SEA REVELATIONS.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 July 1921, Page 4

SEA REVELATIONS.

MR Flf/SON YOUNG’S BOOK. I 1 1 (By H. YV. Wilson, the well-known i Naval Historian). 9 j Mr Filson Young’s •‘With the Battle ] •Cruisers,” is a hook of a very rare and ( notable kind, written by one who com-J bines wide knowledge of naval matters | , with personal participation in tremend- j otts events and a complete mastery of ■ r noble language. It gives an in-, .•piling account '1 !.oid Beatty at his.orb and his play, in manoeuvres and . in battle. . I jior six months —from November 1914 j to April 1913 —the author served in the , l.ion on Lord Beatty’s personal staff, • in the Intelligence Department, and lie j v a» present at the mysterious battle of j the Dogger Bank. He tcl's us what are j the sensations of the ex-civilian who suddenly becomes a living target of , gianv guns, “mise: ably e< Li and rather '• f ightened,” in the Lion’s foretop. ; There are many good stories, as ot ; Lord Beatty at eliureh, • admonishing | the company on ‘‘their lackadaisical i and dragging praise, adding, ‘I want to j hear the ‘Lion’ roar” ; and some that j demand investigation. We hear how : “Winston” wrangled with Lord Fisher from a witness of their encounters. Mr Filson Young secured bis appointment by a stratagem, bending even j Lord Fisher to bis purpose at a moment when lie wrote that he was ‘‘exceeding | busy scrapping parasites.” Lord j Beatty’s exclamation when his new j 1 staff officer appeared was, “Well, I’m l damned!” The world is the gainer by Mr Young’s brilliant adventure, and | when circumstances carried him aw%y ! from the fleet he received this parting j testimonial from his friend Lord j Beatty, of which lie may well be proud : I I shall miss you; it was refreshing to have someone to talk to who was not of the Navy, and your advice was good. ; THE REAL BEATTY. The real Beatty as lie appears in these pages is not merely a dashing leader who trusts to luck, but something very much more: His caution and his sense of responsibility were just as remarkable as his enterprise; but they were never allowed to obscure or dominate the fighting spirit. . . . Perhaps the greatest tribute one can pay to him and the Navy is to say that in the qualities in which he proved supreme ho was not exceptional hut typical. His ideas as expressed in talks with his future historian before the war were: ’To work his people hard while they were at work, and chase them off to recreate and enlarge their minds when work was over. . . . Beatty’s strategy and tactics. . . . might each he summed up in a sentence: One, to get at te enemy ; the other, to destroy him or lead him to destruction. Beatty’s ideal squadron would have turned and manoeuvred and fought like one man without it word front the flagship; and once it had got its teeth in an enemy it would never have let go as long as one of them remained above water. In its greatest battle it was true to this doctrine; all the afternoon ami early night that squadron with dwindling lorces aml fearful losses continued in action at .Jutland against the whole German Fleet ; and, though bruised and bleeding and shattered, it did not let JT<). STRATEGY OF JUTLAND. Mr 1 oting quickly made the discovery that fin opposition to what the official histories are telling us) the Navy was ill prepared: There did not seem to be any definite policy at all. . . . There was no organised hunting for submarines because we bad not got the light craft to limit with. . . . As for mines we had none worth the name. ... It was quite clear that the (‘ommander-in-C'liief’s (Lord Jellicoe’s) principal anxiety was to protect his fleet from danger. . . . Oil November <‘L . . . lie took his fleet out to the westward of Galway Bay, thus placing two islands and a couple of seas between himself and the enemy. In his tactics “the same attitude of mind seemed to he observable..” in manoeuvres between him and Beatty, Beatty launched destroyer attacks at him. To avoid which ho invariably employed the mol hod of turning Ids ships away. I remember that the first time I saw this happen from the bridge of the Lion a staff officer near me said : “If lie does that when the Germans attack he can’t he defeated, but he can’t win.” Tims was Jutland prefigured in exercises. As for the Admiralty, in its dealings with the Fleet it. seemed to ho informed with — | A narrow and lifeless spirit, expressing itself everywhere in the policy that the means were more important than the end. ... it gives some measure of what the Navy is and might he to say that 75 per cent of its efficiency was absorbed by the Admiralty, and that with the remaining 25 the enemy had to be fought. Tn one respect the Admiralty was excellent. It knew the German movements and gave full warning of them to the Fleet, though its information was “doled out to us in very small doses, and often too late to he of nse.” i Thus, though Lord Jellicoe did not put to sea for twenty hours after receipt of the news that the Germans were com- ' ing out, Beatty and a part of the battle • fleet under Sir G. Warrender were near j Scarboronugh when, in December 1914, • that place was bombarded; and this : curious interchange of messages took place: We received a signal from Sir George Warrender: “Scarborough being shelled; T am proceeding towards Hull.” Beatty’s reply to this was characteristic. . . . “Are you? ... I am going to Scarborough.” DOGGER BANK SECRETS. ! The secret of the battle of the Dogger Bank is at last revealed. For the first time the public discovers that the British Fleet had full warning he forehand of the German movements, and that the official despatch describing the battle was so altered at Whitehall that the country was led to suppose that the British battle-cruisers had retired for fear of submarines and mines, which drew from an American commentator the verdict: “Admiral Beatty on the evidence of his published report ought to be shot.” I showed this article to the Admiral (Beatty) at the time, and His only comment was, “I quite agree with him.”

On the eve of the battle a new rearadmiral was appointed as second-in-command of the battle-cruiser squadron. This was unjust to him as he was entirely strange to the methods by which it had been trained. , X managed to raise a somewhat grim smile on my chief’s face by reminding him of Lord Fisher’s aphorism: “Some day we shall lose the Empire because it it' Buggins’s turn.” And we very did. , r ■ At the crisis of the action the Lion was disabled, and flu 1 new second-in-command was left to carry nut Beatty’s last signal, “Keep nearer to the enemy”—the exact modern equivalent of Nelson’s famous “No. lfi,” “Engage i more closely.” i Jie appears not to have liked the ! situation and to have been preoccupied j With thoughts of risk and danger from mines, and it is hard, reading such sigj nals as lie did make, not to bclivee ' that his conception of his duty as a i commander was to get Ids squadron ! away from the track of the enemy as 1 quickly as possible. ! So three German battle-cruisers, two j of them terribly damaged, crawled home j a nd only the Blucher was sunk, j WHAT LORD FISHER SAID. I Such a result required explanations, and they were demanded by Bord Fisher. ’Mr Filson Young was given the task of satisfying his grim inquisitiveness. It was an impressive interview. Turning his hard, wise old eye upon mo he said, “Well, tell me about it. How was it they got away? What s the explanation ? Why didnt’ you get I the lot? .... I don’t understand it. Submarines? There weren’t any; '' e knew the position of every German su >- marine in the' North Sea; and there wasn’t a mine within fifty miles. He looked at me as though my explanation had been a mere invention. “Come,” he said, “you were there. You saw it. Wliat do you think?” I told him what f thought', which was very simple and could he expressed in one sentence. Lord Fisher made no reply except a brief “Oh!” and sat for perhaps a minute staring hard at me, during which time I began to wonder whether I had not perhaps been a little too frank. An extraordinarily grave disclosure is that the faults of our British turret and magazine designs were revealed in the battle, when the Lion was all hut destroyed by charges in the A magazine taking fire. This was pointed out; hut nothing was done towards remedying the defect, till after Jutland, when three battlecruisers actually were blown up from the same cause. If this is correct —and the tact seems beyond challenge—the loss of Queen Mary. Indefatigable, and Invincible, with" nearly 3,000 officers and men, was due to neglect at Whitehall, where •‘terrible complacency” prevailed and ’’the real arduous head .ork which should have followed the battle an as shirked.” _ One last interview with “Winston” and Lord Fisher is narrated in the liveliest terms, where they fought on the luestion whether Mr Young should remain with the Fleet as a “naval eyewitness.” Lord Fisher appealed to Mr Young to support him on the need for absolute secrecy. When Mr Young ,;ivc his opinion, this was the old Sea Lord’s reply: “I’ll rub your nose in your opinion, ,ii>. and let me tell you that a certain person has got his eye on you ; lie does not at all approve of you being where von are—remember that.” But lie afterwards apologised on the ground that, “I am always violent! 1 was horn violent. 1 wouldn’t he weaned.” it is a disagreeable postscript to this store of headquarters concealment and had Admiralty stafl work to find Irom an appendix that the Admiralty still maintains its tradition of keeping hack the facts. It refused Mr Young access to official documents. The hook gives the soul ot the sea .car and throws light on every question which arises in war or perplexes the country in peace. Hence its extraordinary value.