Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY OCTOBER 7, 1916. ANOTHER GERMAN "DAY."

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3575, 7 October 1916, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY OCTOBER 7, 1916. ANOTHER GERMAN "DAY."

It is scarcely likely that if the Germans intended to again try conclusions with, the British Fleet they would make their intentions public. Their chancevs of even minor success against the British entirely depend on a surprise attack, and the possibility of that is so remote, that it is not worth consideration. Yet on two successive days-, information of an impending naval battle has been cabled —once on the authority of a neutral diplomat, who claimed to have the " best authority " for his statement, and yesterday on the authority of the Cologne "Gazette," which stated that "the German fleet contemplates another battle." Commenting upon this latter statement, a German Admiral is reported to have exclaimed: "God help us!" Probably this was merely the usual German appealv for, Divine help, and not an admission"■that the fleet, trusting to its own efforts, was foredoomed to destruction in a second encounter with the British. The Jutland battle was anything but a real test of the fighting quality of the British .Fleet, but the Germans had such a disastrous experience of the power of the secondary warships that only as a last desperate expedient would they risk complete annihilation by the guns of the Grand Meet. One reason advanced for the Germans' supposed desire to precipitate another ''Day" is the impatience of the public with the fleet's inactivity, and the ..need for diverting their minds from the ominous happenings on the Somme. naval action may appeal to the War Lords as a gambler's chance, for it may occur to them that they will probably lose a good number of their'warships' as one of the conditions of .peace. There has been considerable speculation m Allied and neutral countries as to the objects of the German fleet in venturing into the North Sea on May 31. In an article in "Land and Water,": Mr Arthur Pollen says the. 'first German official account spoke of there : being an enterprise .-'to the north which the fleet had sallied- forth to execute. This is a somewhat vague objective, and can be held to cover such. different. . purposes as an'

effort to getdnto the ■ Atlantic; an

attempt to cut the communications of Archangel, or to get the whole battle fleet through the Skagerrack and the Sound into the Baltic for a combined sea and land attack on Riga. The first and second of , these objects could have been better achieved by simpler means, if we assume that .the German staff "realised that to get across the'line of the Archangel supplies, or,, to be at large in the Atlantic, were things for which it would-be worth risking •the existence of their more powerful units. The argument of Riga being the-objective of the fleets is based, on the supposition -.that the latest Dreadnoughts of the Koenig class are not able to make their w.ay through' the Kiel Canal. And a I .the end of May, before the Austrian resistance to the southern end of the Itussian line had "collapsed, an advance on Petrograd-might still have seemed the most promising enterprise that Germany could undertake.. .But, on the, whole, the indications are that the sortie was made with the deliberate intention of engaging our scouting ships, and of limiting that engagement, if possible, to a fight with those forces. Later communiques, indeed, suggest that this clearly was the ob-^ ject. They tell us that Sir David!" Beatty had made frequent sweeps into the waters off Jutland in the months of April and May, and that the fleet was sent out to engage him. The German tactics

tliroiVgliout tlie battle—so far as those tactics were due to, their own initiative—confirm this theory. On the day lhe luck, was, on the whole, on their side,, but it was against them on one point. Their Zeppelin reconnaissances seem to havejjeen fruitless owing to the haze, so that the encounter with the Grand Fleet, into which. Sir David Beatty first . enticed and then forced them, was, in fact, a purpri.se. If this view is correct, the German Fleet came out to fight, a partial action, so that those of the ships- that returned to harbour should be held as a fleet of conquerors. The point is • important, ■