Admiral Beatty seems to have acted throughout as if the enemy should be brought to battle and destroyed, almost regardless of risk. The Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet seems to have been willing to engage only if he could do so without jeopardizing the forces under his command. The one was bent on victory, the other seemed satisfied--so long as the enemy were thwarted in any ulterior purpose--if only the British Fleet were saved from losses. It followed from such very opposite views, that their tactical methods differed also. At each stage of the action Sir David Beatty’s tactic was to get his forces into action at the first possible moment and to keep them in action as long as possible. Thus when the news first reaches him that the enemy is to the northeast, he leads his whole fleet at top speed straight for the Horn Reef to get between him and his base. And this he does without waiting for any information about the composition of the enemy’s force. Whether it is the battle-cruiser and light forces only, or the whole German Fleet, his first idea is to make sure that _he_ is in a position to engage if he wishes to. As it was at 3:0 P.M., so it was at each stage after he got into action. The reduction of his squadron by one third does not seem to have upset the coolness of his judgment or the firmness of his determination in the least degree. When he found himself opposed, no longer by five battle-cruisers, but by sixteen Dreadnought battleships as well, he reversed the course of the fleet, made Evan-Thomas fall in behind him, and, during a holding action for the next hour, kept the Germans under his guns, risking their fire, threatening the head of their line, and half-cajoling, half-forcing Scheer northward to where the British fleets would be united. The moment contact becomes imminent--knowing that the light might at any moment fail--he forces the pace and discounts risks incalculably greater than at any time during the day, if only the enormous striking power of the Grand Fleet can be brought for once into action as a whole. And so, regardless of the punishment his fleet had received earlier in the day, he shortens the range from 14,000 yards to 12,000 and then from 12,000 to 8,000, in a last effort to hold the enemy, while the Grand Fleet deploys and comes into action. There is no foolhardiness in his tactics, for the speed that enables him to head the German line is not only the best defence of his own squadron against torpedo attack. He has made it almost impossible for the German destroyers to enfilade the Grand Fleet, if only it deploys at full speed on him. He knows, of course, that at 8,000 yards the side armour of his ships will not keep out the enemy’s shells. But he has demoralized the German gunfire by his own once before and, confident in the superior coolness and nerve of his officers and crews, he relies on this element again as the best defence of his squadron.