At last the long vigil in the North Sea has ended in the glorious if indecisive battle of Jutland, the greatest sea fight since Trafalgar.  Yet was it indecisive?  After the momentary dismay caused by the first Admiralty communique with its over-estimate of our losses, public confidence, shaken where it was strongest, has been restored by further information and by the admissions of the enemy.  We have to mourn the loss of many ships, still more the loss of splendid ships’ companies and their heroic captains.  We can sympathise with the cruel disappointment of those who, after bearing the brunt of the action, were robbed of the opportunity of overwhelming their enemy by failing light and the exigencies of a strategy governed in the last resort by political caution.  But look at the sequel.  The German Fleet, badly battered, retires to port; and despite the paeans of exultation from their Admirals, Kaiser, and Imperial Chancellor, remains there throughout the month.  Will it ever come out again?  Meanwhile, Wilhelmshaven is closed indefinitely, and nobody is allowed to see those sheep in Wolff’s clothing—­the “victorious fleet.”  The true verdict, so far as we can judge, may be expressed in homely phrase:  The British Navy has taken a knock but given a harder one.  We can stand it and they can’t.

[Illustration:  THE LOST CHIEF

In Memory of Field-Marshal Earl Kitchener, Maker of Armies]

Within a week of Jutland the Empire has been stirred to its depths by the tragic death of Lord Kitchener in the Hampshire, blown up by a mine off the Shetlands on her voyage to Archangel.  On the eve of starting on his mission to Russia his last official act had been to meet his critics of the House of Commons face to face, reply to their questions and leave them silenced and admiring.  On the day of the battle of Jutland these critics had moved the Prime Minister to declare that Lord Kitchener was personally entitled to the credit for the amazing expansion of the army.  Sir Mark Sykes, no mean authority, asserted that in Germany our War Secretary was feared as a great organiser, while in the East his name was one to conjure with; and Sir George Reid, a worthy representative of the Dominions, observed that his chief fault was that he was “not clever at circulating the cheap coin of calculated civilities which enable inferior men to rise to positions to which they are not entitled.”  These tributes were delivered in his lifetime; they deserve to be contrasted with the appreciations of those journalists who clamoured for his appointment, then clamoured for his dismissal, and profaned his passing with their insincere eulogies.  Three weeks of Recess elapsed before the Houses could render homage to the illustrious dead.  In the Lords the debt has been paid by a statesman, Lord Lansdowne, a soldier, Lord French, and a friend, Lord Derby.  In the Commons the speeches were all touched with genuine emotion and the sense of personal loss.