WITH THE BATTLE CRUISERS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 263, 23 October 1916, Page 2

WITH THE BATTLE CRUISERS.

THE JUTLAND FIGHT. “HEROICS’’ AND LAUGHTER., (By ALFRED NOYES in London “Times.”) It was the Battle Cruiser Fleet That engaged and held the enemy during the battle of Jitiland : and it wa.s the Battle Cruise: - Fh <:t that I. bad an opportunity of seeing, somewhere ih the North. On iny way to it 1 passed the grey castle of Edinburgh. A red-faced old soldier was still telting u crowd of tourists about the baby, “wrapped in cloth of gold.” which was discovered a year or two ago in the wall of Queen Mary’s chamber. But there were wounded soldiers quartered in one part of the castle now ; and a brawny Scottish regiment, with kilt and bonnet, preparing for the front in another part. The most romantic of cities was all astir, with history again in the making : ami over the grey crosses, cominciiiorating old battles, the “bold I‘iigleb.owing points of war,” rang from the ancient heights and echoed all down the Canongate, to die awa.v in the halls of Holyrood. All the colour of a thousand years of war had come back, like the life to the face of a tranced sleeper, and added a significance and a glamour to the new forms of power which I was about to see. Never did Britain seem so s« > cnre as in this fortress of a thousand memories ; and the old gtiti that boomed the hour of noon from the ramparts seemed mightier than anything that Krupp could conceive.

I Then came the most striking contrast i that 1 have ever experienced. A smart crew of bluejackets brought a boat up to a quay and very soon we wore butting through grey water towards a cluster of lean grey craft, that looked, at first, as unimpressive as a lot of I floating flatirons. Only they seemed to Ibe made of lead, soft lead; and if there be anything more lifeless, more corpselike, than this fighting colour I have never seen it. I SHIPS OF THE DOMINIONS. ! But they grew as we neared them, grew ti 1 the great guns of their turrets gave significance to their superstructure. 'lbe exquisite lines became organic and .separated clearly from the grey chaos of water; then, as the first great ship towered above us. massive as a fortress, sensitive as a stag to every nicker or wink of a signal in all the circle of the liorizan. 1 read her name. The meaning of those six letters under the brooding might of her guns, guns that could hurl a ton of metal for 20 miles, went through me like a trumpet call. It was the Canada. And one of her bluejackets was talking with two Hags to a ship only a quarter of a mile away, whose name was Australia. And a little way behind them lay the NewZealand. Then I began—faintly—to under-

stand once more the sources of majesty, and the true glory of my country, in the love of her free nations. I do not know whether it was the American Revolution that taught us our wesson; but Ido know that this quiet arrival of Fleets and Armies from the ends of the earth is a terrible answer to many propagandists. To turn away from our own intellectuals, who preach disloyalty in every department of life, to so simple and definite an act as this is like waking from a nightmare to a spring morning. If Armageddon teaches us, once more, the sheer glory and beauty of .ojalty, which is the foundation of all honour, all law, and all freedom on earth, the world will not have suffered in vain. A few minutes later we were aboard the Inflexible, and 1 began to learn a little more about the inside of a British man-of-war. She had plajed her part in the Jutland battle, but showed no scars, except one small hole in a funnel. which was too small to be worth repairing, especially as it could be surrounded with a white ring and worn as a decoration.

The captain explained to me that the bridge—a mere framework of canvashad no armoured protection because it was quite the safest p.ace on the ship, for “if you stand behind armour you get killed by splinters, while on the bridge, unless they get a direct hit, the shell goes clean through without hurting you.” It was the most pleasant philosophy for exposed positions that could be imagined, but he omitted all the reai points of comparison. y junior officer looked at him reproachfully. i‘\Vell,” the captain muttered to himself, almost sheepishly, as it caught in a lie, “perhaps one can exaggerate it.”

There is no race of men in the world more entirely free from every kind of affectation than the British nava. officer. It is not only that they are free from every thought of “posing.” They are free even from the thought that they ought to be free of it. It has never entered their heads. They are quite ready to tell you, with a roar of laughter, bow So-and-so crouched like a cat, ready to jump, with his eye cocked at the lirst shell that went whining over them, and how he leapt to his feet, chuckling like a schoolboy, immediately afterwards, to duck no more than dav.

They have no truck at all with “heroics,” but blow thew away with wholesome laughter. No good man runs any risk of being frozen into a smirking statue in the British Navy. 1 do not believe there is one officer in the Fleet who could be caught in any single attitude that a Press photographer would think “right.” THE LION AND THE TIGER. 'fiie next to loom up out of the grey mists were the Lion and the Tiger, both ready for sea at any moment, as also were other ships, reported by Berlin to be heavily damaged, but showing remarkab.y few traces, even when the scars were pointed out by experts. Ship after ship we passed, on our way to the much desired cruiser where lunch awaited us and —incidentally—the best of all cocktails, in compliment to an American guest who was with the party. It was indeed an excellent cocktail; for, after lunch, as we watched a seaplane soaring overhead and looping the loop like a tumbler pigeon, tho American guest —a gentleman with a wife and iamily, too —implored that be might forthwith be taken up into the heavens for the same purpose. “And what would tho Admiralty say to me if anything happened?” asked the. captain. “No. Sir. Send along some of the. hyphenated kind, and we'll try it ” THE LONELY AIRMAN.

Followed a yarn of an English airman, captured by the Germans, who was asked by his captors to take a German observer over one of our seas in his machine. At first he refused; but afterwards, strapping himself in position, consented. Ihe German was armed but bu.ky; his straps were not to be denended on. .Somewhere over the North Sea, in the dusk of that sunset, a trawler saw a remarkable sight. Au English airman was looping the loop, for sheer joy apparently, somersault after somersault, like a tumbler pigeon. He kept it up for half an hour. Then a dark bulk dropped from the machine, and splashed into the North Sea. Perhaps it was a German, with a revolver in each hand. At any rate, an English airman arrived on the East Coast an hour or tw’o later, and he complained of feeling lonely. It was obvious, in talking to the officers and men of the Battle Cruiser Fleet, that they were brimming with satisfaction over the result of the Jutland battle. I asked them about those curious sentences in the Jel.icoe report, describing a heavy explosion, felt by all the Battle Cruiser Fleet simultaneously, at dusk, after the enemy had withdrawn. The nearest German ship at the time was at least five miles away; and the- xplosion must have been a terrific one, for six of our cruisers imagined that they themse.ves had struck a mine. Perhaps, when “military reasons” permit, we shall have some explanation from Berlin. Our own naval officers have their views, on the matter, though they have not embodied

tb'jrn in any official report. They are content with the ascertained German losses which, absolutely and relatively, in the number of ships and the tonnage a'so. are definitely proven to be considerably greater than our own. Further than that thev will not go: and the simple reason for the German Press victory is that, no matter how great a value our officials and newspapers at home may have placed upon publicity, our men at sea never bothered their heads about it. AVhat can be done with men like those of the AVarspite? It is not that they feel superior to it; They are content with realities, and they simply do not care about the test. SPIRIT OF THE NAVY.

The Jutland battle has been described as our greatest naval victory since Trafalgar. But it is far more than that. The whole scale of our warfare has altered. At Trafalgar we lost 480 men in a fight that extended over two days. At Jutland we lost over 6000 men in three hours. And the Germans lost far more heavily even than their losses in ships would justify; for they had put to sea with double guns’ Crew s, and they were overmanned. So said those who knew what they were talking about on the British Battle Cruiser Fleet. But as for painting the newspapers red on the morrow of a grim reality like this, what can you expect of seamen w lio behave with complete disregard of the proprieties ? In the very hottest moment of this most stupendous battle in all history two grimy stokers’ heads arose for a breath of fresh air. AVhat domestic drama, they were discussing the world may never know. But the words that, were actually heard passing between them, while the shells whined overhead, were these : — “AVhat I ses is—'e ought to ’avc married ’er.” AA*hat can the Press do—-what can Germany do—with men so indecently unhcroic _______