The sun., 1919-02-23
Pollen'S Book on the Work of the British Navy

of Sir John are shown to be formed on
grounds NOT at all web informed, as VI
now know through newspaper quotations
from Jeiiicoe's new book. In the light Of
the Admiralty reports on the battle Of
Jutland and its admirable maps, than
which nothing better has yet appeared on
this action, Mr.. Pollen shows himself to
be prejudiced, without any special teth-
meal information, and in view Of these
facts his assumptions as to the course of
the action and the motives of Sir John
and Admiral Beatty do not hold water.
1t is not possible to illustrate the lame
ness of this critic better than to cite his
chapter on the Zeebrugge and Ostend
operations On st. Georges Day, 1918.
The Admiralty reports On these affairs
are infinitely better than Is Mr. Pollen's,
and TO any one who has had the happy
privilege of hearing the lecture by Capt
Carpenter of H. NJ S. Vindictiye ON the
Zeebrugge action this winters description
and analysis will seem i'll Informed indeed.
Quite the best chapter in the book is
that on the destruction of the German
cruiser Koenigsberg by the British moni-
tors Mersey and Severn in the Rufgi
Delta IN Africa. Most of the letterpress
is quoted from description by one Of the
participants, who tells the story Of the
action in good crisp naval fashion. Mr.
Polien's comments are sound; but here
again he minimizes the fact of how
quickly the naval officers in command of
the two monitors rectifed the errors of the
first attack on the German ship on their
second trial by going into action with one
monitor first and following with the see
ond separately, to the end that the shots
could be spotted" more accurately. Mr..
Pollen is of The opinion that this should
have been common practice in gunnery,
and that it was not he lays the blame,
once more, On the doorstep of the British
Admiralty.
That there always will he two schools of
professional naval opinion is as near a
certainty as any human prediction can be-
But where does Mr. Pollen find ''the pop
ular fallacy" that sithe battleships are
useless, and that it is the submarine that
reigns at sea" has any foundation in pro-
fessional opiniOni Mr.. Pollen's state
ment on page 81 that Capt Allen Of
H. NJ. S. Kent, in his fight with the Nurn-
berg in the Falkland Islands action. "pur-
sued at full speed until he had crippled
the enemy's engines" is not borne out by
the statements in his detailed study of
this battle, for on page POS We read:
"But suddenly, soon after half-past five,
Kent began to gain enormously
upon her opponent. 1t was OBJ
vious that NlrnbergIs motive power had
somehow come to grief. Had one of
Kents shells landed in her engines, or had
one Of her boilers, under the strain of 50
many hours high pressure, given vayf
The fact is that Nlnberg had the heels
of Kent until that moment and Capt
Allen was chasing the German because he
had to. No naval critics sophistries can
alter that condition of affairs
Much Of the matter in this volume has
previously appeared in the English peri
odical Laad and Water. Practically no
effort has been made to bring it up to
date and, therefore, the text must stand
before the reader chiefly as an exhibition
Of contemporary naval criticism that is
sadly out Of date with only q slight his
terieal interest, and this in q British
political sense
THE BRITISH NAVY IN BATTLE. BY