you _can't_ sink a coast. But even
trying to run them down at night was out of the question too; for their
strongest point was night fighting, which is much fuller of risks and
chances than day battles are. Besides, there was the chance of missing
them and losing the best position between them and their base. So
Jellicoe and Beatty separated again and steamed, parallel to each
other, south-south-east to within a hundred miles of the German coast.
They could not possibly cover more than a quarter of the whole way into
the Danish and German coasts; and so most of the Germans managed to
slip in behind them, round by the north.

The night fighting was done by the light craft; and it was here that
Jellicoe had so much need of Tyrwhitt's flotillas from Harwich.
Harwich was very handy to the battlefield and Tyrwhitt's light craft
were as keen and ready as any one could be. But the Government were
afraid to let them go, for fear lest some Germans might raid the
English coast. There was very little chance of a raid at all. It
could not have been a bad one in any case. No mere raid can change the
course of a war. The best way to stop raids is to win the war by
destroying the enemy's means of destroying you. The best way to do
this is to smash his main force wherever it happens to be. And the
best way to smash it is to throw all your own forces against it once
you get a hold on it. But people who are scared in one place will not
think about the war as a whole, though that is the way to save these
very people as well as all the rest. So they ask for some defence they
can actually see. It was much the same as in the days of the Spanish
Armada. Drake and Jellicoe wanted to do the right thing. But Queen
Elizabeth's Council and King George's Government wanted to humour the
people concerned. The only comfort is that, with all our faults, we of
the British Empire make fewer naval mistakes than other people do.

The light craft that did reach that famous battlefield could not have
done more to guard the British battle lines and harass the flying
Germans. There was many a weird sight as scurrying cruisers and
destroyers suddenly showed up, ominously black, against the ghastly
whiteness of the searchlit sea. Hunters and hunted raced, turned, and
twisted without a moment's pause. "We couldn't tell what was
happening," said the commander of a dashing destroyer. "Every now and
then out of the silence would come _Bang! bang