But the Royal Navy which is always at work upon the open seas can never have at any one moment its whole force available for battle. The squadrons composing the Fleets were, however, exceedingly powerful, far more than sufficient for the complete destruction of the Germans had they dared to fight out the action. As the battle was fought the main burden fell upon thirteen only of our ships—Beatty’s four Cat battle cruisers assisted by the _New Zealand_ and _Indefatigable_, Hood’s three battle cruisers of the Invincible class, and Evan-Thomas’s four Queen Elizabeth battleships. Jellicoe’s available main Fleet of twenty-five battleships, including two Royal Sovereigns with 15-inch guns, the _Canada_ with 14-inch guns, and twelve Orions, K.G. Fives and Iron Dukes with 13.5-inch guns, which was robbed of its fought-out battle by the enemy’s skilful withdrawal, was almost sufficient by itself to have eaten up the German High Seas Fleet. During the battle we lost the _Queen Mary_ with 13.5-inch guns, and the _Invincible_ and _Indefatigable_ with 12-inch guns, all of which were battle cruisers. So that after the action our total battle cruiser strength had declined from ten to seven, while our battleship strength was unimpaired. * * * * * It is not easy to be quite sure of what the Germans had managed to do during those twenty-two months of war. I have given them credit for completing every ship which it was possible for them to complete. They were too fully occupied with building submarines to attack our merchant ships, too fully occupied with guns and shells for land fighting, and too much hampered in regard to many essential materials by our blockade, to be able to effect more than the best possible. Rumour from time to time credited them with the construction of “surprise” ships carrying 17-inch guns, but nothing unexpected was revealed when the clash of Fleets came on May 31st, 1916. Huge new battleships and huge new guns take us at the very least fifteen months to complete at full war pressure—most of them nearer two years—and the German rate of construction, even when unhampered by a blockade and the calling to the army of all available men, has always been much slower than ours. The British Admiralty does not work in the dark and doubtless knew fully what the Germans were doing.