These qualities were still better displayed in the engagement off the Dogger Bank. This action is remarkable in several respects. For the first time destroyers were here employed to make massed torpedo attacks on a squadron of capital ships. The particular defensive functions of such torpedo attacks will be discussed in the proper place. Suffice it to say here that no torpedo hit, but that the British were robbed of victory by a chance shot which disabled Sir David Beatty’s flagship, and deprived the squadron of its leader when bold leadership was most needed. Why the action was broken off by Rear-Admiral Moore, who succeeded to the command, has never been explained, and the unfortunate wording of an Admiralty _communiqué_ gave the world for some time an impression that Sir David Beatty--of all people--had retreated from the threat of German submarines. The battle of Jutland eclipses in technical interest all the other engagements put together. It presents, of course on a far larger scale, all the problems hitherto met separately. We are still far too imperfectly informed as to many of the incidents of this battle for it to be possible to attempt any complete analysis of its tactics, or to indicate the line on which judgment will ultimately declare itself. We are, for example, entirely without information either about the method of deployment prescribed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet at six o’clock, or of the theory on which the night attack by the destroyer on the retreating German Fleet was ordered. We do not know how it was that a misunderstanding[A] arose between the battle-cruiser fleet and the battle fleet as to the time and place of junction, nor the arrangements which resulted in contact with the German Fleet being lost after the action was over. It is, therefore, only possible to discuss those points on which light has been thrown by the despatch, and the principles of action which the Commander-in-Chief has set out in various speeches delivered after he had ceased to command at sea. [A] The positions of the two fleets at six o’clock had been estimated by dead reckoning, both in _Lion_ and in _Iron Duke_. The two reckonings did not agree, and the Commander-in-Chief said in the despatch that such a discrepancy was inevitable. The word “misunderstanding” in the text must not be taken to mean that the calculation in either fleet was avoidable, still less reprehensibly, wrong. In the engagement off the Falkland Islands, it will be remembered that there was a marked contrast between the tactical methods followed in the pursuit of Von Spee and those adopted by Captain Allen in his pursuit of _Nürnberg_. In the battle of Jutland we shall find a still more marked contrast between the strategic conceptions of the two leaders of the British forces.