What happened, for instance, at Jutland, the principal general engagement in the last war?
At Jutland, we had both armoured and light cruisers in the scouting line. In theory, the former should have been able to do their work better than the smaller cruisers by being better able to smash their way through the enemy's scouts into a position for sighting and reporting the German battleships. i What happened in reality? Three big armoured cruisers, Defence, Warrior and Black Prince, were' sunk without "achieving anything. The really valuable piece of scouting was performed by Commodore Goodenough's 5,000-ton Southampton.
There was a more remarkable thing still The small un armoured light cruisers actually took more sinking than their armoured big brothers. At Jutland, the 15,000-torr Defence came under the fire of the German battle cruisers and blew up in two or three minutes. The German 4,900-ton Wiesbaden withstood the fire of the whole mighty Grand Fleet, and did nep sink till many hours leter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.