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.
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