WHAT THE GERMAN FLEET INTENDED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1621, 7 October 1916, Page 4

WHAT THE GERMAN FLEET INTENDED.

The forces and considerations which brought the German fleet out are by no means certain, writes Mr Arthur Pollen of the battle of Jutland. The first Gorman 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 he held to cover such different purposes as an effort to get into 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 Bailie for a combined sea and land attack on Riga. The first and second of these obpects could have been better achieved by simpler means, if we assume that fhe 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 way through the Kiel Canal. And at the end of May, before the Austrian resistance to-fhe southern end of fhe Russian 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 . light with those forces. Later communiques, indeed, suggest that this clearly was the object. 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 throughout the battle —-so far as those tactics were due to their own initiative —confirm this theory. On the day the luck was, on the whole,.on their side, hut it was against (hciii on one point. Their Zeppelin reconnaisances seem to have been fruitless owing to the haze, so that the encounter with the Grand Fleet, into which Sir David first enticed and then forced them, was, in fact, a surprise. If this view is cornu;t, the German Fleet came out to light a partial action, so that those of the ships (hat relumed to harbour should be held as a fleet of conquerors. The point is important.