time, even if it had been possible, to give the necessary orders to the scattered squadrons and flotillas when the enemy was close at hand, and the Grand Fleet thus obtained contact in disadvantageous conditions.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Yet a real chance was to be given. Admiral Scheer again turned his fleet together' to attack the Grand Fleet fully deployed, and to place himself in a position of grave danger. As he has explained, 'The manoeuvre would be bound to surprise the enemy, and if the blow

This might have been anticipated in the circumstances-dead reckoning and much zigzagging.

†The presence and course of the High Seas Fleet were signalled to the flagship from the 'Southampton' at 4.38 p.m., and at 6.15 p.m. the deployment began; but previously, at 3.13 p.m., the columns of battleships had been opened out in preparation for deployment.

'It [the High Seas Fleet] was now heading straight into the centre of the arc formed by the British Fleet. In a few minutes the leading squadron and battle cruisers would be threatened with envelopment and the concentrated fire of practically the whole Grand Fleet' (Admiralty Official Narrative).

[merged small][ocr errors]

fell heavily, it would facilitate the breaking loose at night.'* Two German flotillas delivered an attack, and the Grand Fleet turned away according to plan, and lost the enemy never again to obtain contact. This was the real crisis of the Battle of Jutland, and the main reason why the most powerful fleet the world has ever seen was never brought into effective action.

[ocr errors]

Mr Churchill selects as his third chance the moment when Admiral Jellicoe received at about 11.30 p.m. the Admiralty message announcing that the German Battle Fleet had been ordered back to port at 9.14 p.m. on a course stated, which indicated the Horns Reef Passage. If the Admiral had decided to act on this important information, he had, according to his critic, only to turn his fleet on to a course parallel to the Germans in order to make sure of bringing them to action at daybreak.' This can only be regarded as a rash speculation. The Grand Fleet had been turned nearly south at 9 p.m. and was proceeding at 17 knots. The 1st Battle Squadron was not in station, and as the 'Marlborough' had been hit by a torpedo and the flag had not at once been transferred, this squadron became detached.† The Commander-in-Chief could not know the positions of his scouting forces. He had ordered the flotillas to follow five miles astern without instructions, and the whole German Fleet crashed through them in the darkness. Thus prolonged fortuitous fighting occurred, in which our young officers displayed conspicuous gallantry and initiative. The position of the enemy was not understood, and a night action could not be risked by the Grand Fleet for the reasons given in Admiral Jellicoe's Report:

'The German organisation for night is very good. Their system of recognition signals is excellent. Ours is practically nil. Their searchlights are superior to ours and they use them with great effect. Finally, their method of firing at night gives excellent results.'

These reasons, if humiliating, were certainly cogent.

* Admiral Harper describes this manœuvre as a 'blundering' attack; but it was bold, extremely astute, well executed and successful for Admiral Scheer's purpose.

† It did not rejoin the Grand Fleet till the evening of June 1.

After the crucial turn away, not followed by a determined attempt to find out where the enemy was, the decision to steer south can easily be justified. The Grand Fleet could not, in any case, have been ready to fight at daybreak because, as a whole, it was not in hand, and time would have been needed to bring it into order of battle. Mr Churchill's general conclusions are that there were chances on May 31 and later on Aug. 19,

'for gripping the enemy without in any way increasing the risk of being led into an under-water trap. A more flexible system of fleet training and manoeuvring would have enabled these movements to be made.* The attempt to centralise in

a single hand the whole conduct in action of so vast a fleet failed.

This may be admitted; but shortly after the battle, Mr Churchill's imagination led him to fancy the heavenborn commander 'regulating almost by gesture from moment to moment the course of the supreme and intense battle'-an attractive picture far removed from the possibilities of war. There are some inevitable drawbacks to the writing of naval history by an exFirst Lord. Captain Frothingham's able study of the Battle of Jutland has the great merit of detachment, and he explains why 'the ensuing results of the British failure to win a decisive victory at Jutland became more and more disastrous to the Entente Allies as time went on.'

He attributes this failure to the 'cautious policy,' the 'defensive idea,' approved by the Admiralty, and his verdict is that the 'ill-effects should not solely be charged against the men who were fighting the battle.'† In this country, controversy will continue to rage, and Mr Churchill has given it a fresh impulse. Perhaps in the future the tragedy of Jutland will take its true place in the history of the Great War, and it will be realised that psychological causes pre-existing made a Nelson or a Togo victory impossible. The personnel of the Grand

* The working of a large fleet by divisions had been suggested and tried by Sir R. N. Custance and Admiral of the Fleet Sir W. May, but apparently did not commend itself to the Admiralty.

† 'The Naval History of the War,' vol. II. Cambridge Harvard University Press, 1925.

1

Fleet was incomparable. From the Commander-in-Chief to the youngest boy, all were intent on a decision; but defensive ideals had for some years prevailed at the Admiralty, where monster ships and guns had seemed more important than the study of war. It followed that, on the day of trial, the High Seas Fleet, with a great inferiority in numbers, gun-power and speed, proved to be better prepared than our own in important respects.*

It remains a popular delusion that the German Fleet did not again show itself in the North Sea, and Mr Churchill has done well to describe in detail the instructive evolutions on Aug. 18, when again this Fleet, less the slow 2nd Battle Squadron, was at sea with a definite plan, and again there was the chance of a fleet action. Two pieces of false information prevented contact. The light cruiser 'Nottingham' was torpedoed by a submarine; but a mine-field trap being suspected, the Grand Fleet was turned about and lost four hours in its movement south. Later, Admiral Scheer received a false report from an airship that strong British forces— the Harwich flotilla, which was taken for the Grand Fleet-had been seen to the southward, and fearing to be cut off, he returned to port.

[ocr errors]

The year 1916 reached its 'crimson close,' and 1917crucial because of the Russian débâcle and the intervention of America-was to see a repetition of the offensive policy in the West against which Mr Churchill consistently inveighs. A local success at Verdun, carried out mainly by General Mangin, had brought a new exponent of the art of war into prominence, and forthwith a stream of celebrities took the road to Verdun and made for the first time acquaintance' with General Nivelle, who had become Commander-in-Chief of the armies of France on Dec. 12, superseding Foch, Pétain, and Castelnau. His 'forceful and continuous argument,' spoken in English, captivated Mr Lloyd George and led to a 'promise,' not communicated to Haig or Robertson, of control over the British forces, which naturally created difficulties. The new strategy was to depend on surprise and, in Nivelle's words, on violence, brutality, and

*If it is necessary to find scapegoats, they must be sought at the Admiralty. In 1892, the writer gave a plain warning of what might follow from a warped naval policy.

rapidity.' Mr Churchill lucidly explains the vitiation of the assumed conditions by Ludendorff's sudden withdrawal and the other causes which led to a great failure. On May 15, 1917, Nivelle was dismissed, and it fell to Pétain to render invaluable service by restoring the moral and discipline of the French armies, grievously shaken by the 'experiment' which our and many French generals had viewed from the first with misgivings unshared by Mr Lloyd George. The prolongation of the attack at Paschendaele, attributed to the 'HaigRobertson combination,' is severely condemned. The cost may well seem excessive; but the natural desire of the British generals to occupy the enemy during the critical period of Pétain's labours, and the fact that Sir D. Haig ultimately succeeded in occupying a strong position, might have received recognition.

On July 22, Mr Churchill conveyed his views to the Prime Minister.

'With regard to the East, the truth is staring us in the face. An army of six divisions . should be taken from the Salonica front and put in behind Jemal's army.

[ocr errors]

This will force that army to surrender, and all the allied troops in Syria and Palestine, including Allenby's, would be free by the spring of next year for action in Italy or France.'

Mr Lloyd George's response was to offer the command in Palestine to General Smuts, who declined it because his stipulations were not accepted, and General Allenby proceeded to smash Jemal, and in a masterly campaign to drive the Turkish army before him and to occupy Jerusalem. This fine offensive wins Mr Churchill's un

stinted praise. In July 1917 he became Minister of Munitions, and we have an impressive account of the vast activities of his department, which, later, was preparing on a tremendous scale for the 'unfought campaign' of 1919. Yet the almost overwhelming responsibilities thus involved did not suffice, and he was constantly in France watching great battles and occupying a 'central position between the Army and the War Cabinet.'

Before the end of 1917, German intrigue, crowned by the sinister mission of Lenin and his myrmidons, had secured the total collapse of the great Russian armies,

[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
« VorigeDoorgaan »