ceeded to train the newly formed squadron. In some ways it was an advantage. He came to this vital task with an original and untrammelled view of its essential objects, with an instinct for warfare developed in actual fighting, and with a mind undulled by subservience to that long grind of routine which is the inevitable avenue to flag rank except for the fortunate few who, like him, can gain early promotion for fighting services. Throughout his career, when Beatty was given the choice of decoration or other distinction as a reward for such service, he always chose promotion. He had an instinctive certainty that war with Germany would come in his time; and in so far as it lay in his power to shape his career, he shaped it so that he should be in a position to take a leading hand when the hour struck. As it was, with all the brilliant rapidity of his advance- ment, the war came just a little too soon to give him at the out- set, and at the most vital moment, the position of commander- in-chief, which no doubt would have come to him almost as a matter of course if he had had a little longer in which to prove his undoubted qualifications for that post. When he did suc- ceed to it the pioneer work of fleet organization had been done by Sir John Jellicoe, and the policy governing the use of the Grand Fleet as a strategic weapon had been, for good or ill, definitely established.
When the World War broke out, Beatty, although long marked by an intelligent few as certain to achieve distinction, was practically unknown to the navy at large. The routine Home fleet service in which officers get to know each other intimately had claimed little of his time; and when he took command of the battle cruisers even Lord Fisher had never met him. But a very few weeks of war service revealed his quality as a leader. In the action of the Heligoland Bight (Aug. 28 1914), a reconnaissance of light craft in which the battle cruisers were acting in support of Commodores Keyes and Tyrwhitt, Sir David Beatty exhibited his remarkable instinct for being at the right place at the right moment. Partly owing to faulty Admiralty dispositions the British light craft, after the first object of the action had been achieved, were in danger of being cut off when Adml. Beatty, acting not so much on information as on his intuitive sense of the position, turned back through a submarine-infested area and arrived just in time to save them and sink every German ship in the immediate neighbourhood. Then and throughout the war his battle cruisers were the spearhead of the British naval forces. In a score of operations of which, as they did not result in con- tact with the enemy, history takes no note, and in the two which developed into fleet actions, Beatty, in his famous flagship the " Lion," was the leading spirit and pivot of the fighting forces. A true disciple of Nelson, he was a rebel against the official conception of British strategy that, provided the enemy were properly contained, his destruction was a kind of luxury that might be indulged in only on condition that the containing force was not unduly risked. Beatty, on the other hand, was inspired with the spirit of attack. He had unique qualities as a leader which made men willing to follow him anywhere, and to achieve the impossible; but apart from his dash and courage he showed consummate skill and caution in dealing with the new hidden elements which have placed so great a power in the hands of the defensive in modern naval warfare. At the battle of the Dogger Bank (Jan. 24 1915) he chased the enemy for three hours, inflicting such severe punishment that the " Blucher " was sunk and the " Seydlitz " and " Derfflinger " and " Moltke " were in full flight, the two former in a bat- tered condition, when the " Lion," which as head of the pur- suing line had received heavy punishment, was put out of action, and the command devolved on Rear-Adml. Sir Archi- bald Moore. This officer, whose flag was flying in the " New Zealand," gave no orders during the vital 40 minutes following the " Lion's " disablement. Adml. Beatty's signals to " keep nearer to the enemy " were either missed or misunderstood by the ships immediately following him, with the result that touch with the German battle cruisers was lost, and what was on the point of becoming a complete victory was left merely as an
indecisive castigation of the enemy. The facts of this action, which had not been officially made public up to the spring of 1921, were first given at that date in Mr. Filson Young's With the Battle Cruisers, containing a very full account of the battle, with track charts and the actual text and times of the signals made. 1
Beatty's brilliant handling of the battle cruisers in the battle of Jutland is discussed in the article on that action (see JUTLAND, BATTLE OF). Some months later (Dec. 1916) he succeeded Sir John Jellicoe as Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, in which capacity he received the surrender of the German fleet on Nov. 21 1918. He was raised to the peerage in 1919 as Earl Beatty, Visct. Borodale of Borodale, Baron Beatty of the North Sea, receiving the thanks of Parliament and 100,000. At the same time he was awarded the G.C.B., the O.M. and other honours and decorations. In 1919 he became First Sea Lord, and immediately set in motion measures for a reorganization of the naval staff on lines which would give the younger school of naval thought and experience a chance to make itself felt. He attended at Washington, D.C., in 1921 the Conference on the Limitation of Armament.
The following estimate of Lord Beatty was given, in the book referred to, by Mr. Filson Young, who had served on his staff in the " Lion."
" One who has served him and observed him closely in the stress of war may at least bear this testimony to his conduct in the chapter of his life which is already over: that in everything that he did or attempted he showed forth in himself and evoked in others the fighting spirit that made England invincible in the past. The com- mon view of him as a dashing leader trusting largely to luck, which so much endears a man to the ordinary English mind, is singularly untrue. It was not the mere instinct of the hunting-field, strong- as it was in him, that brought him to the head of the Navy. His caution and his sense of responsibility were just as remarkable as his enterprise; but they were never allowed to obscure or dominate the fighting spirit. Perhaps the greatest tribute one can pay to him and to the Navy is to say that in the qualities in which he proved supreme he was not exceptional, but typical; and it was because he was a product of the modern Navy and contained in himself all its most characteristic qualities, that the Navy would have trusted and followed him anywhere."
Lord Beatty married in 1901 Ethel, daughter of Marshall Field, sen., of Chicago; of his two sons the elder, Viscount Borodale, was in 1921 a cadet in the Royal Navy. (F. Y.)
BEAUCHAMP, WILLIAM LYGON, 7TH EARL (1872- ),
English politician, was born in London Feb. 20 1872, the eldest son of the 6th earl. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and afterwards entered public life as a Liberal. In 1891 he succeeded his father in the title. He was
mayor of Worcester from 1895 to 1896, and in 1897 became a member of the London School Board. In 1899 he was appointed governor of N.S.W., but in 1901 returned to England. In 1907 he became lord steward of the royal household, and in 1910 entered Mr. Asquith's Cabinet as first commissioner of works and lord president of the council, retaining the latter
post on the reconstruction of the Government in 1914. He
received the Order of the Garter in 1914, and retired in 1915.
Lord Beauchamp was from 1906 to 1907 captain of the Honour-
able Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms, and in 1913 was made lord
warden of the Cinque Ports. He married in 1902 Lady Lettice
Grosvenor, daughter of Earl Grosvenor and sister of the 2nd
Duke of Westminster.
BEAVERBROOK, WILLIAM MAXWELL AITKEN, 1ST BARON
(1879- ), British politician, was born at Newcastle, New
Brunswick, on May 25 1879, the son of the Rev. William
Aitken, Presbyterian minister of Newcastle. He was edu-
cated at Newcastle, and afterwards went into business, where
he had a very successful career as a financier. Having made
1 The Financial Secretary to the Admiralty answered in the affirmative a question asked in the House of Commons on May 4 1921 by Visct. Curzon as to whether the account given in this book might be taken as correct. Its publication then relieved Adml. Beatty of any responsibility for the somewhat misleading version originally issued by the Admiralty of his own dispatch after the battle.
