Our battle tactics are now plain to see. They are to keep out to the

farthest visible range, to avoid being materially damaged, and to keep

Fritz’s battleships so fully occupied that they will have no opportunity

of closing in upon Beatty when he completes his envelopment. We can see

our battle cruisers some three miles away, swinging more and more round

the head of the German line, and the enemy’s battle cruisers edging away

in the effort to avoid being outflanked. Far away to the north appears

the smoke of the three battle cruisers which are speeding ahead of

Jellicoe’s main Fleet; they are getting their instructions from Beatty’s

_Lion_, and are already making for the head of his line so as to prolong

it, and so to complete the envelopment which is now our urgent purpose.

Our Queen Elizabeth battleships are not hurrying either their engines or

their guns. We are moving just fast enough to keep slightly ahead of the

first half-dozen of the German battleships; we are pounding them

steadily whenever a decent mark is offered us—which unhappily is not

often—and we have seen one big ship go down smothered in smoke and

flames. The time draws on and it is already six o’clock; we have borne

the burden of the fight for more than an hour, though it seems but a few

minutes since we turned more than twenty miles back to the south, and

first gave Fritz a taste of what the Fifth Battle Squadron could do. We

are slowing down now, and the gap between us and Beatty is widening out,

for we know that Jellicoe is coming, and that he will deploy his three

battle squadrons between us and our battle cruisers which, extended in a

long line, with Hood’s _Invincible_ in front, are well round the head of

the German ships. The whole German Fleet is curving into a long,

close-knit spiral between us and Beatty, and, if the light will hold, we

have it ripe for destruction. We have played our part; the issue now

rests with Jellicoe and the gods of weather.

Everything for which we and the battle cruisers have fought and

suffered, for which we have risked and lost the _Queen Mary_ and

_Indefatigable_, is drawing to its appointed end. Our Fifth Battle

Squadron has nearly stopped, and has inclined four points towards the

east, so as to allow the gap for Jellicoe’s deployment to widen out.

Firing upon both sides has ceased. We have great work still to do, and

are anxious to keep all the shells we yet carry for it, and the enemy is

too heavily battered and in too grievous a peril to think of anything

but his immediate escape. We are waiting for Jellicoe, whose squadrons

are already beginning to deploy.

* * * * *

While the Queen Elizabeths wait, ready at any moment to resume the

action whenever and wherever their tremendous services may be called

for, we will leave the Fifth Battle Squadron, and, flying far over the

sea, will penetrate into the Holy of Holies, the conning tower of the

Fleet flagship wherein stands the small, firm-lipped, eager-eyed man who

is the brain and nerve centre of the battle. There are those who have as

sharp a thirst for battle—Beatty has; and there are those who have been

as patient under long-drawn-out delays and disappointments—Kitchener

was; yet there have been few fighting men in English history who could,

as Jellicoe can, combine enduring patience with the most burning ardour,

and never allow the one to achieve mastery over the other. Watch him now

in the conning tower of the _Iron Duke_. He has waited and worked during

twenty-two months for just this moment, when the German High Seas Fleet

have placed their cards upon the table, and he, exactly at the proper

instant, will play his overwhelming trumps. If ever a man had excuse for

too hasty a movement, for too great an eagerness to snatch at victory,

Jellicoe would have one now. His eyes flash, and one may read in them

the man’s intense anxiety not to allow one moment of unnecessary delay

to interpose between his Fleet and the scattering enemy. Yet until the

exact moment arrives when he can with sure hand deploy his squadrons

into line of battle, and fit them with precision into the gap made for

them between Beatty to the east and south and Evan-Thomas to the west

and south, he will not give the order which, once given, cannot be

recalled. For as soon as his Fleet has deployed, it will be largely out

of his hands, its dispositions will have been made, and if it deploys

too soon, the crushing opportunity will be missed, and the Germans will

infallibly escape. So, with his divisions well in hand, he watches upon

the chart the movements of his own and Beatty’s vessels, as the wireless

waves report them to him, and every few minutes goes to the observation

hoods of the conning tower, and seeks to peer through the thick haze and

smoke which still hide from him the enveloping horns of the English

ships, and the curving masses of the enemy. If he could see clearly his

task would be less difficult and the culmination of his hopes less

doubtful. But he cannot see; he has to work by wireless and by instinct,

largely by faith, trusting to the judgment of Beatty and Evan-Thomas,

far away, and himself subject to the ever-varying uncertainties of sea

fighting. He goes back to the chart, upon which his staff are noting

down the condensed essence of all the messages as they flow in, and

then, the moment having arrived, he gives the word. Away run the signal

flags, picked up and interpreted by every squadron flagship, and then

repeated by every ship. The close divisions of the Grand Fleet spread

out, melt gracefully into lines—to all appearance as easily as if they

were battalions of infantry—they swing round to the east, the foremost

vessel reaching out to join up with Beatty’s battle cruisers. As the

Grand Fleet deploys, Evan-Thomas swings in his four Queen Elizabeths so

that the _Barham_, without haste or hesitation, falls in behind the

aftermost of Jellicoe’s battleships, and the remainder of the Fifth

Battle Squadron completes the line, which stretches now in one long

curve to the west and north and east of the beaten Germans. The

deployment is complete, the whole Grand Fleet has concentrated, the

enemy is surrounded on three sides, we are faster than he is, and more

than twice as powerful; if the light will hold, his end has come.

Although from the _Iron Duke_ we cannot now see the wide enveloping

horns, yet we have lately been with them and know them. The main Fleet

in whose centre we now steam, consists of Dreadnoughts, Orions, King

George the Fifths, Iron Dukes (all acting as flagships), Royal

Sovereigns, with 15-inch guns, the _Canada_, with 14-inch guns, and that

queer Dago ship the _Agincourt_, with her seven turrets all on the

middle line, and each containing two 12-inch guns. Not a ship in our

battle line has been afloat for more than seven years, and most of them

are less than three years old. The material newness of the Grand Fleet

is a most striking testimony to the eternal youth of the Navy’s ancient

soul.

We have now concentrated in battle line the battleships of our own main

Fleet and six battle cruisers, after allowing for our losses, and the

Germans have, after making a similar allowance, not more than fourteen

battleships and three battle cruisers. I do not count obsolete

pre-Dreadnoughts. The disparity in force is greater even than is shown

by the bare numbers, which it is not permitted to give exactly. Scarcely

a ship of the enemy can compare in fighting force with the Queen

Elizabeths or the Royal Sovereigns, or even with the Iron Dukes, Orions,

and King George the Fifths. Of course he made off; he would have been a

fool if he had not—and Admiral Scheer is far from being a fool.

Our concentrated Fleet came into action at 6.17, and at this moment the

Germans were curving in a spiral towards the south-west, seeking a way

out of the sea lion’s jaws. They were greatly favoured by the mist and

were handled with superb skill. They relied upon constant torpedo

attacks to fend off our battleships, while their own big vessels worked

themselves clear. We could never see more than four or five ships at a

time in their van, or from eight to ten in their rear. For two hours the

English Fleet, both battleships and battle cruisers, sought to close,

and now and then would get well home upon the enemy at from 11,000 to

9,000 yards, but again and again under cover of torpedo attacks and

smoke clouds, the Germans opened out the range and evaded us. We could

not get in our heavy blows for long enough to crush Scheer, and he could

not get in his mosquito attacks with sufficient success wholly to stave

us off. For us those two hours of hunting an elusive enemy amid smoke

and fog banks were intensely exasperating; for him they must have been

not less intensely nerve-racking. All the while we were hunting him, he

was edging away to the south-west—“pursuing the English” was his own

humorous description of the manœuvre—and both Jellicoe and Beatty were

pressing down between him and the land, and endeavouring to push him

away from his bases. All the while our battleships and battle cruisers

were firing heavily upon any German ship which they could see, damaging

many, and sinking one at least. The return fire was so ragged and

ineffective that our vessels were scarcely touched, and only three men

were wounded in the whole of Jellicoe’s main Fleet. By nine o’clock both

Beatty and Jellicoe were far down the Jutland coast, and had turned

towards the south-west in the expectation that daylight would reveal to

them the German Fleet in a favourable position for ending the business.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS: SOME IMPRESSIONS

AND REFLECTIONS

PART II

At the close of my previous Chapter I took a mean advantage of my

readers. For I broke off at the most interesting and baffling phase in

the whole Battle of the Giants. It was easy to write of the first two

phases—the battle-cruiser action up to the turn where the _Queen Mary_

and _Indefatigable_ were lost, and the phase during which Beatty, though

sorely weakened, gallantly headed off the German line, and Evan-Thomas,

with his Fifth Battle Squadron, stalled off the Main High Seas Fleet in

order to allow Beatty the time necessary for the execution of his

manœuvre, and Jellicoe the time to bring up the Grand Fleet. This second

phase of the battle was perfectly planned and perfectly executed. It

will always stand out in the pages of English Naval History as a

classical example of English battle tactics. I could have described

these two phases with much more of intimate detail had the Censor

permitted, but perhaps I gave enough to make clear what was sought to be

done and what was, in fact, achieved.

When Jellicoe had deployed his potent squadrons, fitting them in between

Evan-Thomas and Beatty and curving round the head of the German line,

which by then had turned back upon itself and taken the form of a

closely knit spiral, the Germans appeared to be doomed. They were not

enveloped in the strict sense of being surrounded—we were twice as

strong as they were in numbers of modern ships and nearly three times as

strong in effective gun power, yet we had not nearly sufficient numbers

actually to surround them. A complete envelopment of an enemy fleet

rarely, if ever, occurs at sea. But though Admiral Scheer was not

surrounded he was in the most imminent peril of destruction. Jellicoe

and Beatty were between his ships and the Jutland Coast, and as they

pressed towards the south and west were pushing him away from the Wet

Triangle and the security of his home bases. We had him outmanœuvred and

beaten, but we did not destroy him. Why was that?

No question is more difficult to answer fairly and truthfully. I have

discussed this third critical phase of the battle with a great many

officers who were present—and in a position to see what happened—and

with a great many who, though not present, had means of informing

themselves upon essential details. I have studied line by line the

English and German dispatches and have paid more regard to what they do

not tell than to what they do tell. It is stupid to reject Admiral

Scheer’s dispatch as fiction; it is not, but it is coloured with the

purpose of making the least of his tactical defeat and the most of his

very skilful escape. Jellicoe’s dispatch is also coloured. I do not

doubt that the statements contained in it are strictly true, but there

are obvious omissions. By a process of examination and inquiry I have

arrived at an answer to my question. I put it forward in all deference,

for though I am of the Navy in blood and spirit, and have studied it all

my life, yet I am a layman without sea training in the Service.

The first point essential to an understanding is that Jellicoe’s

deployment was not complete until late in the afternoon, 6.17 p.m.

G.M.T., that the evening was misty, and the “visibility” poor. Had the

encounter between Beatty’s and Hipper’s battle cruisers occurred two

hours earlier, and had Jellicoe come into action at 4.15 instead of

6.15, one may feel confident that there would not now be any High Seas

German Fleet, that we could, since May 31st, 1916, have maintained a

close blockade with fast light craft of the German North Sea and Baltic

bases, and that the U-boat activity, which still threatens our sea

communications and has had a profound influence on the progress of the

war, would never have been allowed by us to develop. Upon so little, two

hours of a day in late spring, sometimes hangs the fate of nations.

The afternoon was drawing towards evening; the light was poor, the

German lines had curved away seeking safety in flight. But there

remained confronting us Hipper’s battle cruisers and Scheer’s faster

battleships, supported by swarms of torpedo craft. We also had our

destroyers, many of them, and light cruisers. There was one chance of

safety open to Scheer, and he took it with a judgment in design and a

skill in execution which marks him out as a great sea captain. His one

chance was so to fend off and delay Jellicoe and Beatty by repeated

torpedo attacks driven home, that the big English ships would not be

able to close in upon the main German Fleet and destroy it by gun-fire

while light remained to give a mark to the gunners. And so Scheer

decided to “attack,” and did attack. In his dispatch he deliberately

gives the impression—for the comfort and gratification of German

readers—that he successfully attacked our Grand Fleet with his main

High Seas Fleet. He was no fool of that sort. He attacked, but it was

with torpedo craft supported by Hipper’s battle cruisers.

The range of a modern torpedo, the range at which it may occasionally be

effective, is not far short of 12,000 yards, about seven land miles.

This, when the visibility is low, is about the extreme effective range

for heavy guns. The guns can shoot much farther, twice as far, when the

gunners or the fire directors up aloft can see; but gunnery without

proper light is a highly wasteful and ineffective business. At the

range—usually about 12,000 yards, though sometimes coming down to 9,000

yards—to which the German torpedo attacks forced Jellicoe and Beatty to

keep out, only some four or five enemy ships in the van could be seen at

once; more of the rear squadron could be seen, though never more than

eight or twelve. Our marks were usually not the hulls of the enemy’s

ships but the elusive flashes of his guns. Scheer used his torpedo craft

in exactly the same way as a skilful land General—in the old days of

open fighting—used his cavalry during a retreat. He used them to cover

by repeated charges, sometimes of single flotillas, at other times of

heavily massed squadrons, the retirement of his main forces.

If, therefore, we combine the factor of low visibility and the approach

of sunset, with the other factor of the long range of the modern

torpedo, we begin to understand why Jellicoe and Beatty were not able to

close in upon their enemy and wipe him off the seas. From the English

point of view the third phase—that critical third phase to which the

first and second phases had led up and which, under favourable

circumstances, would have ended with the destruction of the German

Fleet—found us in the position of a “following” or “chasing” fleet. But

from the German point of view the same phase found their fleet in the

position of “attackers.” I have shown how these points of view can be

reconciled, for while the main German Fleet was intent upon getting away

and our main fleet was intent upon following it up and engaging it, the

German battle cruisers, supported by swarms of torpedo craft, were

fighting a spirited rearguard action and attacking us continually. The

visibility was poor and mist troubled both sides. But the escape of the

Germans was not wholly due to the difficulty of seeing them distinctly.

If we could have closed in we should have seen his ships all right; we

did not close in because the persistence and boldness of his torpedo

attacks prevented us.

The third phase, which lasted from 6.17 p.m. until 8.20 p.m., was fought

generally at about 12,000 yards, though now and then the range came down

to 9,000 yards. The Germans, fending us off with torpedo onslaughts, did

their utmost to open out the ranges and used smoke screens to lessen

what visibility the atmosphere permitted. Their gun-fire was so poor and

ineffective that Jellicoe’s Main Fleet was barely scratched and three

men only were wounded. But we cannot escape from the conclusion that

Scheer’s rearguard tactics were successful, he did fend Jellicoe off and

kept him from closing, and he did withdraw the bulk of his fleet from

the jaws which during two hours were seeking to close upon it. He made

two heavy destroyer attacks, during one of which the battleship

_Marlborough_ was hit but was able to get back to dock under her own

steam. The third phase of the Jutland Battle was exactly like a contest

between two boxers—one heavy and the other light—being fought in an

open field without ropes. The little man, continually side-stepping and

retreating, kept the big man off; the big man could not close for fear

of a sudden jab in his vital parts, and there were no corners to the

ring into which the evasive light weight could be driven.

If one applies this key to the English and German descriptions of the

third phase in the Jutland Battle one becomes able to reconcile them,

and becomes able to understand why the immensely relieved Germans claim

their skilful escape as a gift from Heaven. They do not in their

dispatches claim to have defeated Jellicoe, except in the restricted

sense of having foiled his purpose of compassing their destruction. They

got out of the battle very cheaply, whatever may have been their actual

losses. This they realise as plainly as we do. Relief shines out of

every line of their official story and is compressed, without reserve,

into its concluding sentence. “Whoever had the fortune to take part in

the battle will joyfully recognise with a thankful heart that the

protection of the Most High was with us. It is an old historical truth

that fortune favours the brave.”

* * * * *

I am afraid that I can do little to elucidate the fourth phase of the

Battle of the Giants—the night scrimmage (one cannot call it a battle)

during which our destroyers were seeking out the enemy ships in the

darkness and plugging holes into them at every opportunity. And that

dawn upon June 1st, of which so much was hoped and from which nothing

was realised? Who can describe that? Nothing that I can write would

approach in sublimity the German dispatch. Consider what the situation

was. Jellicoe and Beatty had worked far down the Jutland coast and had

partially edged their way between Scheer and the German bases. Their

destroyers had sought out the German ships, found them and loosed

mouldies at them, lost them again and found them again; finally had lost

them altogether. At dawn the visibility was even lower than during the

previous evening—only three to four miles—our destroyers were out of

sight and touch and did not rejoin till 9 o’clock. No enemy was in

sight, and after cruising about until 11 o’clock Jellicoe was forced to

the conclusion that Scheer had got away round his far-stretching horns

and was even then threading the mine fields which protected his ports of

refuge. There was no more to be done, and the English squadrons, robbed

of the prey upon which they had set their clutches, steamed off towards

their northern fastnesses. There the fleet fuelled and replenished with

ammunition, and 9.30 a.m. on June 2nd was reported ready for action. The

German description of that dawn is a masterpiece in the art of verbal

camouflage: “As the sun rose upon the morning of the historic First of

June in the eastern sky, each one of us expected that the awakening sun

would illumine the British line advancing to renew the battle. This

expectation was not realized. The sea all round, so far as the eye could

see, was empty. One of our airships which had been sent up reported,

later in the morning, having seen twelve ships of a line-of-battle

squadron coming from the southern part of the North Sea holding a

northerly course at great speed. To the great regret of all it was then

too late for our fleet to intercept and attack them.” The British Fleet,

which the writer regretted not to see upon the dawn of a long day in

late spring, was of more than twice the strength of his own. It would

have had sixteen hours of daylight within which to devour him; yet he

regretted its absence! The Germans must be a very simple people,

abysmally ignorant of the sea if this sort of guff stimulates their

vanity.

* * * * *

In war the moral is far greater than the material, the psychological

than the mechanical. One cannot begin to understand the simplest of

actions unless one knows something of the spirit of the men who fight

them. In sea battles, more than in contests upon land, events revolve

round the personalities of the leaders and results depend upon the skill

with which these leaders have gauged the problem set them, and dispose

their forces to meet those varying phases which lead up to a conclusion.

It is borne in upon us by hard experience that the southern part of the

North Sea is not big enough and not deep enough to afford space for a

first-class naval battle to be fought out to the finish. The enemy is

too near his home bases, he can break off an action and get away before

being overwhelmed. Yet even in the southern North Sea there is room in

which to dispose great naval forces and in which to manœuvre them.

Fleets are not tucked up by space as are modern armies. Jutland was a

battle of encounter and manœuvre, not of heavy destructive fighting.

There was a dainty deftness about the first two phases which is

eminently pleasing to our national sea pride, and however we may growl

at the tactical incompleteness of the battle we cannot but admit that,

taken as a whole, it was as strategically decisive an action as has ever

been fought by the English Navy throughout its long history. It

re-established the old doctrine, which the course of the Sea War has

tended to thrust out of sight, that Command of the Sea rests as

completely as it always has done in the past upon the big fighting ships

of the main battle line. Upon them everything else depends; the

operations of destroyers and light cruisers, of patrols and even of

submarines. For upon big ships depends the security of home bases.

Surface ships alone can occupy the wide spaces of the sea and can hold

securely the ports in one’s own country and the ports which are ravished

from an enemy. Submarines are essentially raiders, their office is the

obstruction of sea communications, but submarines are useless, even for

their special work of obstruction, unless they can retire, refit, and

replenish stores at bases made secure by the existence in effective

being of a strong force of big fighting ships. Had Jutland been as great

a tactical success as it was a strategical success, had it ended with

the wiping out of the German High Seas Fleet, then, as I have already

stated, the U-boat menace would have been scotched by the destruction of

the protecting screen behind which the U-boats are built, refitted, and

replenished. No small part of the German relief at the issue of Jutland

is due to their realisation of this naval truth. They express that

realisation in a sentence which contains the whole doctrine of the

efficacy of the big ship as the final determinant in naval warfare.

Admiral Scheer in his dispatch declared that the Battle of May 31st,

1916, “confirmed the old truth that the large fighting ship, the ship

which combines the maximum of strength in attack and defence, rules the

seas.” They do not claim that the English superiority in strength—which

they place at “roughly two to one”—was sensibly reduced by our losses

in the battle, nor that the large English fighting ships—admittedly

larger, more numerous, and more powerfully gunned than their own—ceased

after Jutland to rule the seas. The German claim, critically considered,

is simply that in the circumstances it was a very lucky escape for the

German ships. And so indeed it was. It left them with the means of

securing their bases from which could be carried on the U-boat warfare

against our mercantile communications at sea.

When the day arrives for the veil which at present enshrouds naval

operations to be lifted, and details can be discussed freely and

frankly, a whole literature will grow up around the Battle of the

Giants. Strategically, I repeat—even at the risk of becoming

tedious—it was a great success, both in its inception and in its

practical results. Tactically its success was not complete. The Falkland

Islands and Coronel actions were by comparison simple affairs of which

all essential details are known. Jutland, from six o’clock in the

evening of May 31st until dawn upon June 1st, when the opposing fleets

had completely lost touch, the one with the other, is a puzzling

confusing business which will take years of discussion and of

elucidation wholly to resolve—if ever it be fully resolved. If any one

be permitted to describe the three actions in a few words apiece one

would say that Coronel was both strategically and tactically a brilliant

success for the Germans. Von Spee concentrated his squadron outside the

range of our observation, placed himself in a position of overwhelming

tactical advantage, and won a shattering victory. At the Falkland

Islands action we did to von Spee exactly what he had done to us at

Coronel. This time it was the English concentration which was effected

outside the German observation, and it was the German squadron which was

wiped out when the tactical clash came. The first two phases of Jutland

were, in spite of our serious losses in ships, notable tactical

successes; they ended with Beatty round the head of the German Fleet and

Jellicoe deployed in masterly fashion between Beatty and Evan-Thomas.

Then we get the exasperating third phase, in which the honours of

skilful evasion rest with the Germans, and the fourth or night phase,

during which confusion became worse confounded until all touch was lost.

And yet, in spite of the tactical failure of the third and fourth

phases, the battle as a whole was so great a success that it left us

with an unchallengeable command of the sea—a more complete command than

even after Trafalgar. The Germans learned that they could not fight us

in the open with the smallest hope of success. One of the direct fruits

of Jutland was the intensified U-boat warfare against merchant shipping.

The Germans had learned in the early part of the war that they could not

wear down our battleship strength by under-water attacks; they learned

at Jutland that they could not place their battleships in line against

ours and hope to survive; nothing was left to them except to prey upon

our lines of sea communication. And being a people in whose eyes

everything is fair in war—their national industry—they proceeded to

make the utmost of the form of attack which remained to them. Viewed,

therefore, in its influence upon the progress of the war, the Battle of

Jutland was among the most momentous in our long sea history.

I have discussed the Battle of the Giants so often, and so

remorselessly, with many officers who were present and many others who

though not present were in a position to know much which is hidden from

onlookers, that I fear lest I may have worn out their beautiful

patience. There are two outstanding figures, Beatty and Jellicoe, about

whose personalities all discussion of Jutland must revolve. They are men

of very different types. Beatty is essentially a fighter; Jellicoe is

essentially a student. In power of intellect and in knowledge of his

profession Jellicoe is a dozen planes above Beatty. And yet when it

comes to fighting, in small things and in great, Beatty has an instinct

for the right stroke at the right moment, which in war is beyond price.

Whether in peace or in war, Jellicoe would always be conspicuous among

contemporaries; Beatty, unless war has given him the stage upon which to

develop his flair for battle, would not have stood out. He got early

chances, in the Soudan and in China; he seized them both and rushed up

the ladder of promotion. He was promoted so quickly that he outstripped

his technical education. As a naval strategist and tactician Jellicoe is

the first man in his profession; Beatty is by professional training

neither a strategist nor a tactician—he was a commander at twenty-seven

and a captain at twenty-nine—but give him a fighting problem to be

solved out in the open with the guns firing, and he will solve it by

sheer instinctive genius. In the Battle of Jutland both Beatty and

Jellicoe played their parts with consummate skill; Beatty was in the

limelight all through, while Jellicoe was off the stage during the first

two acts. Yet Jellicoe’s part was incomparably the more difficult, for

upon him, though absent, the whole issue of the battle depended. His

deployment by judgment and instinct—sight was withheld from him by the

weather—was perfect in its timing and precision. He should have been

crowned with the bays of a complete Victor, but the Fates were unkind.

He was robbed of his prey when it was almost within his jaws. Do not be

so blind and foolish as to depreciate the splendid skill and services of

Lord Jellicoe.

* * * * *

I find the writing of this second Chapter upon the Battle of the Giants

a very difficult job. Twice I have tried and failed; this is the result

of the third effort. My failures have been used to light the fires of my

house. Even now I am deeply conscious of the inadequacy of my tentative

reflections. Upon so many points one has not the data; upon so many

others one is not allowed—no doubt properly—yet still not allowed to

say what one knows. Though sometimes I write grave articles, many of my

readers know that by instinct I am a story-teller, and to me narrative

by dialogue comes more readily than a disquisition. Therefore, if you

will permit me, I will cast the remaining portion of this chapter into

the form of dialogue and make of it a discussion between two Admirals, a

Captain, and myself. One of these Admirals I will call a Salt Horse, a

man who has seen service during half a century but who has not

specialised in a technical branch such as gunnery, or navigation, or

torpedoes. A Salt Horse is an all-round sailor. The other Admiral I will

call a Maker, and regard him as a highly competent technical officer in

the design and construction of ships of war, of their guns, and of their

armour. The Captain, a younger man, I will call a Gunner, one who has

specialised in naval gunnery in all its branches, and one who knows the

old methods and those which now are new and secret. These officers have

not been drawn by me from among my own friends. They are not individuals

but are types. Any attempts which may be made at identifying them will

fail and justly fail—for they do not exist as individuals. Let this be

clearly understood. They are creations of my own; I use them to give a

sense of vividness to a narrative which tends to become tedious, and to

bring out features in the Battle of Jutland which cannot without

impertinence be presented directly by one, like myself, who is not

himself a naval officer.

Bennet Copplestone, an intrusive and persistent fellow, begins the

conference by inquiring whether Beatty had, in the professional judgment

of his brother officers, deserved Admiral Jellicoe’s praise of his “fine

qualities of gallant leadership, firm determination, and correct

strategic insight.” Was he as good as his public reputation? I knew, I

said, a good deal too much of the making of newspaper reputations and

had come to distrust them.

“Beatty is a real good man,” declared the Maker. “He sticks his cap on

one side and loves to be photographed looking like a Western American

‘tough.’ But under all this he conceals a fine naval head and the

sturdiest of hearts. He is a first-class leader of men. I had my own

private doubts of him until this Jutland Battle, but now I will take off

my hat in his presence though he is my junior.”

The Maker’s colleagues nodded approval.

“There was nothing much in the first part,” went on the Maker. “Any of

us could have done it. His pursuit of the German battle cruisers up to

their junction with the High Seas Fleet was a reconnaissance in force,

which he was able to carry through without undue risk, because he had

behind him the Fifth Battle Squadron. His change of course then through

sixteen points was the only possible manœuvre in order to bring his

fleet back towards Jellicoe and to lead the Germans into the trap

prepared for them. So far Beatty had done nothing to distinguish him

from any competent fleet leader. Where he showed greatness was in not

diverging by a hair’s breadth from his plans after the loss of the

_Indefatigable_ and the _Queen Mary_. Mind you, these losses were wholly

unexpected, and staggering in their suddenness. He had lost these fine

ships while fighting battle cruisers fewer in numbers and less powerful

in guns than his own squadrons. A weaker man might have been shaken in

nerve and lost confidence in himself and his ships. But Beatty did not

hesitate. Although he was reduced in strength from six battle cruisers

to four only he dashed away to head off the Germans as serenely as if he

had suffered no losses at all. And his splendid dash had nothing in it

of recklessness. All the while he was heading off the Germans he was

manœuvring to give himself the advantage of light and to avoid the

dropping shots which had killed his lost cruisers. All the while he kept

between the Germans and Jellicoe and within touch of his supporting

squadron of four Queen Elizabeths. Had he lost more ships he could at

any moment have broken off the action and, sheltered by the massive

Fifth B.S., have saved what remained. As a mixture of dash and caution I

regard his envelopment of the German line, after losing the _Queen Mary_

and _Indefatigable_, as a superb exhibition of sound battle tactics and

of sublime confidence in himself and his men. But I wish that he would

not wear his cap on one side or talk so much. He has modified both these

ill-practices since he became Commander-in-Chief. That is one comfort.”

“Nelson was a poseur,” said I, “and as theatrical as an elderly and ugly

prima donna. He posed to the gallery in every action, and died, as it

were, to the accompaniment of slow music. It was an amiable weakness.”

“Jellicoe doesn’t pose,” growled the Maker.

“Jellicoe hates advertisement,” I observed. “Whenever he used to talk to

the gangs of newspaper men who infested the Grand Fleet, he always

implored them to spare his own shrinking personality. It is a matter of

temperament. Jellicoe is a genuinely modest man; Beatty is a vain one.

They form a most interesting contrast. Life would be duller without such

contrasts. One could give a score of examples from military and naval

history of high merit allied both to modesty and vanity.”

“That is true,” said the Maker, “but the Great Silent Sea Service

loathes advertisement like the very devil, and it is right. The Service

would be ruined if senior officers tried to bid against one another for

newspaper puffs.”

“Yet I have known them do it,” said I drily, and then slid away from the

delicate topic. “Let us return to the first part of the action, and

examine the division of the Fleet between Jellicoe and Beatty. Was this

division, admittedly hazardous, a sound method of bringing the Germans

to action?”

The Gunner took upon himself to reply.

“It is not, and never has been, possible to bring the Germans to action

in the southern part of the North Sea except with their own consent.

There is no room. They can always break off and retire within their

protected waters. Steam fleets of the modern size and speed cannot force

an action and compel it to be fought out to a finish in a smaller space

than a real ocean. You must always think of this when criticising the

division of our fleets. Beatty was separated from Jellicoe by nearly

sixty miles, and strengthened by four fast Queen Elizabeth battleships

to enable him to fight an action with a superior German Fleet. He was

made just strong enough to fight and not too strong to scare the Germans

away. In theory, the division of our forces within striking distance of

the enemy was all wrong; in practice, it was the only way of persuading

him into an action. Both sides at the end of May, 1916, wanted to bring

off a fight at sea. Fritz wanted something which he could claim as a

success in order to cheer up his blockaded grumblers at home, who were

getting restive. We wanted to stop the projected German naval and

military onslaught upon Russia in the Baltic. The wonderful thing about

the Jutland Battle is that it appears to have achieved both objects.

Fritz, by sinking three of our battle cruisers, has been able to delude

a nation of landsmen into accepting a highly coloured version of a great

naval success; and we, by making a sorry mess of his main fleet, did in

fact clear the northern Russian flank of a grave peril. The later

Russian successes in the South were the direct result of Jutland, and

without those successes the subsequent Italian, French, and British

advances could not have been pushed with anything like the effect

secured. Regarded in this broad international way, the division of our

fleets justified by its results the risks which it involved. What I

don’t understand is why we suffered so much in the first part of the

action when Beatty had six battle cruisers and four battleships against

five battle cruisers of the enemy. He lost the _Indefatigable_ and

_Queen Mary_ while he was in great superiority both of numbers and of

guns. Then, when the German main fleet had come in, and he was carrying

out an infinitely more hazardous operation in the face of a greater

superior force, he lost nothing. If the _Indefatigable_ and _Queen Mary_

had been lost during the second hour before Jellicoe arrived I should

have felt no surprise—we were then deliberately risking big losses—but

during the first hour of fighting, when we had ten ships against

five—and five much weaker individually than our ten—we lost two fine

battle cruisers. I confess that I am beaten. It almost looks as if at

the beginning the German gunners were better than ours, but that they

went to pieces later. What do you think?” He turned to the Salt Horse,

who spoke little, but very forcibly when he could be persuaded to open

his lips.

“Everyone with Beatty, to whom I have spoken,” declared the Salt Horse,

“agrees that the German gunnery was excellent at the beginning. We were

straddled immediately and hit again and again while coming into action.

Our gunners must have been a bit over-anxious until they settled down.

We ought to have done something solid in a whole hour against five

battle cruisers with our thirty-two 13.5-inch guns and thirty-two

15-inch. And yet no one claims more than one enemy ship on fire. That

means nothing. The burning gas from one big shell will make the deuce of

a blaze. There is no explanation of our losses in the first part, and of

Fritz’s comparative immunity, except the one which you, my dear Gunner,

are very unwilling to accept. Fritz hit us much more often than we hit

him. There you have it. I have spoken.” Admiral Salt Horse, a most

abstemious man, rang the bell of the club of which we were members, and

ordered a whisky and soda. “Just to take the taste of that admission out

of my mouth,” he explained.

The Maker of Ships and Guns smiled ruefully. “I have reckoned,” said he,

“that the Cats fired twenty rounds per gun during the first hour and the

Queen Elizabeths ten. That makes 640 rounds of 13.5-inch shell and 320

rounds of 15-inch. Three per cent. of fair hits at the ranges, and in

the conditions of light, would have been quite good. But did we score

twenty-eight hits of big shell, or anything like it? If we had there

would have been much more damage done than one battle cruiser on fire.

The Salt Horse has spoken, and so have I. I also will wash the taste of

it out of my mouth.”

“You will admit,” muttered the Gunner, “that in the second part, after

Beatty and the Queen Elizabeths had turned, our control officers and

long-service gunners came into their own?”

“Willingly,” cried Admiral Salt Horse. “Nothing could have been finer

than the hammering which Evan-Thomas gave to the whole High Seas Fleet.

And Beatty crumpled up his opposite numbers in first-class style. Our

individual system, then, justified itself utterly. Fritz’s mechanical

control went to bits when the shells began to burst about his fat ears,

but it was painfully good while it lasted. Give Fritz his due, Master

Gunner, it’s no use shutting our eyes to his merits.”

I had listened with the keenest interest to this interchange, for though

I should not myself have ventured to comment upon so technical a subject

as naval gunnery, I had subconsciously felt what the old Salt Horse had

so bluntly and almost brutally expressed.

“We have arrived, then, at this,” observed I, slowly, “that during the

first hour, up to the turn when the main High Seas Fleet joined up with

Hipper’s battle cruisers, our squadrons got the worst of it, though they

were of twice Fritz’s numbers and of far more than twice his strength.

It is a beastly thing for an Englishman to say, but really you leave me

no choice. Though I hate whisky, I must follow the example set by my

betters.”

The Master Gunner laughed. “In the Service,” said he, “we learn from our

mistakes. At the beginning we did badly on May 31st, but afterwards we

profited by the lesson. What more could you ask? . . . Civilians,” said

he, aside to his colleagues, “seem to think that only English ships

should be allowed to have guns or to learn how to use them.”

“Now we have given Fritz his due,” said I, “let us get on to the second

part of the battle, Act Two of the naval drama. You will agree that the

handling of our damaged squadrons by Beatty and Evan-Thomas was

magnificent, and that the execution done by us was fully up to the best

English standards?”

“Yes,” replied the grim Salt Horse, to whom I had specially appealed.

“We will allow both. Beatty’s combination of dash and caution was beyond

praise and the gunnery was excellent.”

“None of our ships were sunk, none were seriously hit,” put in the

Gunner. “On the other hand we certainly sank one German battle cruiser

and one battleship, and very heavily damaged others. I don’t know how

many. I think that we must accept as proved that not many German ships

of the battle line were sunk in any part of the action. When badly hit

they fell out and retired towards home, which they could always do.

During the second part both fleets were steaming away from the German

bases, so that a damaged enemy ship had only to stop to be left behind

in safety. A good many ships were claimed by our officers as sunk when

they were known to have been damaged and had disappeared; but I feel

sure that most of them had fallen out, not been sunk.”

“The outstanding feature,” cried the Maker of Guns, “was the superiority

of our gunnery. We have always encouraged individuality in gun laying,

and have never allowed Fire Control to supersede the eyes and hands of

the skilled gun-layers in the turrets. Control and individual laying are

with us complementary, not mutually exclusive. With the Germans an

intensely mechanical control is of the essence of their system. They are

very good up to a point, but have not elasticity enough to deal with the

perpetual variations of range and direction when fighting ships are

moving fast and receiving heavy punishment. Fritz beat us in the first

part, but we, as emphatically, beat him in the second.”

We then passed to a technical discussion upon naval gunnery,

which cannot be given here in detail. I developed my thesis,

aggravating to expert gunners, that when one passes from the one

dimension—distance—of land shooting from a fixed gun at a fixed

object, to the two dimensions—distance and direction—of moving guns on

board ship firing at moving objects, the drop in accuracy is so enormous

as to make ship gunnery frightfully ineffective and wasteful.

I readily admitted that when one passed still further to three

dimensions—distance, direction, and height—and essayed air gunnery,

the wastefulness and ineffectiveness of shooting at sea were multiplied

an hundredfold. But, as I pointed out, we were not at the moment

discussing anti-aircraft gunnery, but the shooting of naval guns at sea

in the Jutland Battle.

Of course I brought down a storm upon my head. But my main thesis was

not contested. It was, however, pointed out that I had not allowed

sufficient weight to the inherent difficulties of shooting from a moving

ship at a moving ship ten or a dozen miles away, and that instead of

calling naval gunnery “wasteful and ineffective” I ought to be dumb with

wonder that hits were ever brought off at all. I enjoyed myself

thoroughly.

“Don’t be hard on the poor man,” at last interposed the kindly Salt

Horse. “He means well and can be useful to the Service sometimes though

he has not had a naval training. The truth is,” he went on

confidentially, “we feel rather wild about the small damage that we did

to Fritz on May 31st: small, that is, in comparison with our

opportunities. Our gunnery officers and gun-layers are the best in the

world, our guns, range-finders and other instruments are unapproachable

for precision, our system of fire direction is the best that naval

brains can devise and is constantly being improved, and yet all through

the war the result in effective hits has been most disappointing—don’t

interrupt, you people, I am speaking the truth for once. Fritz’s

shooting, except occasionally, has been even worse than ours, which

indicates, I think, that the real inner problems of naval gunnery are

not yet in sight of solution. You see, it is quite a new science. In the

old days one usually fired point blank just as one might plug at a

haystack, and the extreme range was not more than a mile and a half; but

now that every fighting ship carries torpedo tubes we must keep out a

very long way. I admit the apparent absurdity of the situation. Here on

May 31st, two fleets were engaged off and on for six hours—most of the

time more off than on—and the bag for Fritz was three big ships, and

for us possibly four, by gun-fire. The torpedo practice was no better

except when our destroyers got in really close. During all the third

part of the action, when Scheer was fending us off with torpedo attacks

he hit only one battleship, the _Marlborough_, and she was able to

continue in action afterwards and to go home under her own steam. Yet

upon a measured range at a fixed mark a torpedo is good up to 11,000

yards, nearly six miles. In action, against moving ships, one cannot

depend upon a mouldy hitting at over 500 yards, a quarter of a mile. If

gunnery is wasteful and inefficient, what about torpedo practice in

battle?”

“What is the solution?” I asked, greatly interested.

“Don’t ask me!” replied the Salt Horse. “I knew something of gunnery

once, but now I’m on the shelf. I myself would risk the mouldies and

fight at close quarters—we have the legs of Fritz and could choose our

own range—but in-fighting means tremendous risks, and the dear stupid

old public would howl for my head if the corresponding losses followed.

The tendency at present is towards longer and longer ranges, up to the

extreme visible limits, and the longer the range the greater the waste

and inefficiency. Ask the Gunner there, he is more up-to-date than I

am.”

The Master Gunner growled. He had listened to Admiral Salt Horse’s

homily with the gravest disapproval. He was a simple loyal soul; any

criticism which seemed to question the supreme competence of his beloved

Service was to him rank treachery. Yet he knew that the Salt Horse was

as loyal a seaman as he was himself. It was not what was said which

caused his troubled feelings—he would talk as freely himself before his

colleagues—but that such things should be poured into the ears of a

civilian! It was horrible!

“After the first hour, when our gunners had settled down,” said he

gruffly, “their practice was exceedingly good. They hit when they could

see, which was seldom. If the light had been even tolerable no German

ship would have got back to port.”

“I agree,” cried the Maker of Guns and Ships. “We did as well as the

light allowed. Fritz was all to pieces. The bad torpedo practice was

Fritz’s, not ours. The worst of the gunnery was his, too. We have lots

to learn still—as you rightly say, naval gunnery is still in its

infancy—but we have learned a lot more than anyone else has. That is

the one thing which matters to me.”

“Have we not reached another conclusion,” I put in, diffidently,

“namely, that big-ship actions must be indecisive unless the light be

good and the sea space wide enough to allow of a fight to a finish? We

can’t bring Fritz to a final action in the lower part of the North Sea

unless we can cut him off entirely from his avenues of escape. In the

Atlantic, a thousand miles from land, we could destroy him to the last

ship—if our magazines held enough of shell—but as he can choose the

battle ground, and will not fight except near to his bases, we can

shatter him and drive him helpless into port, but we cannot wipe him off

the seas. Is that proved?”

“Yes,” said the Gunner, who had recovered his usual serenity. “In my

opinion that is proved absolutely.”

“One talks rather loosely of envelopment,” explained the Maker, “as if

it were total instead of partial. The German Fleet was never enveloped

or anything like it. What happened was this: As the Germans curved away

in a spiral to the south-west our line curved in with them, roughly

parallel, also to the south-west, keeping always between Fritz and the

land. We were partly between him and his bases, but he could and did

escape by getting round the horn which threatened to cut him off.”

“Could not Jellicoe,” I asked, “have worked right round so as to draw a

line across the mouths of the Elbe and Weser, and to cut Scheer

completely off from the approaches to Wilhelmshaven?”

“Not without immense risk. He would have had to pass into mine fields

and penetrate them all through the hours of darkness. He might have lost

half his fleet. Our trouble has always been the extravagant risk

involved by a close pursuit. When the Germans retire to their protected

waters we must let them go. The Grand Fleet is too vital a force to be

needlessly risked. When Jellicoe’s final stroke failed, owing to the bad

light and the German retirement, the battle was really over. Jellicoe’s

blow had spent itself on the air. The Germans were almost safe except

from our torpedo attacks, which were delivered during the night with

splendid dash and with considerable success. But that night battle was

the queerest business. When the sun rose the enemy had vanished. Fritz

says that we had vanished. I suppose, strictly speaking, that we had. At

least we were out of his sight, though unintentionally. Touch had been

lost and the enemy had got safely home, taking most of his damaged ships

with him. Nothing remained for us to do except to return to our northern

bases, recoal, and refit. The Jutland Battle was indecisive in one

sense, crushingly decisive in another. It left the German Fleet

undestroyed, but left it impotent as a fighting force. Thereafter it

sank into a mere guard for Fritz’s submarine bases.”

“And the gunnery in the third part?” I asked with a sly glance towards

the Gunner. He rose at the bait.

“I do not doubt that, measured by the percentage of hits to rounds

fired, Copplestone would call it wasteful and inefficient. But the Navy

regards the gunnery in the third part as even better than in the second,

as proving our superiority over the Germans. They were then at their

worst while we were at our best; we rapidly improved under the test of

battle, they as rapidly deteriorated. The facts are certain. The enemy

ships were hit repeatedly both by our battleships and battle cruisers,

several were seen to haul out of the line on fire, and at least one

battleship was observed to sink. Throughout all the time—two

hours—during which Jellicoe’s main fleet was engaged his ships were

scarcely touched; not a single man was killed, and three only were

wounded. Is that not good enough for you?”

“You have forgotten the _Invincible_,” remarked that candid critic whom

I have called Salt Horse. “She took station at the head of Beatty’s line

at 6.21. Her distance from the enemy was then 8,000 yards. It was a

gallant service, for Beatty needed support very badly, but by 6.55 the

_Invincible_ had been destroyed. The _Iron Duke_ passed her floating

bottom up. She must have been caught by the concentrated fire of several

enemy ships. It was a piece of luck for Fritz; the last that he had.

Apart from the downing of the _Invincible_, I agree that the third part

of the battle showed our gunnery to be highly effective, and that of the

Germans to be almost wholly innocuous. It was his torpedoes we had then

to fear, not his guns.”

“During the third part,” said the Maker, “the ranges were comparatively

low, from 9,000 to 12,000 yards, but the visibility was so bad that

damaged ships could always betake themselves out of sight and danger. I

am disposed to think that most of Fritz’s sorely damaged ships did get

home—in the absence of evidence that they did not—for we never really

closed in during the whole of the third part of the battle. Fritz was

continually coming and going, appearing and disappearing. His destroyer

attacks were well delivered, and though one battleship only was hit, our

friend the _Marlborough_, we were kept pretty busy looking after

ourselves. Jellicoe was like a heavy-weight boxer trying to get home

upon a little man, skipping about just beyond his reach. We had the

speed and the guns and the superiority of position, but we couldn’t see.

That is the explanation of the indecisiveness of the third part of the

Jutland battle, that part which, with decent luck, would have ended

Fritz’s business. Our gunnery was then top-hole. Take the typical case

of the flagship _Iron Duke_. She got a sight of a _Koenig_ at 12,000

yards (seven miles), straddled her at once, and began to hit at the

second salvo. That is real gunnery, not much waste about it either of

time or shell. Then towards sunset the _Lion_, _Princess Royal_, and

_New Zealand_ engaged two battleships and two battle cruisers at 10,000

yards. Within eighteen minutes three of the Germans had been set on

fire, two were listing heavily, and the three burning ones were only

saved by becoming hidden in smoke and mist. That is the way to get on to

a target and to hold on. I agree with our old friend Salt Horse that the

long ranges during the first part of the action, 18,000 to 20,000

yards—and even more for the _Queen Elizabeth_—are altogether too long

for accuracy unless the conditions are perfect. The distances are well

within the power of the big-calibre guns which we mount, but are out of

harmony with the English naval spirit. We like to see our enemy

distinctly and to get within real punishing distance of him. Compare our

harmless performance during the first part with the beautiful whacking

which we gave Fritz in the third whenever we could see him. The nearer

we get to Fritz the better our gunners become and the more completely

his system goes to bits. Which is just what one would expect. Our

long-service gunners can lay by sight against any ships in the world and

beat them to rags, but when it comes to blind laying directed from the

spotting tops much of the advantage of individual nerve and training is

lost. Like Salt Horse, I am all for in-fighting, at 10,000 yards or

less, and believe that our gun-layers can simply smother Fritz if they

are allowed to get him plainly on the wires of their sighting

telescopes.”

“There is not a petty officer gunlayer who wouldn’t agree with you,”

remarked the Gunner thoughtfully, “but the young scientific Gunnery

Lieutenants would shake their heads. For what would become of the

beautiful fire-direction system which they have been building up for

years past if we are to run in close and pound in the good old fashion?

Ten thousand yards to a modern 15-inch gun is almost point blank.”

“Our business is to sink the enemy in the shortest possible time,” cried

Admiral Salt Horse, “and to fight in the fashion best suited to what

Copplestone here rightly calls the Soul of the Navy. Long-range fighting

is all very well when one can’t do anything else—during a chase, for

example—but when one can close in to a really effective distance, then,

I say, close in and take the risks. In the Jutland Battle we lost two

battle cruisers at long range and one only after the ranges had

shortened. Fritz shot well at long range, but got worse and worse as we

drew nearer to him, until at the end his gunnery simply did not count.

Our ancestors had a similar problem to solve, and solved it at the

Battle of the Saints in brutal fashion by breaking the French line and

fighting at close quarters. There is a lot to be learned from the

Jutland Battle, though it is not for an old dog like me to draw the

lessons. But what does seem to shout at one is that the way to fight a

German is to close in upon him and to knock the moral stuffing out of

him. The destroyers always do it and so do our submarines. I am told

that the way the destroyers charged battleships by night, and rounded up

the enemy’s light stuff by day, was a liberal education in naval

psychology. We are at our best when the risks are greatest—it is the

sporting instinct of the race that sustains us. But Fritz, who is no

sportsman, and has a good deal more of imagination than our lower deck,

cracks when the strain upon his nerves passes the critical point. Our

young officers and men have no nerves; Fritz has more than is good for

him; let us take advantage of his moral weakness and hustle him beyond

the point when he cracks. He is a landsman artificially made into a

seaman; our men are seamen born. In a battleship action the personal

factor tends to be over-borne by the immensity of the fighting

instruments, but it is there all the time and is the one thing which

really counts. We give it full scope in the destroyers, submarines, and

light cruisers; let us give it full scope in the big ships of the battle

line. Let our MEN get at Fritz; don’t seek to convert them into mere

parts of a machine, give their individuality the fullest play; you need

then have no fear lest their work should prove wasteful or ineffective.”

The Master Gunner, a man ten years younger than old Salt Horse, smiled

and said, “I am afraid that the gunnery problem has become too

complicated to yield to your pleasing solution. A few years ago it would

have been considered a futile waste of shell to fight at over 10,000

yards, but the growth in the size of our guns and in our methods of

using them have made us at least as accurate at 20,000 yards as we used

to be at 10,000. At from 9,000 to 12,000 in good light we are now

terrific. All my sympathies are on your side; the Navy has always loved

to draw more closely to the enemy, and maybe our instincts should be our

guide. I can’t say. If we could have a big-ship action every month the

problem would soon be solved. Our trouble is that we don’t get enough of

the Real Thing. You may be very sure that if our officers and men were

told to run in upon Fritz and to smash him, at the ranges which are now

short, they would welcome the order with enthusiasm. The quality and

training of our sea personnel is glorious, incomparable. I live in

wonder at it.”

“And so do I,” cried the Maker, a man not ready to display enthusiasm.

“One has lived with the professional Navy so long that one comes to take

its superb qualities for granted; one needs to see the English Navy in

action to be aroused to its merits. On May 31st very few of those in

Evan-Thomas’s or Jellicoe’s squadrons had been under fire—Beatty’s men

had, of course, more than once. If they showed any defect it was due to

some slight over-eagerness. But this soon passed. In a big-ship action

not one man in a hundred has any opportunity of personal

distinction—which is an uncommonly good thing for the Navy. We have no

use for pot-hunters and advertisers. We want every man to do his little

bit, devotedly, perfectly, without any thought of attracting attention.

Ours is team work. If men are saturated through and through with this

spirit of common devotion to duty they sacrifice themselves as a matter

of course when the call comes. More than once fire penetrated to the

magazines of ships. The men who instantly rolled upon the blazing bags

of cordite, and extinguished the flames with their bodies, did not wait

for orders nor did they expect to be mentioned in dispatches. It was

just their job. But what I did like was Jellicoe’s special mention of

his engineers. These men, upon whose faithful efficiency everything

depends, who, buried in the bowels of ships, carry us into action and

maintain us there, who are the first to die when a ship sinks and the

last to be remembered in Honours lists, these men are of more real

account than almost all those others of us who prance in our decorations

upon the public stage. If the conning tower is the brain of a ship, the

engine-room is its heart. When Jellicoe was speeding up to join Beatty

and Evan-Thomas his whole fleet maintained a speed in excess of the

trial speeds of some of the older vessels. Think what skilful devotion

this simple fact reveals, what minute attention day in day out for

months and years, so that in the hour of need no mechanical gadget may

fail of its duty. And as with Jellicoe’s Fleet so all through the war.

Whenever the engine-rooms have been tested up to breaking strain they

have always, always, stood up to the test. I think less of the splendid

work done by destroyer flotillas, by combatant officers and men in the

big ships, by all those who have manned and directed the light cruisers.

Their work was done within sight; that of the engine-rooms was hidden.”

“I wish that the big public could hear you,” I said, “the big public

whose heart is always in the right place though its head is always

damned ignorant and often damned silly.”

The Maker of Guns and Ships turned on me, this calm, cold man whom I had

thought a stranger to emotion. “And whose fault is that? You are a bit

of an ass, Copplestone, and inconveniently inquisitive. But you can be

useful sometimes. When you come to write of the war at sea, do not wrap

yourself up in a tangle of strategy and tactics of which you know very

little. Stick to the broad human issues. Reveal the men who fight rather

than the ships which are fought with. Think of the Navy as a Service of

flesh and blood and soul, no less than of brains and heart. If you will

do this, and write as well as you know how to do, the public will not

remain either damned ignorant or damned silly.”

“I will do my best,” said I, humbly.

EPILOGUE

LIEUTENANT CÆSAR

Now in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,

That he is grown so great?

When the war is over and tens of thousands of young men, who have drunk

deep of the wine of life, are thrown back upon ginger ale, what will be

the effect upon their heads and stomachs? I do not know; I have no data,

except in the one instance of my friend, Lieutenant Cæsar, R.N.V.R.

I must write of him with much delicacy and restraint, for his friendship

is too rich a privilege to be imperilled. His sense of humour is

dangerously subtle. Cæsar is twenty-three, and I am—well, fully twice

his age—yet he bears himself as if he were infinitely my senior in

years and experience. And he is right. What in all my toll of wasted

years can be set beside those crowded twenty-two months of his, now

ended and done with? The fire of his life glowed during those months

with the white intensity of an electric arc; in a moment it went black

when the current was cut off; he was left groping in the darkness for

matches and tallow candles. I dare not sympathise with him openly,

though I feel deeply, for he would laugh and call me a silly old

buffer—a term which I dread above all others.

* * * * *

The variegated career of Lieutenant Cæsar fills me with the deepest

envy. When the war broke out he was a classical scholar at Oxford, one

of the bright spirits of his year. His first in Greats, his prospects of

the Ireland, his almost certain Fellowship—he threw them up. The Army

had no interest for him, but to the Navy he was bound by links of family

association. To the Navy therefore he turned, and prevailed upon a

somewhat reluctant Admiralty to gazette him as a Sub-Lieutenant in the

Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. “A classical scholar,” argued Whitehall,

“is about as much use to us as a ruddy poet. What can this young man do

away from his books?” Cæsar rapidly marshalled his poor accomplishments.

He could row—no use, we are in the steam and petrol age; he had been a

sergeant of O.T.C.—no thanks, try the Royal Naval Division; he could

drive a motor-car and was a tolerable engineer. At last some faint

impression was made. Did he understand the engines of a motor-boat? It

appeared that he did; was, in fact, a mildly enthusiastic member of the

Royal Motor Boat Club at Southampton. “Now you’re talking,” said

Whitehall. “Why didn’t you say this at once instead of wasting our time

over your useless frillings?” The official wheels stirred, and within

two or three weeks Cæsar found himself gazetted, and dropped into a fine

big motor patrol boat, which the Admiralty had commandeered and turned

to the protection of battleships from submarines. At that time we had

not a safe harbour anywhere except on the South Coast, where they did

not happen to be wanted. For many months Cæsar patrolled by night and

day deep cold harbours on the east coast of Scotland, hunting

periscopes. It was an arduous but exhilarating service. His immediate

chief, a Lieutenant R.N.V.R., was a benevolent American, the late owner

of the boat. He had handed her over without payment in return for a

lieutenant’s commission. “I was once,” he declared, “a two-striper in

Uncle Sam’s Navy. I got too rich for my health, chucked the Service, and

have been eating myself out of shape. Take the boat but, for God’s sake,

give me the job of running her. She’s too pretty for your thumb-crushing

blacksmiths to spoil.” When reminded that he was an alien, he treated

the objection as the thinnest of evasive pleas. “King George is my man;

there are no diamonds in his garters,” he wrote.

The Lords of the Admiralty, who never in their sheltered lives had read

such letters as now poured in upon them, gasped, collapsed, and gave to

the benevolent neutral all that he asked.

Cæsar worshipped the big motor-boat and her astonishing commander. His

first love wrapped itself round the twin engines, two of them,

six-cylinders each, 120 horse-power. They were ducks of engines which

never gave any trouble, because Cæsar and the two American engineers—I

had almost written nurses—were always on the watch to detect the least

whimper of pain. But though he never neglected his beloved engines, the

mysterious fascinations of the three-pounder gun in the bows gradually

vanquished his mature heart. Her deft breech mechanism, her rapid

loading, the sweet, kindly way she slipped to and fro in her cradle,

became charms before which he succumbed utterly. Cæsar and the gun’s

high-priest, a petty officer gunlayer, became the closest of friends,

and the pair of them would spend hours daily cleaning and oiling their

precious toy. The American lieutenant had his own bizarre notions of

discipline—he thought nothing of addressing the petty officer as “old

horse”; but he worked as hard as Cæsar himself, kept everyone in the

best of spirits through the vilest spells of weather, and was a

perpetual fount of ingenious plans for the undoing of Fritz. The _Mighty

Buzzer_—named from her throbbing exhaust—was a happy ship.

The _Buzzer’s_ career as a king’s ship was brief, and her death

glorious. One night, or rather early morning, she was far out in the

misty jaws of a Highland loch, within which temporarily rested many

great battle-cruisers. Cæsar despised these vast and potent vessels.

“What use are they?” he would ask of his chief. “There is nothing for

them to fight, and they would all have been sunk long ago but for us.”

Fast motor-boats, with 120 horse-power engines, twenty-five knots of

speed—thirty at a pinch, untruthfully claimed the Lieutenant—and

beautiful 3-pounder guns were in Cæsar’s view, the last word in naval

equipment. The Lieutenant would shake his head gravely at his Sub’s

exuberant ignorance. “They are gay old guys just now,” he would reply,

“and feeling pretty cheap. But some day they will get busy and knock

spots off Fritz’s hide. You Britishers are darned slow, but when you do

fetch a gun it’s time to shin up trees. The Germs have stirred up the

British Lion real proper and, I guess, wish now they’d let him stay

asleep.”

The _Buzzer_ had chased many a German submarine, compelling it to dive

deeply and become harmless, but never yet had Cæsar been privileged to

see one close. Upon this misty morning of her demise, when he gained

fame, she was farther out to sea than usual, and was cruising at about

the spot where enterprising U-boats were wont to come up to take a

bearing. I am writing of the days before our harbour defences had

chilled their enterprise into inanition. Cæsar was on watch, and stood

at the wheel amidships. The petty officer and a blue-jacket were

stationed at the gun forward. Our friend’s senses were very much alert,

for he took his duties with the utmost seriousness. Near his boat the

sea heaved and swirled, and as he saw a queer wave pile up he became, if

possible, even more alert and called to his watch to stand by. The sea

went on swirling, the surface broke suddenly, and up swooped the hood

and thin tube of a periscope. It was less than fifty yards away, and for

a moment the lenses did not include the _Buzzer_ within their field of

vision. For Cæsar, his watch on deck, and the sleepers below, the next

few seconds were packed with incident. Round came the _Buzzer_ pointing

straight for the periscope, the exhaust roared as Cæsar called for full

speed, and the gun crashed out. Away went periscope and tube, wiped off

by the spreading cone of the explosion, as if they were no more

substantial than a bullrush, and up shot the _Buzzer’s_ bows as Cæsar

drove her keel violently upon the top of the conning tower of the rising

U-boat. Keel and conning-tower ripped together; there was a tremendous

rush of air-bubbles, followed by oil, and the U-boat was no more. She

had gone, and the _Buzzer_, with six feet of her tender bottom torn off,

was in the act to follow. As she cocked up her stern to dive after her

prey there was just time to get officers and crew into lifebelts and to

signal for help. Cæsar met in the water his commanding officer, who,

though nearly hurled through his cabin walls by the shock, and entirely

ignorant of the cataclysm in which he had been involved, was cheerful as

ever. “Sakes,” he gasped, when he had cleared mouth and nose of salt

water, “when you Britishers do get busy, things—sort of—hum.”

A destroyer rushing down picked up the swimmers and heard their story.

The evidence was considered sufficient, for oil still spread over the

sea, and there were no rocks within miles to have ripped out the

_Buzzer’s_ keel, so another U-boat was credited to the Royal Navy and

Cæsar became a lieutenant. It was a proud day for him.

But he had lost his ship, and was for a time out of a job. The new

harbour defences were under way and fast motor-boats were for a while

less in demand. The Admiralty solved the problem of his future. “This

young man,” it observed, “is nothing better than a temporary lieutenant

of the Volunteer Reserve, but he is not wholly without intelligence and

has a pretty hand with a gun. We will teach him something useful.” So

the order was issued that Lieutenant Cæsar should proceed to Whale

Island, there to be instructed in the mysteries of naval gunnery. “You

will have to work at Whale Island,” warned the captain of his flotilla,

“and don’t you forget it. It is not like Oxford.” This to reduce Cæsar

to the proper level of humility.

Up to this stage in his career Lieutenant Cæsar, though temporarily

serving in the Royal Navy, knew nothing whatever about it. His status

was defined for me once by a sergeant of Marines: “A temporary

gentleman, sir, ’ere to-day and gone to-morrow, and good riddance, sir.”

Upon land the corps and regiments have been swamped by temporaries, but

at sea the Regular Navy remains in full possession. In the barracks at

Whale Island, where Cæsar was assigned quarters, he felt like a very

small schoolboy newly joining a very large school. His fellow-pupils

were R.N.R. men, mercantile brass-bounders with mates’ and masters’

certificates, and R.N.V.R.’s drawn from diverse classes. To him they

seemed a queer lot. He lay low and studied them, finding most of them

wholly ignorant of everything which he knew, but profoundly versed in

things which he didn’t. The instructors of the Regular Service gave him

his first definite contact with the Navy. “My original impression of

them,” he told me, laughing, “was that they were all mad. I had come to

learn gunnery, but for a whole week they insisted upon teaching me squad

drill, about the most derisory version of drill which I have ever seen.

Picture us, a mob of mates out of liners and volunteers out of workshops

and technical schools, trailing rifles round the square at Whale Island,

feeling dazed and helpless, and wondering if we had brought up by

mistake at a lunatic asylum. After the first week, during which Whale

Island indulged its pathetic belief that its true _métier_ is squad

drill, we were all right. We got busy at the guns, and found plenty to

learn.” It was at Whale Island that he received the name of Cæsar, the

one Latin author of which his messmates had any recollection. During the

first month of his training he daily cursed Winchester and Oxford for

the frightful gaps which they had left in his educational equipment. He

could acquire languages with anyone, but mathematics, that essential key

to the mysteries of gunnery, gave him endless trouble. But he had a

keenly tempered brain and limitless persistence. Slowly at first, more

rapidly later, he made up on his contemporaries, and when after two

months of the toughest work of his life he gained a first-class

certificate, he felt that at last he had tasted a real success.

Time brings its revenges. As a Sub in a motor-boat he had affected to

think slightingly of the great battle-cruisers which his small craft

protected, but now that he was transferred to one of the new Cats of the

First Battle Cruiser Squadron his views violently changed. Battleships

were all very well, they had huge guns and tremendous armour, but when

it came to speed and persistent aggressiveness what were these sea

monsters in comparison with the Cats? Why nothing, of course. Which

shows that Cæsar was becoming a Navyman. Put a naval officer into the

veriest tub which can keep herself afloat with difficulty, and steam

five knots in a tideway, and he will exalt her into the most efficient

craft beneath the White Ensign. For she is His Ship.

Lieutenant Cæsar very quickly became at one with his new ship, and

entered into his kingdom. Whether upon the loading platform of a turret

or in control of a side battery, he serenely took up his place and felt

that he had expanded to fill it adequately. His tone became obtrusively

professional. When I asked for some details of his hardships and his

thrills, he sneered at me most rudely. “There are no hardships,” he

declared; “we live and grow fat, and there is not a thrill to the whole

war. My motor-boat was a desperate buccaneer in comparison with these

stately Founts of Power. Every week or two we do a Silent Might parade

in the North Sea, but nothing ever happens.” This was after the Dogger

Bank action for which he was too late, and before the Jutland Battle. He

wrote to me many veiled accounts of the North Sea stunts upon which the

battle-cruisers were persistently engaged, but always insisted that they

were void of excitement.

* * * * *

“Dismiss from your landsman’s mind,” he would write—Cæsar was now a

sailor among sailors—“all idea of thrills. There aren’t any. When the

hoist Prepare to Leave Harbour goes up on the flagship, and black smoke

begins to pour from every funnel in the Squadron, there is no excitement

and no preparation—for we are already fully prepared. We go out with

our attendant destroyers and light cruisers and scour at will over the

‘German Ocean’ looking for Fritz, that we may fall upon him. But he is

too cunning for us. I wish that we had some scouting airships.”

* * * * *

This wish of Lieutenant Cæsar is, I believe, shared by every officer in

the Grand Fleet from the Commander-in-Chief downwards. Airships cannot

fight airships or sea ships, and are of very little use as destructive

agents, but they are bright gems in the firmament of scouts.

I asked Cæsar why he did not keep notes of his manifold experiences. “It

is against orders,” answered he sorrowfully. “We are not allowed to keep

a diary, and I have a rotten memory for those intimate details which

give life to a story. If I could keep notes I would set up in business

as a naval Boyd Cable.” But I am afraid that Cæsar was reckoning without

the Naval Censor, a savage, hungry lion beside whom his brother of the

Military Department is a complacent lamb. Cæsar has a pretty pen, but

his hands are in shackles.

Cæsar bent his keen eyes upon those with whom he was associated, studied

their strength and weakness, and delivered judgment, intolerant in its

youthful sureness.

“The young lieutenants,” he wrote, “are wonderful. Profoundly and

serenely competent at their own work, but irresponsible as children in

everything else. Their ideas of chaff and ragging never arise above

those of the fifth form. Whenever they speak of the Empire they mean the

one in Leicester Square. Shore leave for them means a bust at the

Trocadero, with a music-hall to follow, preferably with a pretty girl.

Their notions of shore life are of the earth earthy, not to say fleshy,

but at sea work they approach the divine. There is not a two-striper in

my wardroom who could not with complete confidence and complete

competence take the Grand Fleet into action. But of education, as you or

I understand the word, they have none. The Navy has been their strictly

intensive life since they left school at about thirteen. Of art, or

literature, or music—except in the crudest forms—they know nothing,

and care nothing. And this makes their early retirement the more

tragical. They go out, nine-tenths of them, before they reach forty

without mental or artistic resources. The Navy is a remorseless user up

of youth. Those who remain afloat, especially those without combatant

responsibilities, tend to degenerate into S.O.B.s.”

* * * * *

I will not translate; Cæsar is too young and too clever to be

sympathetic towards those of middle age.

One afternoon in spring Lieutenant Cæsar was plunged without warning

into the Jutland Battle. He and his like were placidly waiting at action

stations in their turrets, when the order came to put live shell into

the guns. For six hours he remained in his turret, serving his two

13.5-inch guns, but seeing nothing of what passed outside his thick

steel walls. When I implored him to recount to me his experiences, he

protested that he had none.

* * * * *

“You might as well ask a sardine, hermetically sealed in a tin, to

describe a fire in a grocer’s shop,” wrote he. “I was that sardine, and

so were nearly all of us. Those in the conning tower saw something, and

so did the officers in the spotting top when they were not being

smothered by smoke and by water thrown up by bursting shells. But as for

the rest of us—don’t you believe the stories told you by eye-witnesses

of naval battles. They are all second or third hand, and rubbish at

that. When I have sorted the thing out from all those who did see, and

collated the discrepant accounts, I will give you my conclusions, but I

shall not be allowed to write them. For a literary man the Navy is a

rotten service.”

* * * * *

Cæsar at this time wrote rather crossly. He had, I think, visualised

himself as the writer some day of an immortal story of the greatest

naval battle in history. Now that he had been through it, he knew as

little of it at first hand as a heavy gunner in France does of the

advancing infantry whose path forward he is cutting out.

The isolation of a busy turret in action may be realised when one learns

that Cæsar knew nothing of the loss of the _Queen Mary_,

_Indefatigable_, or _Invincible_ until hours after they had gone to the

bottom. He had heard nothing even of damage suffered by his own ship

until, a grimy figure in frowsy overalls, he crawled through the roof of

his big sardine tin and met in the darkness one of his friends who had

been in the spotting top.

* * * * *

“There was a frightful row going on as we sat there on the turret’s

roof,” wrote Cæsar to me. “Our destroyers were charging in upon Fritz’s

flying ships, which with searchlights and guns of all calibres were

seeking to defend themselves. We could not fire for our destroyers were

in the way. The horizon flamed like the aurora borealis, and now and

then big shells, ricochetting, would scream over us. I enjoyed myself

fine, and had no wish to seek safety in my turret, of which I was

heartily sick. That is the only part of the action which I saw, and the

details were buried in confusion and darkness. All the rest of the day I

had been serving two hungry guns with shells and cordite, and firing

them into unknown space. I was too intent on my duties to be bored, but

I did not get the least bit of a thrill until I climbed out on the roof.

Still I am glad to have been in the Battle, and, I love my big wise

guns.”

* * * * *

It was while his battle-cruiser was being refitted, and when he had just

returned from a few days’ leave, that the wheel of his destiny made

another turn. He was hauled struggling and kicking out of his turret as

one plucks a periwinkle from its shell, and cast into a destroyer

attached to the North Sea patrol. He had, as I have told, an easy knack

of picking up languages. To a solid knowledge of German he had added in

past vacations more than a speaking acquaintance with the Scandinavian

tongues—Norse, Danish, and Swedish—and his industry was now turned to

his undoing. Naval gunners were more plentiful than boarding officers

who could converse with the benevolent and unbenevolent neutral, and

Cæsar’s unfortunate accomplishments clearly indicated him for a new job.

At first he was furious, but became quickly reconciled. For, as he

argued, fighting on a grand scale is over, Fritz has had such a

gruelling that he won’t come out any more; North Sea stunts will seem

very tame after that day out by the Jutland coast; patrolling the upper

waters of the North Sea cannot be quite dull, and cross-examining

Scandinavian pirates may become positively exciting. So Cæsar settled

down in his destroyer, in so far as any one can settle down in such an

uneasy craft.

Cæsar now formed part of the inner and closer meshes of the North Sea

blockade designed to intercept those ships which had penetrated the more

widely spread net outside. Many of the masters whom he interviewed

claimed to have a British safe-conduct, but Cæsar was not to be bluffed.

With a rough and chocolate-hued skin he had acquired the peremptory air

of a Sea God.

* * * * *

“It is rather good fun sometimes,” he wrote to me. “We can’t search big

ships on the high seas at all thoroughly, and we don’t want to send them

all into port for examination, so we work a Black List. I have a list

from the War Trade Department of firms which are not allowed to ship to

neutral countries, and of all suspected enemy agents in those countries.

The Norse, Danish and Dutch skippers are very decent and do their best

to help, but the Swedes are horrid blighters. Whenever there is any

doubt at all we send ships into port to be thoroughly examined there.

You may take it that not much gets through now. Next to a complete

blockade of all sea traffic for neutral ports—which I don’t suppose the

politicians can stomach—our Black List system seems to be the goods. I

get good fun with these merchant skippers, and am becoming quite a

linguist, but the work is less exciting than I had hoped. It is amusing

to see a 7,000-ton tramp escorted into port by a twenty-foot motor-boat

which she could sling up on her davits, but even this sight becomes a

matter of course after a while. I have seen something of war from three

aspects, and seem to have exhausted sensations. They are greatly

overrated.”

* * * * *

But Lieutenant Cæsar was destined to have one more experience before war

had used him up and relaid him upon the shelf from which he was plucked

in September, 1914. A destroyer upon patrol duty is still a fighting

vessel, and fights joyfully whenever she can snatch a plausible

opportunity. Cæsar had sunk a submarine, served through the Jutland

Battle, and assisted to stop the holes in the British blockade, but he

had not yet known what fighting really means. That is reserved for

destroyers in action. One afternoon he was cruising not far from the

Dogger Bank, when the sound of light guns was heard a few miles off

towards the east. The Lieut.-Commander in charge of our unit in H.M.S.

_Blockade_ obeyed the Napoleonic rule and steered at once for the guns.

In about ten minutes a group of small craft wreathed in smoke, lighted

up at short intervals by gun flashes, appeared on the horizon, and

roaring at her full speed of 34 knots the British destroyer swept down

upon them. Presently seven trawlers were made out firing with their

small guns at two German torpedo boats, which with torpedo and

23-pounder weapons were intent upon destroying them. One trawler was

blown sky-high while Cæsar’s ship was yet half a mile distant, and

another rolled over shattered by German shell. “It was a pretty sight,”

said Cæsar, when I visited him in hospital, and learned to my deep joy

that he was out of danger. “When we got within a quarter of a mile we

edged to starboard to give the torpedo tubes a clear bearing on the port

bow. A shell or two flew over us, but the layers at the tubes took no

notice. They waited till we were quite close, not more than two hundred

yards, and then loosed a torpedo. I have never seen anything so quick

and smart. I saw the mouldy drop and start, and then a huge column of

water spouted up, blotting out entirely the nearest German boat. The

water fell and set us tossing wildly, but I kept my feet and could see

that German destroyer shut up exactly like a clasp-knife. She had been

bust up amidships, her bow and stern almost kissed one another, and she

went down vertically. The other turned to fly, firing heavily upon us,

but our boys had her in their grip. We had three fine guns, 4-inch

semi-automatics. We hit her full on the starboard quarter as she turned,

and then raked her the whole length of her deck. I did not see the end,

for earth and sky crashed all round me, and I went to sleep. When I

awoke I was lying below, my right leg felt dead, but there was no pain,

and from the horrid vibration running through the vessel I knew that we

were at full speed.

“‘Did we get the other one?’ I asked of my servant, whom I saw beside

me. ‘She sunk proper, sir,’ said he. ‘You, sir, are the only casualty we

’ad.’ It was an honour which I found it difficult to appreciate. ‘What’s

the damage?’ I muttered. ‘I’m afraid, sir,’ he replied diffidently,

’that your right leg is blowed away.’ Then I fainted, and did not come

round again till I was in hospital here. My leg is gone at the knee; I

lost a lot of blood, and should have lost my life but for the tourniquet

which the Owner himself whipped round my thigh. They have whittled the

stump shipshape here, and I am to have a new leg of the most fashionable

design. The doctors say that I shall not know the difference when I get

used to it, and shall be able to play golf and even tennis. Golf and

tennis! Good games, but they seem a bit tame after the life I’ve led for

the last two years.” Cæsar fell silent, and I gripped his hand.

“It isn’t as if you were in the Regular Service,” I murmured. “It isn’t

your career that’s gone. That is still to come. You’ve done your bit,

Cæsar, old man.”

His eyes glittered and a tear welled over and rolled down his cheek.

That was all, the only sign of weakness and of regret for the lost leg

and the lost opportunities for further service. When he spoke again it

was the old cheerful Cæsar whom I knew. “It seems funny. A month or two

hence I shall be back at Oxford, reading philosophy and all sorts of

absurd rubbish for my First in Greats. From Oxford I came, and to Oxford

I shall return; these two years of life will seem like a dream. A few

years hence I shall have nothing but my medal and my wooden leg to

remind me of them. It has been a good time, Copplestone—a devilish good

time. I have done my bit, but I wasn’t cut out for a fighting man. There

is too much preparation and too little real business. I should have

exhausted the thing and got bored. In time I should have become an

S.O.B. like some of those others. No, Copplestone, I have nothing to

regret, not even the lost leg. It is better to go out like this than to

wait till the end of the war, and then to be among the Not Wanteds.”

“They’ve made you a Lieutenant-Commander,” I said slowly.

“Two and a half stripes,” he murmured. “They look pretty, but they are

only the wavy ones, not the real article. I was never anything but a

‘tempory blighter, ’ere to-day and gone to-morrow, and good riddance.’

It was decent of them to think of me, but stripes are no use to me now.

I shall be at Oxford with the other cripples, and the weak hearts, and

the aliens, and the conscientious objectors—what do the dregs of Oxford

know of stripes?”

* * * * *

I saw as much as I could of Cæsar during the weeks that followed. His

mental processes interested me hugely. He has an enviable faculty of

concentrating upon the job in hand to the complete exclusion of

everything outside. He forgot Oxford in the Service, and now seemed to

have almost forgotten the Service in his return to Oxford, and to what

he calls civilisation. He was greatly taken up with the design for his

wooden leg. I met him after his first visit to Roehampton to be

measured, and found him bubbling over with enthusiasm. “Such legs and

arms!” cried he. “They are almost better than meat and bone ones. I saw

a Tommy with a shorter stump than mine jumping hurdles and learning to

kick. He was a professional footballer once. Another with a wooden arm

could write and even draw. In a month or two’s time, when my stump is

healed solid and I have learnt the tricks of my new leg, it will be a

great sport exercising it and trying to find out what it can’t do. A new

interest in life.”

“You seem rather to like having a leg blown off,” I said, wondering.

He is extraordinarily exuberant. I looked for depression after a month

in hospital, but looked in vain. He builds up a future with as much zest

as a youthful architect executes his first commission. The First in

Greats is “off”; Cæsar says that he has not time to bother about such

things. “I shall read History and modern French and Russian literature.

History will do for my Final Schools, and Literature for my play. I

shall learn Russian. Then when I have taken my degree I shall go in for

the Foreign Office. My wooden leg will actually help me to a nomination,

and the exam. is nothing. It’s not a bad idea; I thought of it last

night.”

“You don’t take long over a decision,” I remarked.

“I never did,” said he calmly.

When he returned to Oxford early in November he urged me to pay him a

visit. I was in London a week or two later and having twenty-four hours

to spare ran up to Oxford, established myself at the Clarendon, and

summoned Cæsar to dine with me. All through the meal wonder grew upon

me. For my very charming guest was an undergraduate in his fourth year,

bearing no trace of having been anything else. We talked of Balzac,

Anatole France, and Turgeniev. I listened politely to Cæsar’s views upon

German and Russian Church music. I learned that the scarcity of Turkish

cigarettes was causing him distress, that his rooms were delightful, and

that Oxford was a desert swept clear of his old friends. The war was

never once referred to. His conversation abounded in slang with which I

was not familiar—I come from the other shop. It was an insufferable

evening, and I saw Cæsar hobble away upon his crutches with positive

relief. He could use his leg a little, but the stump was still rather

sore. That hobble was the one natural and human thing about him.

I passed a wretched night, came to a desperate resolution early in the

morning, and carried it out about nine o’clock. Cæsar was in his

“delightful rooms.” They certainly had a pleasant aspect, but the

furniture disgusted me; it might have been selected by a late-Victorian

poet. I looked for a book or a picture which might connect Cæsar with

the R.N.V.R., and looked in vain. He was busy trampling upon the best

two years of his life and forgetting that he had ever been a man. It

should not be. Presently he came in from his bedroom and began to talk

in the manner of the night before but I cut him short. “Cæsar,” I said

brutally, “you are no better than an ass. Look at these rooms. Is this

the place for a man who has lived and fought in a motor-boat, a

battle-cruiser, and a T.B.D.? You have sunk a German submarine, served

in the Jutland Battle, and lost a leg in your country’s service. Hug

these things to your soul, don’t throw them away. Brood upon them, write

about them, for the love of Heaven don’t try to forget them.”

I saw his eyes light up, but he said nothing. His lips began to twitch

and, knowing him as I did, I should have heeded their warning. But

unchecked I drivelled on:

“Are you the man to shrink from an effort because of pain? Did you

grouse when your leg was blown off? Wring all you can out of the future.

Read History, join the F.O., study Russian. But do these things in a

manner worthy of Lieutenant-Commander Cæsar, and don’t try to revive the

puling Oxford spark that you were two years ago before the war came to

sweep the rubbish out of you.”

He gave a clumsy leap, tripped over his new leg, and fell into a chair.

Lying there he laughed and laughed and laughed. How he laughed! Not

loud, but deeply, thoroughly, persistently, as if to make up for a long

abstinence.

“Confound you!” I growled. “What the deuce are you laughing at?”

“You,” said Cæsar simply.

At the word the truth surged over me in a shameful flood. That

preposterous dinner with its babble of Balzac and Turgeniev, Church

music, and Turkish cigarettes. These rooms stripped of all reminders of

two strenuous years of war. That Oxford accent and the intolerable

Oxford slang. “Cæsar,” I shouted, joining in his exuberant laughter,

“you have been pulling my leg all the time.”

“All the time,” said he. “My bedroom is full of stuff that I cleared out

of here. Last night, Copplestone, your ever-lengthening face was a

lovely study, and I have wondered ever since how I kept in my laughter.”

“You young villain,” cried I, overjoyed to find that Cæsar was still my

bright friend of the R.N.V.R. “How shall I ever get even with you?”

“I owe you some reparation,” said he, “and here it is.” He hobbled over

to his desk and drew out a great roll of paper. “This is the first

instalment; there are lots more to come. For the last month I have been

trying to remember, not to forget. I am writing of everything that I

have done and seen and heard and felt during those two splendid years.

Everything. It will run to reams of paper and months of time. When it is

finished you shall have it all. Take it, saturate yourself in it, add

your spells to it. We will stir up the compound of Copplestone and Cæsar

until it ferments, and then distil from the mass a Great Work. It shall

be ours, Copplestone—yours and mine. Will you have me as your partner.”

“With the greatest pleasure in life,” I cried.

We discussed our plans in full detail, and parted the best of friends.

Cæsar is rekindling the ashes of a life which I had thought to be

extinguished; soon there will be a great and glowing fire of realised

memory which will keep warm the years that are to come. He has solved

the problem of his immediate future. But what of those others, those

tens of thousands, who when the war is over will seek for some means to

keep alive the fires which years of war have lighted in their hearts?

Are they to be merged, lost, in the old life as it was lived before

1914? Are they to degenerate slowly but surely into S.O.B.s, intent only

upon earning a living somehow, playing bad golf, or looking on at

football matches? I do not know, I have no data, and it is rather

painful to indulge oneself in speculation.

* * * * *

This sketch was published a year ago. Two months after I had visited

Cæsar at Oxford he called upon me in London. He was in uniform, and

explained that he had quickly grown tired of sick leave and had recalled

himself to Service. “I can’t go to sea again,” said he, “with this

timber toe, but I am at least good for an office job ashore.” But Cæsar

was not made to fit the stool of any office, and when I last heard from

him was an observer in the R.N.A.S.

In this fashion he has rounded off his experiences, and basely failed

me, his friend and biographer, of the scanty data with which to answer

the question set forth in the first sentence of this chapter.

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.

Some illustrations moved to facilitate page layout.