BEATTY'S SIGNAL AT JUTLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 May 1919, Page 5

BEATTY'S SIGNAL AT JUTLAND.

"IF YOU CAN FOLLOW ME, SIR, WE CAN ANNIHILATE THEM." (By H. W, Wilson, the Naval Historian, in the Daily Mail.) I understand that an effort is to be made in Parliament to secure an impartial inquiry into the defects of armament and organisation in the British Navy which Lord Jellicoe has put forward as the explanation of hia failure to defeat the enemy decisively at the Battle of Jutland, and into the question of who was personally responsible for them.

The one fact which stands out from his account of Jutland is that, at the critical moment of the whole naval war, he did not place the destruction of the enemy above the safety of his ships. In this his leadership differs from that of Nelson, who discouraged rash and foolish attacks, but gave his officers very plainly to understand that he would support any captain who closed with the enemy, and that the enemy's destruction was to be the one overmastering object. Lord Jellicoe's book contains no allusion to a signal from Sir David Bcatty, which is stated to have been made about 7.15, when the British Battle Fleet a second turn away from the enemy, in face of a German torpedo attack on the rear of the British line. The effect of this signal was, I believe, this:

"If you follow me, sir, we can annihilate them."

It was addressed to the British battleship division leading the Hue, and it was made at the last moment when any chance of closing with the enemy remained if a night action was not to be fought. Lord Jellicoe had already decided that it was impossible for him to fight such a night action, because of his searchlights, want pf star-shells and destroyers. Thus, a second time, after the first turn from the enemy, which had taken place about an hour earlier, he avoided close and decisive action. What was the situation at this moment? The Germans, from the facts published, seem to have had only sixteen Dreadnought battleships in line, with two battle-cruisers. Both those battlecruisers had been violently battered by Sir David Bcatty and the Fifth Battle Squadron. Of the German battleships, sevoral had been badly hit. Against them were three battleships of the Fifth Battle Squadron (for the Warspite had fallen out of the line owing to injuries received), 24 intact battleships of the main British Battle Fleet, four of Admiral Bcatty's battle-cruisers, and two of Admiral Hood's ships of the same class.

The British superiority was overwhelming in numbers, and in weight of metal it was even greater. In close action the British shells would have gone through the enemy's armor, and there is every reason to think the German Fleet would either have been destroyed or driven to a sauve qui peut flight, in which it must have lost at least half a dozen damaged ships which ultimately reached port.

Between U. 14 and 6.30 the British battleships, owing to the first tuvn-awny from the enemy, had been from 3000 to MOO yards further away from the enemy than Admiral Beatty's battle-cruisers, which emerged from this struggle without further heavy loss. That they were able to floht the Germans at so much closer quarters is evidence that the German fire had greatly deteriorated, and that the Germans were a beaten fleet.