n fleet might have had one chance
in ten of getting a turn of fortune in its favour by an unexpected stroke
of strategy. This was the danger against which Jellicoe had to guard.
For in one sense, the Germans had the tactical offensive by sea as
well as by land; theirs the outward thrust from the centre. They could
choose when to come out of their harbour; when to strike. The British
had to keep watch all the time and be ready whenever the enemy
should come.

Thus, the British Grand Fleet was at sea in the early part of the war,
cruising here and there, begging for battle. Then it was that it learned
how to avoid submarines and mine-fields. Submarines had played a
greater part than expected, because Germany had chosen a guerrilla
naval warfare: to harass, to wound, to wear down. Doubtless she
hoped to reduce the number of British fighting units by attrition.

Weak England might be in plants for making arms for an army, but
not in ship-building. Here was her true genius. She was a maritime
power; Germany a land power. Her part as an ally of France and
Russia being to command the sea, all demands of the Admiralty for
material must take precedence over demands of the War Office. At
the end of the first year she had increased her fighting power by sea
to a still higher ratio of preponderance over the Germans; in another
year she would increase it further.

Admiral von Tirpitz wanted nothing so much as to draw the British
fleet under the guns of Heligoland or into a mine-field and submarine
trap. But Sir John Jellicoe refused the bait. When he had completed
his precautions and his organization to meet new conditions, his fleet
need not go into the open. His Dreadnoughts could rest at anchor at
a base, while his scouts kept in touch with all that was passing, and
his auxiliaries and destroyers fought the submarines. Without a British
Dreadnought having fired a shot at a German Dreadnought, nowhere
on the face of the seas might a single vessel show the German flag
except by thrusting it above the water for a few minutes.

If von Tirpitz sent his fleet out he, too, might find himself in a trap of
mines and submarines. He was losing submarines and England was
building more. His naval force rather than Sir John's was suffering
from attrition. The blockade was complete from Iceland to the North
Sea. While the world knew of the work of the armies, the care that
this task required, the hardships endured, the enormous expenditure