Meantime, as we have seen, success had justified the solution of the October crisis. The attempt to probe deeper and to get at the cause of things was a thankless task. Those who could see beneath the surface could not fail to note in December and January that, while an exuberant optimism had become the mark of the British attitude towards the war at sea, a movement curiously parallel to it was going forward in Germany. The shifts to which the Grand Fleet had been put by the defenceless state of its harbours, though rigidly excluded from the British Press, has been triumphantly exploited in the German. Hence, when the enemy’s only oversea squadron was annihilated by Sir Doveton Sturdee, his Press responded with an outcry on the cowardice of the British Fleet that, while glad to overwhelm an inferior force abroad, dared not show itself in the North Sea. And, as if to prove the charge, Whitby and the Hartlepools were forthwith bombarded by a force we were unable to bring to action while returning from this exploit. The enemy naval writers surpassed themselves after this. And it looked so certain that the German Higher Command might itself become hypnotized by such talk that, before the New Year, it seemed prudent to note these phenomena and warn the public that we might be challenged to action after all, of the kind of action the enemy would dare us to, and what the problems were that such an action would present. And in particular it seemed advisable to state explicitly that much less must be expected from naval guns in battle than those had hoped, whose notions were founded upon battle practice. A battle-cruiser manœuvring at twenty-eight knots--instead of a canvas screen towed at six--mines scattered by a squadron in retreat, a line of retreat that would draw the pursuers into minefields set to trap them; the attacks on the pursuing squadrons by flotillas of destroyers, firing long-range torpedoes--these new elements would upset, it was said, all experiences of peace gunnery, because in peace practices it is impossible to provide a target of the speed which enemy ships would have in action, and because there had been no practice while executing the manœuvres which torpedo attack would make compulsory in battle. Within a fortnight the action of the Dogger Bank was fought and Von Hipper’s battle-cruisers were subjected to the fire of Sir David Beatty’s Fleet from nine o’clock until twelve, without one being sunk or so damaged as to lose speed. The enemy’s tactics included attacks by submarine and destroyer which had imposed the manœuvres as anticipated--and the best of gunnery had failed. But _Blücher_ had been sunk; the enemy had run away; so the warning fell on deaf ears; the lesson of the battle was misread. Optimism reigned supreme. THE SECOND CRISIS