NAVAL BATTLE.

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 3011, 4 August 1916, Page 4

NAVAL BATTLE.

BEATTY'S FINE WORK

HOW HE CRIPPLED THE GEll-

MAN FLEET.

London, June 16. Ample information is now available to dispose finally of any pessimistic superstitions that the recent naval battle was a German victory. Impartial history will record the affair as one of the most brilliant, and, in its way, ono of tho most successful, of all British naval actions. The German Battle Fleet was not prowling in the North Sea merely on the off ohance of snapping off a few unconsidered trifles. There were some deep designs behind the move. And it is more than probable that what the Germans were after was to break the blockade, the moro stringent effects of which are now telling rather heavily in Germany. The German strategy seems to have been to endeavour to forgo an action in which an inferior British fleet would be overwhelmed by superior weight and numbers, if possible to strike a severe blow at the British Battle Fleet by means of mines and torpedoes in the night, and to let loose under cover of the fight a swarm of fast auxiliary commerce destroyers. The joint effect of such a coup as this might have been considerable.

The battle of Horn's Reef will rank as a British victory for the solid reason that the enemy's ambitious plans were wholly frustrated ,that tho enemy's fleet suffered greater losses than our own, and that the enemy was pounded back into port. So much was only to be expecied of what we know of the efficiency and supremacy of the British Navy. The action Avas brilliant and glorious for other reasons. By his bulldog heroism in dashing in dauntlessly to hold the main German battle fleet until the British main battle line hove into sight, and by his consummate tactics and fine seamanship in so manoeuvring his ships that they suffered no more losses than the overwhelming forces of the enemy, Admiral Beatty takes his place in_ the supreme category of British sailors whose fame is immortal. Two great and cardinal results ensue from this engagement off the coast of Jutland. The German battle fleet as a whole organism has been put out of action for some months at least. And the German naval commanders and sailors now know that any attempt to riska main action with the British fleet is doomed as a foregone conclusion to irretrievable disaster.