It is strange how events of great national importance become associated in one’s mind with small personal experiences. I have told with what vividness I remember the receipt in November, 1914, of private news that the battle cruisers _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ had left Devonport for the Falkland Islands, and how I heard Lord Rosebery read out Sturdee’s victorious dispatch to 6,000 people in St. Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow. In a similar way the Jutland battle became impressed upon my mind in an unforgettable personal fashion. On May 22nd, 1916, I learned that Admiral Beatty had at his disposal the four “Cats”—_Lion_, _Tiger_, _Queen Mary_, and _Princess Royal_—of about twenty-nine knots speed, and each armed with eight 13.5-inch guns, the two battle cruisers _New Zealand_ and _Indefatigable_, of some twenty-seven knots of speed, and carrying each eight 12-inch guns, and the _Queen Elizabeth_, of twenty-five knots, all of which were armed with eight of the new 15-inch guns, which were a great advance upon the earlier thirteen-point-fives. The ships of the Fifth Battle Squadron had all been completed since the war began. The _Queen Elizabeth_ herself went into dock at Rosyth for repairs, so that for immediate service the squadron was reduced to four ships—_Barham_, _Valiant_, _Warspite_, and _Malaya_. Upon the following Saturday, May 27th, I was invited to lunch in one of the battleships, but upon arrival at South Queensferry, I found the Fleet under Short Notice for sea, and no one was allowed to leave the ships, or to receive friends on board. It was a beautiful day, the long, light-coloured Cats and the Futurist-grey battleships were a most noble sight, but I felt too much like a Peri shut out of Paradise to be happy in observing them. A day or two later, Thursday, June 1st, was fixed for my next visit, but again the Fates were unkind. When I arrived in the early morning and stood upon the heights overlooking the anchorage, Beatty’s Fleet had gone, and, though I did not know it, had even then fought the Jutland battle. In the afternoon, news came with the return to the Forth of the damaged battleship _Warspite_ surrounded by her attendant destroyers. That was on the Thursday afternoon, but it was not until the evening of Friday that the first Admiralty message was issued, that famous message which will never be forgotten either by the country or by the Navy. The impression which it made may be simply illustrated. I was sitting in my drawing-room after dinner, anxiously looking for news both on national and personal grounds, when a newsboy shrieked under my window “Great Naval Disaster: Five British Battleships Sunk.” The news printed in the paper was not so bad as that shouted, but it was bad enough; it gave the impression of very heavy losses incurred for no compensating purpose, and turned what had really been a conspicuous naval success into an apology for a naval disaster. As a humble student,