THE TURNING POINT.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 July 1916, Page 4

THE TURNING POINT.

The result of the recent naval engagement off Jutland will probably be proclaimed by the historians of the future as the turning point of the war. The event is too close for lis to realise its rea' significance and how far it is influencing the course of the war. The battle was not decisive in the sense tint Trafalgar wa3. Nature robbed us of that crowning issue. Robbed we were by the loss of a few minutes of light and clear swing. Good judges are satisfied the Germans lost a third of their strength, and that two more such engagements (let alone afouglit-out fight) would leave it with a mere remnant of submarines oid destroyers. The accounts that are coming to hand by mail from men who participated in the battle show that from the time .Tellicoe steamed up and formed liis arched line with magnificent regu laritj the German fleet had not a elianec. Ship after ship burst into flames under eur marksmanship, and retreat (admirably conducted by tile German commander) was inevitable if the High Seas Fleet was to e.vist for the remainder of the war. After the encounter, brief as it was, net a shadow of doubt rested, not merely on tiie superior force of our Kavy as a mass, hut on its superior quality in detail. It is plain that Germany set out with her full fleet to achieve something in the north. She pounded a section of our fleet, which met and held her; and, 011 the appearance af tie main fleet, steamed, after a brief (Vsastrous, and utterly unequal conflict, for home. This was her correct tactics, assuming she had no chance of decisively beating the British fleet. But it was i;er inferiority alone .hat made it correct tactics. There must be a famishing appetite for success in Germany when such an exploit can be proclaimed, as i ; was, as a ''victory." Oui men returned from the fight with the conviction and elation of victory, and were dumb founded when they found the impression in F.ngland that we had suffered practically a defeat-. We won the battle on the sea, and the Admiralty lost it 111 a despatch, as a writer in the London Nation put it. "I declare it to be a victory for us, hard-earned', but a vi? tiry," said Lord Beresford. "-lellicoe and Beatty have a mandate to whip the German Fleet. Their business 011 May 31 was to go for that fleet and give it everything the British had in stoel;. 'iliat was done. It cost a price, but the world will not have long to wait to learn that the price was not disproportionate," commented the Chicago Daily N'ews, which seems to have represented impartial American feeling. A victorious foe does not run for home and leave the field—this time the seas—to his adversary. The Dutch and the Danes, nations with a long experience of seamanship hundreds of years before Prussia was heard of in European politics, saw through the German claims at once. So did prosaic Wall Street. So, too, did our French and Russian Allies. The grand issues are clear. Germany's "Day" lias 110 morrow to whose dawn her naval strategists can look with hope. The German fleet is 110 match for ours. It may never emerge again, save for unsubstantial raids. Its ability to break, or weaken, the blockade lias been ue--1 eisively tested, and the German admiraN must already have reported the scuttling of all such hopes, adventures, and polities. The command of the seas remains ours, and will so remain till the end of the war. Despite the crescendo of German boastfulness, in which the Kaiser out-bawled the Chancellor, and the Chancellor shouted down the much more modest admirals, who realised they had been heavily defeated, and that the idea of their ever securing command, even temporary command, of the sea had gone, perhaps for ever. For us in the colonics, the result of that brief but terrible struggle in the North Sea was everything. It meant the preservation c? our independence, of our rights, of our property, of our most valuable possession—liberty.