Another Sir John--Admiral Jellicoe--is commander-in-chief of the British navy. Events still to come must determine whether Anglo-Saxon history is to be enriched with another Nelson. But as far as human prescience could foretell, "Jack" Jellicoe was of all men in the British Fleet preordained by talent, temperament and training to be the admiral in whose keeping could safely be entrusted British destinies more priceless than those which were safeguarded at Trafalgar.
Jellicoe was one of the godfathers of the dreadnought, having been summoned by Lord Fisher, the real author of that revolution in naval science, to support and carry into execution the all-big-gun ship idea. Fisher had years before associated young Captain Jellicoe with him as assistant director of naval ordnance, whereupon there ensued an intimacy which friends say will link their names together much as history associated St. Vincent and Nelson as the twin victors of Trafalgar--the one, the far-sighted planner of preparatory reforms; the other, the faithful executor of their purpose.
Jellicoe resembles Sir John French in more than given name. Like him, he is of quite markedly small stature. Neither the Generalissimo or Admiralissimo of Britain in the Great War at all corresponds, physically, to the popular notion that the English are "big" men. Like French, again, Jellicoe is mild and gentle, a pair of conspicuously tight lips indicating poise, reserve force and self-confidence. The chieftain of the Grand Fleet--that is its official title and not an effusive expletive--did not make his first acquaintance with danger afloat when von Tirpitz' submarines began to make life a burden for British sailors. He has been snatched from the jaws of death on three separate occasions. In 1893 Jellicoe was commander of Sir George Tryon's Victoria, when it was sent to its doom in the Mediterranean, and, although "below" in the ship-hospital with fever at the moment of the disaster, was miraculously rescued by a midshipman when he came to the surface more dead than alive after the vessel foundered. Seven years previous, as if Fate was keeping a protecting hand over him for some great hour, Jellicoe had an equally marvelous escape from drowning when a gig he was commanding off Gibraltar capsized and he was washed ashore. In the Boxer war of 1900, Jellicoe was flag captain to Admiral Seymour, the commander of the Allied expedition which marched from Tien-tsin to the relief of the Powers' legations in Pekin, and at the battle of Peitsang Jellicoe was struck by a Chinese bullet, incurring wounds which the flagship-surgeon considered fatal. Again Jellicoe was spared. A brother-officer tells a story of Jellicoe's agony on that occasion, which illuminates his capacity for facing the music, however doleful. He had asked how the advance to Pekin was proceeding. Told that everything was going satisfactorily, Jellicoe flashed back: "Tell me the truth, damn it. Don't lie!"
The triumvirate which has accomplished that amazing, silent victory of the British Fleet in the war--the complete conquest of sea power without anything savoring of a decisive action in the open--consists of Lord Fisher, the creator of the dreadnought; Admiral Sir Percy Scott, the inventor of the central "fire control" system, and Sir John Jellicoe, to whose gunnery science and innovations in that all-important branch of naval warfare are ascribed, in large measure, the acknowledged preeminence of the British Fleet as a striking force. He had not been director of ordnance a year when the percentage of the navy's hits out of rounds fired increased from forty-two to more than seventy. "In other words," as a critic describes it, "Jellicoe enhanced by more than a third the fighting value of the British Fleet, and that without a keel being added to its composition."
Jellicoe, who is fifty-six years old, has nothing but sailor blood in his veins. His father was a captain in the Fleet before him, and one of his kinsmen, Admiral Philip Patton, was Second Sea Lord in Nelson's time. Jellicoe is the incarnation of the spirit, traditions, practises and brain-force of the British navy of to-day. He has the not inconsiderable advantage of having had opportunity personally to take the measure of his German antagonists, for he has visited their country, where he made the acquaintance of von Tirpitz, Ingenohl, Pohl, Behncke, Holtzendorff, Prince Henry and all the other naval men of the Fatherland, and was even privileged to cruise over Berlin in a Zeppelin.
England has heard little and seen nothing of Jellicoe during the war. The veil of mystery which envelops the Grand Fleet is seldom lifted. Not one Englishman in a million knows where the Fleet is, though all know that it is where it ought to be. A ten days' visit paid to the officers and men of the Armada by the Archbishop of York in the late summer of 1915 resulted in imparting to the nation the first glimmer of their life, of their indomitable watch and wait, which had been forthcoming.
"It is difficult for our sailormen," wrote the Archbishop, "to realize the value of their long-drawn vigil. Their one longing is to meet the German ships and sink them; and yet month after month the German ships decline the challenge. The men have little time or chance or perhaps inclination to read accounts in serious journals of the invaluable service which the Navy is fulfilling by simply keeping its watch; and naval officers do not make speeches to their men. I think, indeed I know, that it was a real encouragement to them to hear a voice from the land of their homes telling them of the debt their country owes them for the command of the seas--the safety of the ships carrying food and means of work to the people, supplies of men and munitions to the fields of battle--which is secured to us by the patient watching of the Fleet."
Speaking of Admiral Jellicoe, the Archbishop said:
"It was refreshing and exhilarating beyond words to find oneself in a world governed by a great tradition so strong that it has become an instinct of unity and mutual trust. But to the influence of this great tradition must be added the influence of a great personality. I can not refrain from saying here that I left the Grand Fleet sharing to the full the admiration, affection, and confidence which every officer and man within it feels for its Commander-in-Chief, Sir John Jellicoe. He reassuredly is the right man in the right place at the right time. His officers give him the most absolute trust and loyalty. When I spoke of him to his men I always felt that quick response which to a speaker is the sure sign that he has reached and touched the hearts of his hearers. The Commander-in-Chief--quiet, modest, courteous, alert, resolute, holding in firm control every part of his great fighting engine--has under his command not only the ships but the heart of his Fleet. He embodies and strengthens that comradeship of single-minded service which is the crowning honor of the Navy."
More than once the criticism has been uttered in England itself that the Fleet has been conspicuously lacking in the "Nelson touch." Even Americans, friendly observers, have ventured to suggest that there seemed to be an absence of the Farragut or Dewey "to-hell-with-mines" spirit. Up to the end of the first year of war, Britons faced the fact that their "supreme navy" had lost seven battleships aggregating 97,600 tons (not counting a super-dreadnought reported by the foreign press to have been lost in the early months of the war, but which was a loss never "officially confirmed" in England), and ten cruisers aggregating 81,365 tons. Submarines, in that nerve-racking and troublous day before Scott and Jellicoe solved the problem of sinking "U boats" almost faster than German dockyards could launch substitutes, accomplished terrific havoc among the British merchant fleet, even though the sea commerce of these islands was never remotely in danger of being "paralyzed," as von Tirpitz and the minions of Frightfulness fondly planned.