"Well, almost the identical conditions under which we had planned and practised to run our torpedo barrage were reproduced at Horn Reef when the British battle fleet came into action near the end of the day, but it failed because the English Admiral anticipated it--probably because he knew in advance, as you always seemed to know everything we were doing or intended to do, what to expect--by turning away while still at the extreme limit of effective torpedo range. Most of our spare torpedoes went for almost nothing, so far as damage to the enemy was concerned, in that 'barrage,' and it would have gone hard with us had there been enough daylight remaining for the English fleet to have continued the action. Its superior speed would have allowed it to make the range whatever its commander desired, and--even before half of the battleships of it were firing--we were absolutely crushed by sheer weight of metal, and it would not have been long before every one of our ships would have been incapable of replying. You will see, then, that, in the sense that it postponed the brunt of the attack of the English battle fleet attack until it was too late for it to be effective, our torpedo barrage undoubtedly saved the High Sea Fleet from complete destruction. "Our lavish expenditure of torpedoes at that juncture, though, compelled us to forgo the great opportunity which was now presented to us to do your fleet heavy damage in a night action. Darkness, as you know, goes far to equalize the difference in numbers of opposing fleets, and makes an action very largely a series of disjointed duels between ship and ship. In these duels the odds are all in favour of the ship with the best system of recognition, the most powerful searchlights, and the most effective searchlight control. We believed that we had much the best of you in all of these particulars, and (although it was our plan to avoid contact as far as possible on account of our shortage of torpedoes) such encounters as could not be avoided proved this to be true beyond any doubt. You seemed to have no star shells at all (so far as any of our ships reported), and our searchlights were not only more powerful than yours, but seemed also to be controlled in a way to bring them on to the target quicker. It may be that the fact that our special night-glasses were better than anything of the kind you had contributed to this result. In any case, in almost every clash in the darkness it was the German's guns which opened fire first. Practically every one of our surviving ships reported this to have been the case, but with those that were lost, of course, it is likely the English opened up first. Another way in which we scored decisively in this phase of the action was through solving the reply to your night recognition signal, or at least a part of it. One of our cruisers managed to bluff one of your destroyers into revealing this, and then passed it on to as many