The German losses were officially stated as follows:

Immediately after the battle, the Germans claimed that Jutland had been a great German naval victory. This claim was at once disputed by the British, who insisted that the Germans were concealing their true losses and had published a list of only half of the tonnage which had been destroyed. Jellicoe estimated that the total German tonnage destroyed in the battle was in the neighborhood of 120,000, and many and bitterly scornful were the British jibes at the untruthfulness of the German Admiralty. With the close of the war, however, it was seen that the German statement had been correct. However, many of the German ships which returned to port were in an almost helpless condition and doubtless the British estimate of the German losses included many vessels which the British believed could not make port but which managed to keep afloat until safe within German harbors.

Accordingly, considered absolutely, Jutland was a German victory. But it must be remembered that the ratio of the British fleet to the German was as two to one, and as the losses were in that ratio, Jutland, considered relatively, was a drawn battle. At all events, the outcome of the battle was indecisive. The British continued to control the seas and to maintain their blockade; the Germans continued their submarine attacks and furtive bombardments. There had been no

test of the strength of the respective main fleets-the British had fled when outnumbered and the Germans had fled when outnumbered. The naval situation was the same after June 1, 1916 as it had been

before May 31, 1916.

An indirect result of the Battle of Jutland was the replacement of Sir John Jellicoe in command of the British Grand Fleet by Sir David Beatty, on November 29, 1916.

Shortly after the greatest naval contest of the war came another severe blow to Great Britain. On June 6, there sank off the Orkney Islands the British armored cruiser, Hampshire. The vessel and the crew were a total loss, and to the end of the war there was no information as to how the ship had met its end. The vessel had been transporting to Russia the man in complete charge of the British war program, Lord Kitchener, and he went down with the ship. But by the summer of 1916, Kitchener's work had largely been done. His extensive plans for England's participation in the war had been matured and other shoulders were better prepared to take the burden of the direction of the war than they would have been in 1914 or 1915. Kitchener was succeeded as Minister of War by David LloydGeorge.

Other naval incidents in the year 1916 were unimportant. Throughout the year a number of British warships, large and small, were sunk by mines or torpedoes. In August a skirmish was fought in the North Sea between fragments of the main fleets, and the British cruisers Falmouth and Nottingham were sunk and the German battleship Westfallen, although not sunk, was seriously damaged. On the whole, the Russians maintained control of the Black Sea and the French of the Mediterranean, but Turkish warships appeared on occasions in the Black Sea as did Austrian warships in the Adriatic. In March, the German auxiliary cruiser Moewe slipped safely through the British blockade into a German port, after having destroyed much merchant shipping.

The situation at the end of 1916 was still distinctly favorable for the Central Powers. True, 1916 had not been so decidedly a German year as had 1915, but nevertheless the developments of the year had been more helpful to the Central Powers than to the Allies. Germany had failed to break through at Verdun, but similarly the Allies had in turn signally failed in their great effort along the Somme. Russia had revealed some signs of recuperation from her complete military collapse in 1915, but the recuperation was not vigorous and the signs were many that Russia would be of less and less assistance to the Allies. The Russian people were becoming war-weary to the point of revolt; the Russian government was yielding bit by bit to German influences; and rumors of a separate peace with Russia were increasing, in spite of the fact that in September, 1914 the Allies had formally agreed that no one of them would make peace without the consent of all. The blockade of the Allies was causing great inconvenience and distress in Germany and Austria-Hungary, but the great victories of the Central Powers in Servia, Roumania, Poland and the Dardanelles had opened new sources of supplies. On the sea, the Allies still maintained control, but the submarine warfare was greatly hindering the prosecution of the war by the Entente. In man-power the Central Powers were at a disadvantage, as they had by this time put forth their maximum strength, and France was the only one of the Allies which had called upon her man-power to its utmost resources; but the geographical position of the Central Powers was such that they could utilize their man-power to far greater advantages than the Allies could utilize theirs. Italy was employed entirely in occupying the territory she desired to annex, and her support had not yet been of signal help. Moreover, Germany was revealing far greater industrial skill in manipulating her resources than the Allies, for the latter, although taking many steps towards the greater material war-time efficiency of state socialism (state capitalism), were nevertheless hampered by a tenderness of feeling for private property and private interests to which Germany in war-time was less subservient. In March, the Allies for the first time had pooled their resources in a Joint War Council, followed by a great Joint Economic Conference in Paris. in June. In the latter, they officially declared that even after the war

they intended to cripple Germany's commerce and industry. Whatever the ethical and economic justification of this declaration, its practical effect was that the German people was more readily persuaded than ever by its government that the war it was fighting was in reality a war for the defence of the Fatherland; and that if the German people should refuse to support the war whole-heartedly, the terms of peace imposed by the victorious Allies would be the brutal terms of the victor over the vanquished. There is much evidence to show that before June, with the German failure at Verdun, the feeling for revolt or at least for a greater democratization of the German political system had been growing in Germany; but the official statement of the Paris Economic Conference served the effect of discouraging and weakening the forces making for revolution inside of Germany and Austria-Hungary. In 1914, the Allies had promised to set up an independent Poland at the expense of Germany and Austria-Hungary, although it would be under the general suzerainty cf Russia; but in 1916 Germany countered against the advantageous political effect of that declaration by promising in turn an independent Poland at the expense of Russia, although naturally refusing to admit within its boundaries the Poles in Prussia and Galicia. On the whole, the Allies were wasting their greater resources so much more rapidly than the Central Powers were wasting their lesser resources that ultimate victory for the Allies was becoming recognized as doubtful unless the United States should finally be drawn into the war.

THE WAR, 1917

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Not until many decades after the official termination of the Great War will it be possible to determine which of the settlements arising from the struggle will prove to be superficial and which will prove of far-reaching effect. Although no other war has so thoroughly shaken .civilization to its foundations as has the Great War, yet there have been wars, and great wars, before this, and their results have usually been seen with different eyes by the generation which passed through them and by the generations which knew them only through the written pages of history. Political necessity makes strange bedfellows overnight and the evil civilization of one decade becomes the beneficent civilization of the next. In 1900, Great Britain resounded with praise of Germany and bitter detestation of Russia; in 1910, Germany had become the enemy and Russia the ally. In 1887, the British Government semi-officially announced that England would not feel called upon to declare war against a country which used Belgium for a military passage-way, with no idea of permanent occupancy; and in 1914 England's official reason for entering the lists against Germany was the German violation of the treaty of 1839, guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality. Our own Mexican War seemed unrighteous, in the whole United States, to only a few recalcitrant spirits like Daniel Webster; today most American historians confess that it was hardly justified. Even the complete helplessness of the military autocracy which was Germany may not be lasting; in 1870 France was also on her knees. The League of Nations may be permanent or may dissolve into another illusion like the Hague Conferences. Woodrow Wilson himself has maintained that the Great War had its roots in the disregard of the right of minor nationalities to choose their own political destinies, and in a number of instances the Treaties of Versailles place nationalities