In any case, they were bold enough to take their chance on occasions, always with their fortified ports and mined waters and their submarines under their lee. They might succeed in reducing British superiority by the “attrition” of some encounters. Such was the genesis of the Dogger Bank battle of January 24th, 1915, when that gallant officer Sir David Beatty inflicted a severe defeat upon Admiral Hipper, and drove him back in flight, with the loss of the _Blücher_ and much other injury. The same causes brought the German High Sea Fleet, under Admiral Scheer, into the great conflict, first with Sir David Beatty, and then with the main force of the Grand Fleet, under command of Sir John Jellicoe, on May 31st, 1916. The events of the great engagement of the Jutland Bank will not be related here. All that it is necessary to note is that the Germans had so chosen their time that they were able to avoid decisive battle with Sir John Jellicoe’s fleet by retreating in the failing light of the day, and that their adventure availed them nothing to break the blockade or otherwise to modify the impotent position in which they are placed at sea. That action operated to the disadvantage of England and her Allies in no degree whatever. The superiority of the British Fleet as a fighting engine had been placed beyond dispute. The mine and the submarine have put an end to the system of naval blockade as practised by St. Vincent and Cornwallis. No fleet can now lie off, or within striking range of, an enemy’s port. Battleships cannot be risked against submarines, acting either as torpedo craft or mine-layers, nor against swift destroyers at night. That is the explanation of the situation which has arisen in the North Sea. The blockade is necessarily of a distant kind. There are no places on the British coasts where the Grand Fleet could be located, except those in which it lies and from which it issues to sweep the North Sea periodically. The first essential is to control the enemy’s communications, which is done effectively at the North Passage—between the Orkneys and Shetlands, and the Norwegian coast—and at the Straits of Dover. If the enemy desired a final struggle for supremacy at sea, with all its tremendous consequences, he could have it. But he can be attacked only when he is accessible. “There shall be neither sickness nor death which shall make us yield until this service be ended,” wrote Howard in 1588. That is the spirit of the British Navy to-day. But, then, the Spanish Armada was at sea. It was not hiding behind its shore defences. Be it noted that the Germans, thus hiding themselves, enjoy a certain opportunity of undertaking raiding operations in the North Sea. It is not a difficult thing to rush a force of destroyers on a dark night against some point in an extended line of patrols and effect a little damage somewhere. What advantage the Germans hope to gain by such proceedings is difficult to discover.