Many surmises have been made as to the object with which the High Sea Fleet put to sea on this occasion. The view which I have always held is that the frequent light cruiser sweeps, which had taken place down the Norwegian coast and in the vicinity of the Skagerrak during the spring of 1916, may have induced the German Commander-in-Chief to send out a force with the object of cutting off the light cruisers engaged in one of these operations, and that he took the Battle Fleet to sea in support of this force. There is no doubt that he did not expect to meet the whole Grand Fleet. If confirmation of this were needed it is supplied in the German account of the battle, in which it is stated that “there was no reason for supposing that any enemy forces were about, much less the entire British Fleet.” Consideration of the tactics at Jutland, or indeed of the whole strategy and tactics of the War, leads naturally to the fresh problems which the advent of new weapons had introduced. When I took command of the Grand Fleet one of these problems was that of how to counter a destroyer attack in a day action. It had excited more attention in the two or three years before the War than any other question of tactics, much attention was devoted to it during the War, and for that reason it is desirable to discuss it fully. It was not, I believe, until the year 1911, during what were then known as “P.Z. Exercises” (that is, actions between Battle Fleets as an exercise), that destroyer attacks were actually carried out in the British Navy on a large scale. During that year manœuvres took place between the 3rd and 4th Divisions of the Home Fleets, commanded by Admiral the Marquis of Milford Haven, and the Atlantic Fleet, commanded by myself; and the first phase of the manœuvres of that year included some Battle Fleet “P.Z. Exercises,” during which attacks by considerable forces of destroyers were carried out. Before this date the risk attendant on such exercises, and the fact that our Main Fleet exercises frequently took place without destroyer flotillas being present, had prevented the matter from being made the subject of thorough practical experiment on such a scale as to give reliable guidance. The 1911 exercises brought the question into greater prominence. The Fleet manœuvres of 1912 did not throw further light on the question, as no Fleet action took place in which destroyers were engaged; and the subsequent Battle Fleet exercises did not, so far as I recollect, include destroyer flotillas amongst the vessels engaged. During the Fleet action at the close of the 1913 manœuvres most of the destroyer attacks on the “Red” Fleet were made from towards the rear of the “Blue” battle line, and we did not gain much fresh knowledge from them.