What Jellicoe himself thought of those who fought so well under his inspiring leadership cannot be said better than in his own words. "The conduct of officers and men throughout the day and night actions was entirely beyond praise. No words of mine could do them justice. On all sides it is reported to me that the glorious traditions of the past were worthily upheld. Officers and men were cool and determined, with a cheeriness that would have carried them through anything. The heroism of the wounded was the admiration of all. I cannot express the pride with which the spirit of the Grand Fleet filled me."
Results. Jutland taught the German Navy what every one should have known before: that whenever tyrants have tried to lord it over all the world they have always had to reckon with the British Navy first, and that this Navy has never failed to lay them low. More things were wrought by Jutland than the British Empire thinks, and more, far more, than other people, for lack of knowledge, can imagine. There was a regular, unbreakable chain of cause and effect, and Jutland was the central link.
To conquer their bully's "place in the sun" of the white man's empire overseas the Germans built their Navy. But the Grand Fleet blockaded it so well that the Germans clamoured for a fight to wipe the British off the sea and to let the German merchant ships get out. Jutland settled that. From Jutland on to the end of the war the German bluejackets could never again be led against the British on the surface of the sea. So the murderous German submarine campaign was tried instead. This forced even the American Peace Party to change their minds and save their country's honour by joining the War Party in armed defence both of American rights and of the freedom of the world.
After another two years the Germans failed under water as they had upon the surface; and when, in wild despair, the Kaiser ordered the whole of his High Sea Fleet to try another fight, the final mutiny began. This broke out at 5 A.M. on the 3rd of November, 1918, eight days before the Armistice. It was not the German Army, nor yet the German people, that began the Revolution, but the German Fleet, which knew that a second Jutland could only mean the death of every German there. In its own turn the Revolution brought on the great surrender, a thing unheard-of in the story of the sea.
Thus, like the immortal Battle of the Marne on land, Jutland was not only itself a mighty feat of arms but one on which the whole war turned.
CHAPTER XXVI
SUBMARINING
(1917-1918)
Jutland proved to all hands in the German Navy that they had no chance whatever against Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. But the great mass of the German people never heard this truth; and even their navy hoped to win under the water a victory it had found impossible on top. So, for the last two years of the war, the Germans worked their hardest at what they called the "Submarine Blockade." As this "Blockade" forced the United States into war, and as its failure showed the Germans that, in the end, they had no more chance under water than on top, we can all see now that Jutland turned the scale.
The British fleets blockading Germany of course seized and kept for the Government, as spoils of war, whatever warlike stores (guns, shells, and so on) they could lay their hands on. But all the other goods the Navy stopped the Government bought, paying fair market prices. So the American and other neutrals trying to trade with the enemy had really nothing to complain of; for a blockade at sea is very like a siege on land, and nobody has ever pretended that a besieging army has not a perfect right to stop any supplies of any kind from reaching the besieged. Moreover, the crews of the ships trying to break the British blockade were always very kindly treated, though their ships were trying to help the enemy and make fortunes for their owners at the expense of freedom.