In continued anxiety lest some capital mistake should be made through a different sense of proportion prevailing in the Fleet and at the Admiralty, I drew up the following appreciation which with the concurrence of the First Sea Lord was sent officially to Sir John Jellicoe.
_Admiralty to Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleets. August 8, 1914. Sent 10.15 p.m._
1. To-morrow, Sunday, the Expeditionary Force begins to cross the Channel. During that week the Germans have the strongest incentives to action. They know that the Expeditionary Force is leaving, and that the mobilisation and training of the Territorial Army is incomplete. They may well argue that a raid or raids now upon the East Coast would interrupt, confuse and probably delay the departure of the Army, and further that it might draw the Grand Fleet rapidly South to interfere with the landing.
2. Alternatively, or simultaneously, they may attempt to rush the Straits and interrupt the passage of the Army. It seems in the last degree improbable that if they did so they would use their modern Battle Fleet. Their principle has been, according to all we know about them, to aim at a general battle with the British Fleet when by attrition and accident our margin of superiority has been reduced. They may be assumed to know our general dispositions in the South, and the strong and numerous Submarine flotillas of which we and the French dispose. They must apprehend that the Straits are mined. Since the distance across the Channel can be covered in 6 to 8 hours, 3 hours’ notice of their approach would enable every transport to reach safety. To force the Straits and enter the Channel with their best ships means the certain loss of units which it is vital to them to preserve if they are ever to fight a general battle. And this sacrifice, with all its hazards, would lead them only into an Anglo-French lake, lined with fortified harbours and infested with torpedo craft, at the end of which lies the Atlantic Ocean, and the Grand Fleet—wherever it is—certainly between them and home. If this plan were followed by the Germans, we should mine the Straits of Dover heavily behind them, and leave you to engage them at your convenience.