The official documents relating to the Battle of Jutland have at last been published. Nothing in the course of the war has been debated so thoroughly as the naval battle on the issue of which hung such great issues, and in spite of the fact that the official report appears to have been haphazardly thrown together in a volume of 604 pages it will be dissected very thoroughly both at home and abroad. Without going into too great detail, the main point brought out by the report is that the plan of manceuvre throughout the battle was in general accordance with a scheme of operations drawn up by Admiral Jellicoe in the early days of the war, and a plan that had received the sanction of the senior officers of the fleet. In_ this memorandum Admiral Jellicoe says. "If the enemy battle fleet were to turn away from an advancing fleet, I should assume that it was their intention to lead us over mines or submarines, and should decline to be so drawn." The date and tenour of this memmorandum, which suggests circumstances that afterwards materialized, should set at rest for ever the implication occasionally heard that. the Fleet Commander was __overcautious in action, or that a better decision might have been made apart from the flurry of battle.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.