Rutland of Jutland

In 1916, after the Battle of Jutland, Flight Commander F. J. Rutland dove from the deck of the seaplane carrier Engandine to rescue a wounded rating whom a ship's heave had plunked into the sea. A proud Britain awarded Hero Rutland one of its most sparingly given decorations: the gold Albert Medal.

After World War I, Britain sent Rutland as technical officer to Japan, instructed him to "withhold nothing" from the ally she was wooing. In the House of Commons last week plain-talking Admiral Sir Roger Keyes told the rest of Rutland's story: "He stayed in Japan until 1923 and returned home again for five years. He then asked to return to Japan. For the following five years he acted in America as a secret service agent for Japan. He had been given the names of American naval officers, with whom he dealt."

Last year Rutland suddenly repented, talked with U.S. Naval Intelligence officers. They hustled him off to Britain where, last October, he laid down "a most complete scheme of intelligence against Japan." Bluntly dismissed, he hung around until ten days after Pearl Harbor; then the Home Office clapped him in jail.

"I am not concerned," said Admiral Keyes, "with defending Rutland when he seemed to be hunting with the hounds and running with the fox. But his services might have been of immediate value. He could have told what the Repulse and the Prince of Wales were likely to expect when they got into those [Malayan] waters--a superior fleet and an enormous air force." There was only one living Briton, he reminded the Houses, who could wear an Albert Medal, First Class, awarded him in World War I. That Briton was ex-Flight Commander Rutland.

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