I could to some extent read between the lines of the dispatch and dimly perceive what had happened, but to the mass of the British public, the wording of that immortal document could not have been worse conceived. To them it seemed that the End of All Things was at hand. The story runs that the first bulletin was made up by clerks from scraps of messages which came over the wireless from the Grand Fleet, but in which the most important sentence of all was omitted. “The Germans are claiming a victory,” wailed the Admiralty clerks through the aerials at Whitehall. “What shall we say?” “Say,” snapped the Grand Fleet, “say that we gave them hell!” If the Admiralty had only said this, said it, too, in curt, blasphemous naval fashion, the public would have understood, and all would have been well. What a dramatic chance was then lost! Think what a roar of laughter and cheering would have echoed round the world if the first dispatch had run as follows: “We have met and fought the German Fleet, and given it hell. Beatty lost the _Queen Mary_ and _Indefatigable_ in the first part of the battle when the odds were heavily against us, but Jellicoe coming up enveloped the enemy, and was only prevented by mist and low visibility from destroying him utterly. The Germans have lost as many ships as we have, and are shattered beyond repair.” That message, in a few words, would have given a true impression of the greatest sea fight that the world has known, a fight, too, which has established beyond question the unchallengeable supremacy of British strategy, battle tactics, seamanship, discipline, and devotion to duty of every man and boy in the professional Navy. In the technical sense, it was an indecisive battle: the Germans escaped destruction. But morally, and in its practical results, no sea fight has been more decisive. Nearly two years have passed since that morning of June 1st when the grey dawn showed the seas empty of German ships, and though the High Seas Fleet has put out many times since then, it has never again ventured to engage us. Jutland drove sea warfare, for the Germans, beneath the surface, a petty war of raids upon merchant vessels, a war—as against neutrals—of piracy and murder. By eight o’clock on the evening of May 31st, 1916, the Germans had been out-fought, outmanœuvred, and cut off from their bases. Had the battle begun three hours earlier, and had visibility been as full as it had been in the Falkland Islands action, had there been, above all, ample sea room, there would not have been a German battleship afloat when the sun went down. There never was a luckier fleet than that one which scrambled away through the darkness of May 31st-June 1st, worked its way round the enveloping horns of Jellicoe, Beatty, and Evan-Thomas, and arrived gasping and shattered at Wilhelmshaven. We can pardon the Kaiser, who, in his relief for a crowning mercy, proclaimed the escape to be a glorious victory.