CHAPTER XIX
The Battle of Jutland
I. NORTH SEA STRATEGIES
The battle off Jutland Bank, which took place on May 31, 1916, was the first and, at the time of writing, has been the only meeting between the main naval forces of Great Britain and Germany. It was from the first inevitable that we should have to wait long for a sea fight. It was inevitable, because the probability of a smaller force being not only decisively defeated, but altogether destroyed in a sea fight, is far greater than in a land battle, and the consciousness of this naturally makes it chary of the risk. Sea war in this respect preserves the characteristic of ancient land fighting, for—as is luminously explained in Commandant Colin’s incomparable “Transformations of War”—it was a common characteristic of the older campaigns that the main armies would remain almost in touch with each other month after month before the battle took place. He sums up his generalization thus:
“From the highest antiquity,” he says, “till the time of Frederick II, operations present the same character; not only Fabius or Turenne, but also Cæsar, Condé, and Frederick, lead their armies in the same way. Far from the enemy they force the pace, but as soon as they draw near they move hither and thither in every direction, take days, weeks, months in deciding to accept or to force battle. Whether the armies are made up of hoplites or legionaries, or pikemen or musketeers, they move as one whole and deploy very slowly. They cannot hurl themselves upon the enemy as soon as they perceive him, because while they are making ready for battle he disappears in another direction.
“In order to change this state of affairs we must somehow or another be able to put into the fight big divisions, each deploying on its own account, leaving gaps and irregularities along the front.
“This, as we have seen, is what happened in the eighteenth century.
“Up to the time of Frederick II, armies remained indivisible during operations; they are like mathematical points on the huge theatres of operations in Central Europe. It is not possible to grasp, to squeeze, or even to push back on some obstacle, an enemy who refuses battle, and retires laterally as well as backwards. There is no end to the pursuit. It is the war of Cæsar, as it was that of Condé, Turenne, Montecuculi, Villars, Eugène, Maurice de Saxe, and Frederick. It is the sort of war that all more or less regular armies have made from the remotest antiquity down to the middle of the eighteenth century.
“Battle only takes place by mutual consent, when both adversaries, as at Rocroi, are equally sure of victory, and throw themselves at one another in open country as if for a duel; or when one of them, as at Laufeld, cannot retreat without abandoning the struggle; or when one is surprised, as at Rossbach.
“And certainly to-day, as heretofore, a general may refuse battle; but he cannot prolong his retreat for long—it is the only means that he has for escaping the grip of the enemy—if the depth of the theatre of operations is limited. On the other hand, an enemy formerly could retire laterally, and disappear for months by perpetually running to and fro, always taking cover behind every obstacle in order to avoid attack.”
But at sea a fleet has to-day precisely the same power of avoiding action that an army had in former days. It cannot disappear for months by “running to and fro,” but it can disappear for years by burying itself in inaccessible harbours. It can, in other words, take itself out of the theatre of war altogether while yet retaining liberty at any moment to re-enter it. How, in view of these potentialities, did the rival fleets dispose their forces?
On April 25, 1916, some German cruisers made an attack on Lowestoft, similar in character but far less considerable in result to those made in the autumn of 1914, on the same small town, on Scarborough, Whitby, and the Hartlepools. As in 1914, there was considerable perturbation on the East Coast, and the Admiralty, urged to take steps for the protection of the seaboard towns, made a somewhat startling announcement. While this was going forward in England, the German Admiralty put out an inspired commentary on the raid, which dwelt with great exultation over the picture of “the Island Empire, once so proud, now quivering with rage at its own impotence.” These two documents, the First Lord’s and the German apology, led to a good deal of discussion, which I dealt with at the time in terms that I quote textually, as showing the general conception of naval strategy underlying the dispositions of the British Fleet.