1 would be to make the most of his luck and get safely home, it was also to the last degree probable that he would shape a course for home which would bring him soonest under the protection of whatever defences the German coast could offer. He would not, that is to say, attempt to regain Heligoland by trying to get round the British Fleet to the south and west, and then turn sharply east to Heligoland; he would probably try to creep down the Danish and Schleswig coasts, where wounded ships might, if necessary, be beached, and the islands might supply some form of refuge if the situation became desperate. It was on this route also that the submarines sent out to cover the retreat could be stationed. The best chance of bringing the Germans once more to action on the morning of June 1 would then appear to have been a sweeping movement towards the Horn Reef. The German fleet could not possibly have reached this point before half-past four, and probably not before half-past six. The fast, light forces and the battle-cruisers could have got across to the Schleswig coast in two and a half hours and the battleships before seven o’clock. If the despatch tells us all that was done, one is rather driven to the conclusion that the Commander-in-Chief assumed that it was not our business, but the Germans’ business, to resume the action. Why else should he say that “the enemy made no sign”? or exult in the fact that he knew from his Zeppelin at four o’clock where the British fleet was if he liked to look for it? Why should the enemy make a sign? Was it not obvious after the events of the preceding day that he could have but one idea and that was safety? Scheer and Von Hipper had certainly done enough for honour. They had inflicted heavier losses than they had suffered. If they could get home they had anything but a discreditable story to tell. If the Commander-in-Chief really thought it was not his first duty to find and bring the enemy to action again; if the risk of approaching the Jutland coast seemed too great; if the frustration of any ulterior object the enemy might have contemplated the day before seemed cheaply purchased by the losses the Battle Cruiser Fleet had suffered, so long as our main strength at sea was not impaired, then the proceedings on June 1, as communicated to us, are perfectly intelligible. Yet there must have been many among his officers and under his command who took a diametrically different view. After engaging for the last time at 8:40 on the previous evening, Sir David Beatty says: “In view of the gathering darkness, _and of the fact that our strategical position was such as to make it appear certain that we should locate the enemy at daylight under most favourable circumstances_, I did not consider it desirable or proper to close the enemy battle fleet during the dark hours. I therefore concluded that I should be carrying out your wishes by turning to the course of the fleet, reporting to you that I had done so.”