THE JUTLAND NAVAL BATTLE

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 160, 7 August 1916, Page 3

THE JUTLAND NAVAL BATTLE

PROVES AN EPOCH MAKER. THE TIDE HAS CHANGED. PLOWS WITH THE ALLIES. SOME SCATHING CRITICISM. LONDON, August 4. Mr Balfour has issued a review of the naval situation on the second anniversary of the war. He says: — The moral and material consequences of the Jutland battle cannot be easily { over-ruled. That was the moment j when the tid e began to flow strongly { in our favour. Every week since has • seen a new Allied success on one field or other. Before the Jutland light the German fleet was imprisoned. After Jutland it sank again, into impotence. This is not merely the British view. German utterances have given precisely the same impression. Both parties are agreed that the object of the naval batt] e was to obtain sea command. We have not losr it. Our blockade has been tightened since Jutland. The Gemans admit this by their greater violence of invective against Britain, and their unwearied repetition of the cry that Britain is ar. arch enemy who must at all costs be humbled in tlie dust If the Germans felt they were reaching maritime equality would they spend so much breath in advertising the performances of submarines flying the mercantile flag which carried 2SO tons of German produce, to say nothing -of the Kaiser \s autograph letter, from Bremen to Baltimore. The whole interest lay in the fact that by using a submarine they would elude the barrier which the British had placed between Germany and th e outer world, and which they knew the German fleet could neither break nor weaken. German newspapers, upon the anniversary, exhorted the people to take comfort in studying the maps. The amount of comfort desirable depends on the maps chosen. Even the map of Europe shows an ever shrinking battle-line. The map of Germany's colonial empire shows that most have gone, and that the remainder are slipping from her grasp. The Germans are aware that their victorious fleet

is useless. Therefore submarine warfare makes a double German militarism —an appeal to prudence and brutality, because it cannot be carried out on a large scale consistent 'with the laws of war and the requirements of humanity. The skill and energy which merchantmen defend themselves have driven the Grman 'Admiralty to its latst and most stupid act of calculatd ferosifyt—the judical let of calculated ferocity—the judica 1 murder of Captain Fryatt. I do not propose to argue the case. It is not worth arguing. Why should we do the German military authorities the injustice of supposing that they were animated by any solicitude for international law and blundered into illegality, or that by some unhappy accident they sank twenty-two British ships without warning. They knew that Captain Fryatt.. refusing to submit. was doing his duty as a man of courage and honour. The Germans are resolved at ail costs to discourage intimation.