Читать книгу The Victory at Sea: History of the Naval Combat in WW1 - William Sowden Sims - Страница 5

Table of Contents

I

In the latter part of March, 1917, a message from the Navy Department came to me at Newport, where I was stationed as president of the Naval War College, summoning me immediately to Washington. The international atmosphere at that time was extremely tense, and the form in which these instructions were cast showed that something extraordinary was impending. The orders directed me to make my visit as unostentatious as possible; to keep all my movements secret, and, on my arrival in Washington, not to appear at the Navy Department, but to telephone headquarters. I promptly complied with these orders; and, after I got in touch with the navy chiefs, it took but a few moments to explain the situation. It seemed inevitable, I was informed, that the United States would soon be at war with Germany. Ambassador Page had cabled that it would be desirable, under the existing circumstances, that the American navy be represented by an officer of higher rank than any of those who were stationed in London at that time. The Department therefore wished me to leave immediately for England, to get in touch with the British Admiralty, to study the naval situation and learn how we could best and most quickly co-operate in the naval war. At this moment we were still technically at peace with Germany. Mr. Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy, therefore thought it wise that there should be no publicity about my movements. I was to remain ostensibly as head of the War College, and, in order that no suspicions should be aroused, my wife and family were still to occupy the official residence of its president. I was directed to sail on a merchant vessel, to travel under an assumed name, to wear civilian clothes and to take no uniform. On reaching the other side I was to get immediately in communication with the British Admiralty, and send to Washington detailed reports on prevailing conditions.

A few days after this interview in Washington two commonplace-looking gentlemen, dressed in civilian clothes, secretly boarded the American steamship New York. They were entered upon the passenger list as V. J. Richardson and S. W. Davidson. A day or two out an enterprising steward noticed that the initials on the pyjamas of one of these passengers differed from those of the name under which he was sailing and reported him to the captain as a suspicious character. The captain had a quiet laugh over this discovery, for he knew that Mr. Davidson was Rear-Admiral Sims, of the United States Navy, and that his companion who possessed the two sets of conflicting initials was Commander J. V. Babcock, the Admiral's aide. The voyage itself was an uneventful one, but a good deal of history was made in those few days that we spent upon the sea. Our ship reached England on April 9th; one week previously President Wilson had gone before Congress and asked for the declaration of a state of war with Germany. We had a slight reminder that a war was under way as we neared Liverpool, for a mine struck our vessel as we approached the outer harbour. The damage was not irreparable; the passengers were transferred to another steamer and we safely reached port, where I found a representative of the British Admiralty, Rear-Admiral Hope, waiting to receive me. The Admiralty had also provided a special train, in which we left immediately for London.

Whenever I think of the naval situation as it existed in April, 1917, I always have before my mind two contrasting pictures—one that of the British public, as represented in their press and in their social gatherings in London, and the other that of British officialdom, as represented in my confidential meetings with British statesmen and British naval officers. For the larger part the English newspapers were publishing optimistic statements about the German submarine campaign. In these they generally scouted the idea that this new form of piracy really threatened in any way the safety of the British Empire. They accompanied these rather cheerful outgivings by weekly statistics of submarine sinkings; figures which, while not particularly reassuring, hardly indicated that any serious inroads had yet been made on the British mercantile marine. The Admiralty was publishing tables showing that four or five thousand ships were arriving at British ports and leaving them every week, while other tables disclosed the number of British ships of less than sixteen hundred tons and more than sixteen hundred tons that were going down every seven days. Thus the week of my arrival I learned from these figures that Great Britain had lost seventeen ships above that size, and two ships below; that 2,406 vessels had arrived at British ports, that 2,367 had left, and that, in addition, seven fishing vessels had fallen victims to the German submarines. Such figures were worthless, for they did not include neutral ships and did not give the amount of tonnage sunk, details, of course, which it was necessary to keep from the enemy. The facts which the Government thus permitted to come to public knowledge did not indicate that the situation was particularly alarming. Indeed the newspapers all over the British Isles showed no signs of perturbation; on the contrary, they were drawing favourable conclusions from these statistics. Here and there one of them may have sounded a more apprehensive note; yet the generally prevailing feeling both in the press and in general discussions of the war seemed to be that the submarine campaign had already failed, that Germany's last desperate attempt to win the war had already broken down, and that peace would probably not be long delayed. The newspapers found considerable satisfaction in the fact that the "volume of British shipping was being maintained"; they displayed such headlines as "improvement continues"; they printed prominently the encouraging speeches of certain British statesmen, and in this way were apparently quieting popular apprehension concerning the outcome. This same atmosphere of cheerful ignorance I found everywhere in London society. The fear of German submarines was not disturbing the London season, which had now reached its height; the theatres were packed every night; everywhere, indeed, the men and women of the upper classes were apparently giving little thought to any danger that might be hanging over their country. Before arriving in England I myself had not known the gravity of the situation. I had followed the war from the beginning with the greatest interest; I had read practically everything printed about it in the American and foreign press, and I had had access to such official information as was available on our side of the Atlantic. The result was that, when I sailed for England in March, I felt little fear about the outcome. All the fundamental facts in the case made it appear impossible that the Germans could win the war. Sea power apparently rested practically unchallenged in the hands of the Allies; and that in itself, according to the unvarying lessons of history, was an absolute assurance of ultimate victory. The statistics of shipping losses had been regularly printed in the American press, and, while such wanton destruction of life and property seemed appalling, there was apparently nothing in these figures that was likely to make any material change in the result. Indeed it appeared to be altogether probable that the war would end before the United States could exert any material influence upon the outcome. My conclusions were shared by most American naval officers whom I knew, students of warfare, who, like myself, had the utmost respect for the British fleet and believed that it had the naval situation well in hand.

Yet a few days spent in London clearly showed that all this confidence in the defeat of the Germans rested upon a misapprehension. The Germans, it now appeared, were not losing the war—they were winning it. The British Admiralty now placed before the American representative facts and figures which it had not given to the British press. These documents disclosed the astounding fact that, unless the appalling destruction of merchant tonnage which was then taking place could be materially checked, the unconditional surrender of the British Empire would inevitably take place within a few months.

On the day of my arrival in London I had my first interview with Admiral Jellicoe, who was at that time the First Sea Lord. Admiral Jellicoe and I needed no introduction. I had known him for many years and for a considerable period we had been more or less regular correspondents. I had first made his acquaintance in China in 1901; at that time Jellicoe was a captain and was already recognized as one of the coming men of the British navy. He was an expert in ordnance and gunnery, a subject in which I was greatly interested; and this fact had brought us together and made us friends. The admiration which I had then conceived for the Admiral's character and intelligence I have never lost. He was then, as he has been ever since, an indefatigable worker, and more than a worker, for he was a profound student of everything which pertained to ships and gunnery, and a man who joined to a splendid intellect the real ability of command. I had known him in his own home with his wife and babies, as well as on shipboard among his men, and had observed at close hand the gracious personality which had the power to draw everyone to him and make him the idol both of his own children and the officers and jackies of the British fleet. Simplicity and directness were his two most outstanding points; though few men had risen so rapidly in the Royal Navy, success had made him only more quiet, soft spoken, and unostentatiously dignified; there was nothing of the blustering seadog about the Admiral, but he was all courtesy, all brain, and, of all the men I have ever met, there have been none more approachable, more frank, and more open-minded.

Physically Admiral Jellicoe is a small man, but as powerful in frame as he is in mind, and there are few men in the navy who can match him in tennis. His smooth-shaven face, when I met him that morning in April, 1917, was, as usual, calm, smiling, and imperturbable. One could never divine his thoughts by any outward display of emotion. Neither did he give any signs that he was bearing a great burden, though it is not too much to say that at this moment the safety of the British Empire rested chiefly upon Admiral Jellicoe's shoulders. I find the absurd notion prevalent in this country that his change from Commander of the Grand Fleet to First Sea Lord was something in the nature of a demotion; but nothing could be farther from the truth. As First Sea Lord, Jellicoe controlled the operations, not only of the Grand Fleet, but also of the entire British navy; he had no superior officer, for the First Lord of the Admiralty, the position in England that corresponds to our Secretary of the Navy, has no power to give any order whatever to the fleet—a power which our Secretary possesses. Thus the defeat of the German submarines was a direct responsibility which Admiral Jellicoe could divide with no other official. Great as this duty was, and appalling as was the submarine situation at the time of this interview, there was nothing about the Admiral's bearing which betrayed any depression of spirits. He manifested great seriousness indeed, possibly some apprehension, but British stoicism and the usual British refusal to succumb to discouragement were qualities that were keeping him tenaciously at his job.

After the usual greetings, Admiral Jellicoe took a paper out of his drawer and handed it to me. It was a record of tonnage losses for the last few months. This showed that the total sinkings, British and neutral, had reached 536,000 tons in February and 603,000 in March; it further disclosed that sinkings were taking place in April which indicated the destruction of nearly 900,000 tons. These figures indicated that the losses were three and four times as large as those which were then being published in the press.1

It is expressing it mildly to say that I was surprised by this disclosure. I was fairly astounded; for I had never imagined anything so terrible. I expressed my consternation to Admiral Jellicoe.

"Yes," he said, as quietly as though he were discussing the weather and not the future of the British Empire. "It is impossible for us to go on with the war if losses like this continue."

"What are you doing about it?" I asked.

"Everything that we can. We are increasing our anti-submarine forces in every possible way. We are using every possible craft we can find with which to fight submarines. We are building destroyers, trawlers, and other like craft as fast as we can. But the situation is very serious and we shall need all the assistance we can get."

"It looks as though the Germans were winning the war," I remarked.

"They will win, unless we can stop these losses—and stop them soon," the Admiral replied.

"Is there no solution for the problem?" I asked.

"Absolutely none that we can see now," Jellicoe announced. He described the work of destroyers and other anti-submarine craft, but he showed no confidence that they would be able to control the depredations of the U-boats.

The newspapers for several months had been publishing stories that submarines in large numbers were being sunk; and these stories I now found to be untrue. The Admiralty records showed that only fifty-four German submarines were positively known to have been sunk since the beginning of the war; the German shipyards, I was now informed, were turning out new submarines at the rate of three a week. The newspapers had also published accounts of the voluntary surrender of German U-boats; but not one such surrender, Admiral Jellicoe said, had ever taken place; the stories had been circulated merely for the purpose of depreciating enemy moral. I even found that members of the Government, all of whom should have been better informed, and also British naval officers, believed that many captured German submarines had been carefully stowed away at the Portsmouth and Plymouth navy yards. Yet the disconcerting facts which faced the Allies were that the supplies and communications of the forces on all fronts were threatened; that German submarines were constantly extending their operations farther and farther out into the Atlantic; that German raiders were escaping into the open sea; that three years' constant operations had seriously threatened the strength of the British navy, and that Great Britain's control of the sea was actually at stake. Nor did Admiral Jellicoe indulge in any false expectations concerning the future. Bad as the situation then was, he had every expectation that it would grow worse. The season which was now approaching would make easier the German operations, for the submarines would soon have the long daylight of the British summer and the more favourable weather. The next few months, indeed, both in the estimation of the Germans and the British, would witness the great crisis of the war; the basis of the ruthless campaign upon which the submarines had entered was that they could reach the decision before winter closed in. So far as I could learn there was a general belief in British naval circles that this plan would succeed. The losses were now approaching a million tons a month; it was thus a matter of very simple arithmetic to determine the length of time the Allies could stand such a strain. According to the authorities the limit of endurance would be reached about November 1, 1917; in other words, unless some method of successfully fighting submarines could be discovered almost immediately, Great Britain would have to lay down her arms before a victorious Germany.

"What we are facing is the defeat of Great Britain," said Ambassador Walter H. Page, after the situation had been explained to him.

In the next few weeks I had many interviews with Admiral Jellicoe and other members of the Admiralty. Sitting in conference with them every morning, I became, for all practical purposes, a member of their organization. There were no secrets of the British navy which were not disclosed to their new American ally. This policy was in accordance with the broad-minded attitude of the British Government; there was a general desire that the United States should understand the situation completely, and from the beginning matters were discussed with the utmost frankness. Everywhere was manifested a willingness to receive suggestions and to try any expedient that promised to be even remotely successful; yet the feeling prevailed that there was no quick and easy way to defeat the submarine, that anything even faintly resembling the much-sought "answer" had not yet appeared on the horizon. The prevailing impression that any new invention could control the submarine in time to be effective was deprecated. The American press was at that time constantly calling upon Edison and other great American inventors to solve this problem, and, in fact, inventors in every part of two hemispheres were turning out devices by the thousands. A regular department of the Admiralty which was headed by Admiral Fisher had charge of investigating their proposals; in a few months it had received and examined not far from 40,000 inventions, none of which answered the purpose, though many of them were exceedingly ingenious. British naval officers were not hostile to such projects; they declared, however, that it would be absurd to depend upon new devices for defeating the German campaign. The overshadowing fact—a fact which I find that many naval men have not yet sufficiently grasped—is that time was the all-important element. It was necessary not only that a way be found of curbing the submarine, but of accomplishing this result at once. The salvation of the great cause in which we had engaged was a matter of only a few months. A mechanical device, or a new type of ship which might destroy this menace six months hence, would not have helped us, for by that time Germany would have won the war.

I discussed the situation also with members of the Cabinet, such as Mr. Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, and Sir Edward Carson. Their attitude to me was very different from the attitude which they were taking publicly; these men naturally would say nothing in the newspapers that would improve the enemy moral; but in explaining the situation to me they repeated practically everything that Jellicoe had said. It was the seriousness of this situation that soon afterward sent Mr. Balfour and the British Commission to the United States. The world does not yet understand what a dark moment that was in the history of the Allied cause. Not only were the German submarines sweeping British commerce from the seas, but the German armies were also defeating the British and French on the battlefields in France. It is only when we recall that the Germans were attaining the high peak of success with the U-boats at the very moment that General Nivelle's offensive had failed on the Western Front that we can get some idea of the real tragedy of the Allied situation in the spring of 1917.

"Things were dark when I took that trip to America," Mr. Balfour said to me afterward. "The submarines were constantly on my mind. I could think of nothing but the number of ships which they were sinking. At that time it certainly looked as though we were going to lose the war."

One of the men who most keenly realized the state of affairs was the King. I met His Majesty first in the vestibule of St. Paul's, on that memorable occasion in April, 1917, when the English people held a thanksgiving service to commemorate America's entrance into the war. Then, as at several subsequent meetings, the King impressed me as a simple, courteous, unaffected English gentleman. He was dressed in khaki, like any other English officer, and his manner was warm-hearted, sincere, and even democratic.

"It gives me great pleasure to meet you on an occasion like this," said His Majesty, referring to the great Anglo-American memorial service. "I am also glad to greet an American admiral on such a mission as yours. And I wish you all success."

On that occasion we naturally had little time to discuss the submarines, but a few days afterward I was invited to spend the night at Windsor Castle. The King in his own home proved to be even more cordial, if that were possible, than at our first meeting. After dinner we adjourned to a small room and there, over our cigars, we discussed the situation at considerable length. The King is a rapid and animated talker; he was kept constantly informed on the submarine situation, and discussed it that night in all its details. I was at first surprised by his familiarity with all naval questions and the intimate touch which he was evidently maintaining with the British fleet. Yet this was not really surprising, for His Majesty himself is a sailor; in his early youth he joined the navy, in which he worked up like any other British boy. He seemed almost as well informed about the American navy as about the British; he displayed the utmost interest in our preparations on land and sea, and he was particularly solicitous that I, as the American representative, should have complete access to the Admiralty Office. About the submarine campaign, the King was just as outspoken as Jellicoe and the other members of the Admiralty. The thing must be stopped, or the Allies could never win the war.

Of all the influential men in British public life there was only one who at that time took an optimistic attitude. This was Mr. Lloyd George. I met the Prime Minister frequently at dinners, at his own country place and elsewhere, and the most lasting impression which I retain of this wonderful man was his irrepressible gaiety of spirits. I think of the Prime Minister of Great Britain as a great, big, exuberant boy, always laughing and joking, constantly indulging in repartee and by-play, and even in this crisis, perhaps the darkest one of British history, showing no signs of depression. His face, which was clear in its complexion as a girl's, never betrayed the slightest anxiety, and his eyes, which were always sparkling, never disclosed the faintest shadow. It was a picture which I shall never forget—that of this man, upon whose shoulders the destiny of the Empire chiefly rested, apparently refusing to admit, even to himself, the dangers that were seemingly overwhelming it, heroically devoting all his energies to uplifting the spirits of his countrymen, and, in his private intercourse with his associates, even in the most fateful moments, finding time to tell funny stories, to recall entertaining anecdotes of his own political career, to poke fun at the mistakes of his opponents, and to turn the general conversation a thousand miles away from the Western Front and the German submarines. It was the most inspiring instance of self-control that I have ever known; indeed only one other case in history can be compared with it; Lloyd George's attitude at this period constantly reminded me of Lincoln in the darkest hours of the Civil War, when, after receiving news of such calamities as Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville, he would entertain his cabinet by reading selections from Artemus Ward, interlarded with humorous sayings and anecdotes of his own. Perhaps Lloyd George's cheerfulness is explained by another trait which he likewise possessed in common with Lincoln; there is a Welsh mysticism in his nature which, I am told, sometimes takes the form of religious exaltation. Lloyd George's faith in God and in a divine ordering of history was evidently so profound that the idea of German victory probably never seized his mind as a reality; we all know that Lincoln's absolute confidence in the triumph of the North rested upon a similar basis. Certainly only some such deep-set conviction as this could explain Lloyd George's serenity and optimism in the face of the most frightful calamities. I attended a small dinner at which the Premier was present four days after the Germans had made their terrible attack in March, 1918. Even on this occasion he showed no evidences of strain; as usual his animated spirits held the upper hand; he was talking incessantly, but he never even mentioned the subject that was absorbing the thoughts of the rest of the world at that moment; instead he rattled along, touching upon the Irish question, discussing the impression which Irish conscription would make in America, and, now and then, pausing to pass some bantering remark to Mr. Balfour. This was the way that I always saw the head of the British Government; never did I meet him when he was fagged or discouraged, or when he saw any end to the war but a favourable one.

On several occasions I attempted to impress Mr. Lloyd George with the gravity of the situation; he always refused to acknowledge that it was grave.

"Oh, yes, things are bad," he would say with a smile and a sweep of his hand. "But we shall get the best of the submarines—never fear!"

The cheerfulness of the Prime Minister, however, was exceptional; all his associates hardly concealed their apprehension. On the other hand, a wave of enthusiasm was at that time sweeping over Germany. Americans still have an idea that the German Government adopted the submarine campaign as the last despairing gambler's chance, and that they only half believed in its success themselves. There is an impression here that the Germans never would have staked their Empire on this desperate final throw had they foreseen that the United States would have mobilized against them all its men and resources. This conviction is entirely wrong. The Germans did not think that they were taking any chances when they announced their unrestricted campaign; the ultimate result seemed to them to be a certainty. They calculated the available shipping which the Allies and the neutral nations had afloat; they knew just how many ships their submarines could sink every month, and from these statistics they mathematically deduced, with real German precision, the moment when the war would end. They did not like the idea of adding the United States to their enemies, but this was because they were thinking of conditions after the war; for they would have preferred to have had American friendship in the period of readjustment. But they did not fear that we could do them much injury in the course of the war itself. This again was not because they really despised our fighting power; they knew that we would prove a formidable enemy on the battlefield; but the obvious fact, to their eyes, was that our armies could never get to the front in time. The submarine campaign, they said, would finish the thing in three or four months; and certainly in that period the unprepared United States could never summon any military power that could affect the result. Thus from a purely military standpoint the entrance of 100,000,000 Americans affected them about as much as would a declaration of war from the planet Mars.

We confirmed this point of view from the commanders of the occasionally captured submarines. These men would be brought to London and questioned; they showed the utmost confidence in the result.

"Yes, you've got us," they would say, "but what difference does that make? There are plenty more submarines coming out. You will get a few, but we can build a dozen for every one that you can capture or sink. Anyway, the war will all be over in two or three months and we shall be sent back home."

All these captives laughed at the merest suggestion of German defeat; their attitude was not that of prisoners, but of conquerors. They also regarded themselves as heroes, and they gloried in the achievements of their submarine service. For the most part they exaggerated the sinkings and estimated that the war would end about the first of July or August. Similarly the Berlin Government exaggerated the extent of their success. This was not surprising, for one peculiarity of the submarine is that only the commander, stationed at the periscope, knows what is going on. He can report sinking a 5,000 ton ship and no one can contradict his statement, for the crew and the other officers do not see the surface of the water. Not unnaturally the commander does not depreciate his own achievements, and thus the amount of sunken tonnage reported in Berlin considerably exceeded the actual losses.

The speeches of German dignitaries resounded with the same confidence.

"In the impending decisive battle," said the Kaiser, "the task falls upon my navy of turning the English war method of starvation, with which our most hated and most obstinate enemy intends to overthrow the German people, against him and his allies by combating their sea traffic with all the means in our power. In this work the submarine will stand in the first rank. I expect that this weapon, technically developed with wise forethought at our admirable yards, in co-operation with all our other naval fighting weapons and supported by the spirit which, during the whole course of the war, has enabled us to perform brilliant deeds, will break our enemy's war will."

"In this life and death struggle by hunger," said Dr. Karl Helfferich, Imperial Secretary of the Interior, "England believed herself to be far beyond the reach of any anxiety about food. A year ago it was supposed that England would be able to use the acres of the whole world, bidding with them against the German acres. To-day England sees herself in a situation unparalleled in her history. Her acres across sea disappear as a result of the blockade which our submarines are daily making more effective around England. We have considered, we have dared. Certain of the result, we shall not allow it to be taken from us by anybody or anything."

These statements now read almost like ancient history, yet they were made in February, 1917. At that time, Americans and Englishmen read them with a smile; they seemed to be the kind of German rodomontade with which the war had made us so familiar; they seemed to be empty mouthings put out to bolster up the drooping German spirit. That the Kaiser and his advisers could really believe such rubbish was generally regarded as absurd. Yet not only did they believe what they were saying but, as already explained, they also had every reason for believing it. The Kaiser and his associates had figured that the war would end about July 1st or August 1st; and English officials with whom I came in contact placed the date at November 1st—always provided, of course, that no method were found for checking the submarine.2

II

How, then, could we defeat the submarine? Before approaching this subject, it is well to understand precisely what was taking place in the spring and summer of 1917 in those waters surrounding the British Isles. What was this strange new type of warfare that was bringing the Allied cause to its knees? Nothing like it had ever been known in recorded time; nothing like it had been foreseen when, on August 4, 1914, the British Government threw all its resources and all its people against the great enemy of mankind.

Leaving entirely out of consideration international law and humanity, it must be admitted that strategically the German submarine campaign was well conceived. Its purpose was to marshal on the German side that force which has always proved to be the determining one in great international conflicts—sea power. The advantages which the control of the sea gives the nation which possesses it are apparent. In the first place, it makes secure such a nation's communications with the outside world and its own allies, and, at the same time, it cuts the communications of its enemy. It enables the nation dominant at sea to levy upon the resources of the entire world; to obtain food for its civilian population, raw materials for its manufactures, munitions for its armies; and, at the same time, to maintain that commerce upon which its very economic life may depend. It enables such a power also to transport troops into any field of action where they may be required. At the very time that sea power is heaping all these blessings upon the dominant nation, it enables such a nation to deny these same advantages to its enemy. For the second great resource of sea power is the blockade. If the enemy is agriculturally and industrially dependent upon the outside world, sea power can transform it into a beleaguered fortress and sooner or later compel its unconditional surrender. Its operations are not spectacular, but they work with the inevitable remorselessness of death itself.

This fact is so familiar that I insist upon it here only for the purpose of inviting attention to another fact which is not so apparent. Perhaps the greatest commonplace of the war, from the newspaper standpoint, was that the British fleet controlled the seas. This mere circumstance, as I have already said, was the reason why all students of history were firm in their belief that Britain could never be defeated. It was not until the spring of 1917 that we really awoke to the actual situation; it was not until I had spent several days in England that I made the all-important discovery, which was this—that Britain did not control the seas. She still controlled the seas in the old Nelsonian sense; that is, her Grand Fleet successfully "contained" the German battle squadrons and kept them, for the greater part of the war, penned up in their German harbours. In the old days such a display of sea power would have easily won the war for the Allies. But that is not control of the seas in the modern sense; it is merely control of the surface of the seas. Under modern methods of naval warfare sea control means far more than controlling the top of the water. For there is another type of ship, which sails stealthily under the waves, revealing its presence only at certain intervals, and capable of shooting a terrible weapon which can sink the proudest surface ship in a few minutes. The existence of this new type of warship makes control of the seas to-day a very different thing from what it was in Nelson's time. As long as such a warship can operate under the water almost at will—and this was the case in a considerable area of the ocean in the early part of 1917—it is ridiculous to say that any navy controls the seas. For this subsurface vessel, when used as successfully as it was used by the Germans in 1917, deprives the surface navy of that advantage which has proved most decisive in other wars. That is, the surface navy can no longer completely protect communications as it could protect them in Nelson's and Farragut's times. It no longer guarantees a belligerent its food, its munitions, its raw materials of manufacture and commerce, or the free movement of its troops. It is obviously absurd to say that a belligerent which was losing 800,000 or 900,000 tons of shipping a month, as was the case with the Allies in the spring of 1917, was the undisputed mistress of the seas. Had the German submarine campaign continued to succeed at this rate, the United States could not have transported its army to France, and the food and materials which we were sending to Europe, and which were essential to winning the war, could never have crossed the ocean.

That is to say, complete control of the subsurface by Germany would have turned against England the blockade, the very power with which she had planned to reduce the German Empire. Instead of isolating Germany from the rest of the world, she would herself be isolated.

In due course I shall attempt to show the immediate connexion that exists between control of the surface and control of the subsurface; this narrative will disclose, indeed, that the nation which possesses the first also potentially possesses the second. In the early spring of 1917, however, this principle was not effective, so far as merchant shipping was concerned.

Germany's purpose in adopting the ruthless submarine warfare was, of course, the one which I have indicated: to deprive the Allied armies in the field, and their civilian populations, of these supplies from overseas which were essential to victory. Nature had been kind to this German programme when she created the British Isles. Indeed this tight little kingdom and the waters which surround it provided an ideal field for operations of this character. For purposes of contrast, let us consider our own geographical situation. A glance at the map discloses that it would be almost impossible to blockade the United States with submarines. In the first place, the operation of submarines more than three thousand miles from their bases would present almost insuperable difficulties. That Germany could send an occasional submarine to our coasts she demonstrated in the war, but it would be hardly possible to maintain anything like a regular and persistent campaign. Even if she could have kept a force constantly engaged in our waters, other natural difficulties would have defeated their most determined efforts. The trade routes approach our Atlantic sea-coast in the shape of a fan, of which different sticks point to such ports as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, and the ports of the Gulf of Mexico. To destroy shipping to American ports it would be necessary for the enemy to cover all these routes with submarines, a project which is so vast that it is hardly worth the trial. In addition we have numerous Pacific ports to which we could divert shipping in case our enemy should attempt to blockade us on the Atlantic coast; our splendid system of transcontinental railroads would make internal distribution not a particularly difficult matter. Above all such considerations, of course, is the fact that the United States is an industrial and agricultural entity, self-supporting and self-feeding, and, therefore, it could not be starved into surrender even though the enemy should surmount these practically insuperable obstacles to a submarine blockade. But the situation of the British Isles is entirely different. They obtain from overseas the larger part of their food and a considerable part of their raw materials, and in April of 1917, according to reliable statements made at that time, England had enough food on hand for only six weeks or two months. The trade routes over which these supplies came made the submarine blockade a comparatively simple matter. Instead of the sticks of a fan, the comparison which I have suggested with our own coast, we now have to deal with the neck of a bottle. The trade routes to our Atlantic coast spread out, as they approach our ports; on the other hand, the trade routes to Great Britain converge almost to a point. The far-flung steamship lanes which bring Britain her food and raw materials from half a dozen continents focus in the Irish Sea and the English Channel. To cut the communications of Great Britain, therefore, the submarines do not have to patrol two or three thousand miles of sea-coast, as would be necessary in the case of the United States; they merely need to hover around the extremely restricted waters west and south of Ireland.

This was precisely the area which the Germans had selected for their main field of activity. It was here that their so-called U-boats were operating with the most deadly effect; these waters constituted their happy hunting grounds, for here came the great cargo ships, with food and supplies from America, which were bound for Liverpool and the great Channel ports. The submarines that did destruction in this region were the type that have gained universal fame as the U-boats. There were other types, which I shall describe, but the U-boats were the main reliance of the German navy; they were fairly large vessels, of about 800 tons, and carried from eight to twelve torpedoes and enough fuel and supplies to keep the sea for three or four weeks. And here let me correct one universal misapprehension. These U-boats did not have bases off the Irish and Spanish coasts, as most people still believe. Such bases would have been of no particular use to them. The cruising period of a submarine did not depend, as is the prevailing impression, upon its supply of fuel oil and food, for almost any under-water boat was able to carry enough of these essential materials for a practically indefinite period; the average U-boat, moreover, could easily make the voyage across the Atlantic and back. The cruising period depended upon its supply of torpedoes. A submarine returned to its base only after it had exhausted its supply of these destructive missiles; if it should shoot them all in twenty-four hours, then a single day would end that particular cruise; if the torpedoes lasted a month, then the submarine stayed out for that length of time. For these reasons bases on the Irish coast would have been useful only in case they could replenish the torpedoes, and this was obviously an impossibility. No, there was not the slightest mystery concerning the bases of the U-boats. When the Germans captured the city of Bruges in Belgium they transformed it into a headquarters for submarines; here many of the U-boats were assembled, and here facilities were provided for docking, repairing, and supplying them. Bruges was thus one of the main headquarters for the destructive campaign which was waged against British commerce. Bruges itself is an inland town, but from it two canals extend, one to Ostend and the other to Zeebrugge, and in this way the interior submarine base formed the apex of a triangle. It was by way of these canals that the U-boats reached the open sea.

Once in the English Channel, the submarines had their choice of two routes to the hunting grounds off the west and south of Ireland. A large number made the apparently unnecessarily long detour across the North Sea and around Scotland, going through the Fair Island Passage, between the Orkney and the Shetland islands, along the Hebrides, where they sometimes made a landfall, and so around the west coast of Ireland. This looks like a long and difficult trip, yet the time was not entirely wasted, for the U-boats, as the map of sinkings shows, usually destroyed several vessels on the way to their favourite hunting grounds. But there was another and shorter route to this area available to the U-boats. And here I must correct another widely prevailing misapprehension. While the war was going on many accounts were published in the newspapers describing the barrage across the English Channel, from Dover to Calais, and the belief was general that this barrier kept the U-boats from passing through. Unfortunately this was not the case. The surface boats did succeed in transporting almost at will troops and supplies across this narrow passage-way; but the mines, nets, and other obstructions that were intended to prevent the passage of submarines were not particularly effective. The British navy knew little about mines in 1914; British naval men had always rather despised them as the "weapons of the weaker power," and it is therefore not surprising that the so-called mine barrage at the Channel crossing was not successful. A large part of it was carried away by the strong tide and storms, and the mines were so defective that oysters and other sea growths, which attached themselves to their prongs, made many of them harmless. In 1918, Admiral Sir Roger Keyes reconstructed this barrage with a new type of mine and transformed it into a really effective barrier; but in the spring of 1917, the German U-boats had little difficulty in slipping through, particularly in the night time. And from this point the distance to the trade routes south and west of Ireland was relatively a short one.

Yet, terribly destructive as these U-boats were, the number which were operating simultaneously in this and in other fields was never very large. The extent to which the waters were infested with German submarines was another particularly ludicrous and particularly prevalent misapprehension. Merchant vessels constantly reported that they had been assailed by "submarines in shoals," and most civilians still believe that they sailed together in flotillas, like schools of fish. There is hardly an American doughboy who did not see at least a dozen submarines on his way across the Atlantic; every streak of suds which was caused by a "tide rip," and every swimming porpoise, was immediately mistaken for the wake of a torpedo; and every bit of driftwood, in the fervid imagination of trans-Atlantic voyagers, immediately assumed the shape of a periscope. Yet it is a fact that we knew almost every time a German submarine slunk from its base into the ocean. The Allied secret service was immeasurably superior to that of the Germans, and in saying this I pay particular tribute to the British Naval Intelligence Department. We always knew how many submarines the Germans had and we could usually tell pretty definitely their locations at a particular time; we also had accurate information about building operations in Germany; thus we could estimate how many they were building and where they were building them, and we could also describe their essential characteristics, and the stage of progress they which had reached at almost any day.

It was not the simplest thing to pilot a submarine out of its base. The Allies were constantly laying mines at these outlets; and before the U-boat could safely make its exit elaborate sweeping operations were necessary. It often took a squadron of nine or ten surface ships, working for several hours, to manœuvre a submarine out of its base and to start it on its journey. For these reasons we could keep a careful watch upon its movements; we always knew when one of our enemies came out; we knew which one it was, and not infrequently we had learned the name of the commander and other valuable details. Moreover, we knew where it went, and we kept charts on which we plotted from day to day the voyage of each particular submarine.

"Why didn't you sink it then?" is the question usually asked when I make this statement—a question which, as I shall show, merely reflects the ignorance which prevails everywhere on the underlying facts of submarine warfare.

Now in this densely packed shipping area, which extended from the north of Ireland to Brest, there were seldom more than eight or ten submarines engaged in their peculiar form of warfare at one time. The largest number which I had any record of was fifteen; and this was an exceptional force; the usual number was four, six, eight, or perhaps ten. Yet the men upon our merchant convoys and troopships saw submarines scattered all over the sea. We estimated that the convoys and troopships reported that they had sighted about 300 submarines for every submarine which was actually in the field. Yet we knew that for every hundred submarines which the Germans possessed they could keep only ten or a dozen at work in the open sea. The rest were on their way to the hunting grounds, or returning, or they were in port being refitted and taking on supplies. Could Germany have kept fifty submarines constantly at work on the great shipping routes in the winter and spring of 1917—before we had learned how to handle the situation—nothing could have prevented her from winning the war. Instead of sinking 850,000 tons in a single month, she would have sunk 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 tons. The fact is that Germany, with all her microscopic preparations for war, neglected to provide herself with the one instrumentality with which she might have won it.

This circumstance, that so few submarines could accomplish such destructive results, shows how formidable was the problem which confronted us. Germany could do this, of course, because the restricted field in which she was able to operate was so constantly and so densely infested with valuable shipping.

In the above I have been describing the operations of the U-boats in the great area to the west and south of Ireland. But there were other hunting fields, particularly that which lay on the east coast of England, in the area extending from Harwich to Newcastle. This part of the North Sea was constantly filled with ships passing between the North Sea ports of England and Norway and Sweden, carrying essential products like lumber and many manufactured articles. Every four days a convoy of from forty to sixty ships left some port in this region for Scandinavia; I use the word "convoy," but the operation was a convoy only in the sense that the ships sailed in groups, for the navy was not able to provide them with an adequate escort—seldom furnishing them more than one or two destroyers, or a few yachts or trawlers. Smaller types of submarines which were known as UB's and UC's and which issued from Wilhelmshaven and the Skager Rack constantly preyed upon this coastal shipping. These submarines differed from the U-boats in that they were smaller, displacing about 350 and 400 tons, and in that they also carried mines, which they were constantly laying. They were much handier than the larger types; they could rush out much more quickly from their bases and get back, and they did an immense amount of damage to this coastal trade. The value of the shipping sunk in these waters was unimportant when compared with the losses which Great Britain was suffering on the great trans-Atlantic routes, but the problem was still a serious one, because the supplies which these ships brought from the Scandinavian countries were essential to the military operations in France.

Besides these two types, the U-boats and the UB's and UC's, the Germans had another type of submarine, the great ocean cruisers. These ships were as long as a small surface cruiser and were half again as long as a destroyer, and their displacement sometimes reached 3,000 tons. They carried crews of seventy men, could cross the Atlantic three or four times without putting into port, and some actually remained away from their bases for three or four months. But they were vessels very difficult to manage; it took them a relatively long time to submerge, and, for this reason, they could not operate around the Channel and other places where the anti-submarine craft were most numerous. In fact, these vessels, of which the Germans had in commission perhaps half a dozen when the armistice was signed, accomplished little in the war. The purpose for which they were built was chiefly a strategic one. One or two were usually stationed off the Azores, not in any expectation that they would destroy much shipping—the fact is that they sank very few merchantmen—but in the hope that they might divert anti-submarine craft from the main theatre of operations. In this purpose, however, they were not successful; in fact, I cannot see that these great cruisers accomplished anything that justified the expense and the trouble which were involved in building them.

III

This, then, was the type of warfare which the German submarines were waging upon the shipping of the Allied nations. What were the Allied navies doing to check them in this terrible month of April, 1917? What anti-submarine methods had been developed up to that time?

The most popular game on both sides of the Atlantic was devising means of checking the under-water ship. Every newspaper, every magazine, every public man, and every gentleman at his club had a favourite scheme for defeating the U-boat campaign. All that any one needed for this engaging pastime was a map of the North Sea, and the solution appeared to be as clear as daylight. As Sir Eric Geddes once remarked to me, nothing is quite so deceptive as geography. All of us are too likely to base our conception of naval problems on the maps which we studied at school. On these maps the North Sea is such a little place! A young lady once declared in my hearing that she didn't see how the submarines could operate in the English Channel, it was so narrow! She didn't see how there was room enough to turn around! The fact that it is twenty miles wide at the shortest crossing and not far from two hundred at the widest is something which it is apparently difficult to grasp.

The plan which was most popular in those days was to pen the submarines in their bases and so prevent their egress into the North Sea. Obviously the best way to handle the situation was to sink the whole German submarine fleet; that was apparently impossible, and the next best thing was to keep them in their home ports and prevent them from sailing the high seas. It was not only the man in the street who was advocating this programme. I had a long talk with several prominent Government officials, in which they asked me why this could not be done.

"I can give you fourteen reasons why it is impossible," I answered. "We shall first have to capture the bases, and it would be simply suicidal to attempt it, and it would be playing directly into Germany's hands. Those bases are protected by powerful 15-, 11-, and 8-inch guns. These are secreted behind hills or located in pits on the seashore, where no approaching vessel can see them. Moreover, those guns have a range of 40,000 yards, but the guns on no ships have a range of more than 30,000 yards; they are stationary, whereas ours would be moving. For our ships to go up against such emplacements would be like putting a blind prize-fighter up against an antagonist who can see and who has arms twice as long as his enemy's. We can send as many ships as we wish on such an expedition, and they will all be destroyed. The German guns would probably get them on the first salvo, certainly on the second. There is nothing the Germans would so much like to have us try."

Another idea suggested by a glance at the map was the construction of a barrage across the North Sea from the Orkneys to the coast of Norway. The distance did not seem so very great—on the map; in reality, it was two hundred and thirty miles and the water is from 360 to 960 feet in depth. If we cannot pen the rats up in their holes, said the newspaper strategist, certainly we can do the next best thing: we can pen them up in the North Sea. Then we can route all our shipping to points on the west coast of England, and the problem is solved.

I discussed this proposition with British navy men and their answer was quite to the point.

"If we haven't mines enough to build a successful barrage across the Straits of Dover, which is only twenty miles wide, how can we construct a barrage across the North Sea, which is 230?"

A year afterward, as will be shown later, this plan came up in more practical form, but in 1917 the idea was not among the possibilities—there were not mines enough in the world to build such a barrage, nor had a mine then been invented that was suitable for the purpose.

The belief prevailed in the United States, and, to a certain extent, in England itself, that the most effective means of meeting the submarine was to place guns and gun crews on all the mercantile vessels. Even some of the old British merchant salts maintained this view. "Give us a gun, and we'll take care of the submarines all right," they kept saying to the Admiralty. But the idea was fundamentally fallacious. In the American Congress, just prior to the declaration of war, the arming of merchant ships became a great political issue; scores of pages in the Congressional Record are filled with debates on this subject, yet, so far as affording any protection to shipping was concerned, all this was wasted oratory. Those who advocated arming the merchant ships as an effective method of counteracting submarine campaigns had simply failed to grasp the fundamental elements of submarine warfare. They apparently did not understand the all-important fact that the quality which makes the submarine so difficult to deal with is its invisibility. The great political issue which was involved in the submarine controversy, and the issue which brought the United States into the war, was that the Germans were sinking merchant ships without warning. And it was because of this very fact—this sinking without warning—that a dozen guns on a merchant ship afforded practically no protection. The lookout on a merchantman could not see the submarine, for the all-sufficient reason that the submarine was concealed beneath the water; it was only by a happy chance that the most penetrating eye could detect the periscope, provided that one were exposed. The first intimation which was given the merchantman that a U-boat was in his neighbourhood was the explosion of the torpedo in his hull. In six weeks, in the spring and early summer of 1917, thirty armed merchantmen were torpedoed and sunk off Queenstown, and in no case was a periscope or a conning-tower seen. The English never trusted their battleships at sea without destroyer escort, and certainly if a battleship with its powerful armament could not protect itself from submarines, it was too much to expect that an ordinary armed merchantman would be able to do so. I think the fact that few American armed ships were attacked and sunk in 1917 created the impression that their guns afforded them some protection. But the apparent immunity extended to them was really policy on Germany's part. She expected, as I have said, that she would win the war long before the United States could play an effective rôle in the struggle. It was therefore good international politics to refrain from any unnecessary acts that would still further embitter the American people against her. There was also a considerable pacifist element in our country which Germany was coddling in the hope of preventing the United States from using against her such forces as we already had at hand. The reason American armed merchantmen were not sunk was simply because they were not seriously attacked; I have already shown how easily Germany could have sunk them if she had really tried. Any reliance upon armed guards as a protection against submarines would have been fundamentally a mistake, for the additional reason that it was a defensive measure; it must be apparent that the extremely grave situation which we were then facing demanded the most energetic offensive methods. Yet the arming of merchant ships was justified as a minor measure. It accomplished the one important end of forcing the submarine to submerge and to use torpedoes instead of gunfire. In itself this was a great gain; obviously the Germans would much prefer to sink ships with projectiles than with torpedoes, for their supply of these latter missiles was limited.3

In April, 1917, the British navy was fighting the submarine mainly in two ways: it was constantly sowing mines off the entrance to the submarine bases, such as Ostend and Zeebrugge, and in the Heligoland Bight—operations that accomplished little, for the Germans swept them up almost as fast as they were planted; and it was patrolling the submarine infested area with anti-submarine craft. The Admiralty was depending almost exclusively upon this patrol, yet this, the only means which then seemed to hold forth much promise of defeating the submarine, was making little progress.

For this patrol the navy was impressing into service all the destroyers, yachts, trawlers, sea-going tugs, and other light vessels which could possibly be assembled; almost any craft which could carry a wireless, a gun, and depth charges was boldly sent to sea. At this time the vessel chiefly used was the destroyer. The naval war had demonstrated that the submarine could not successfully battle with the destroyer; that any U-boat which came to the surface within fighting range of this alert and speedy little surface ship ran great risk of being sunk. This is the fundamental fact—that the destruction of the submarine was highly probable, in case the destroyer could get a fair chance at her—which regulated the whole anti-submarine campaign. It is evident, therefore, that a proper German strategy would consist in so disposing its submarines that they could conduct their operations with the minimum risk of meeting their most effective enemies, while a properly conceived Allied strategy would consist in so controlling the situation that the submarines would have constantly to meet them. Frankness compels me to say that, in the early part of 1917, the Germans were maintaining the upper hand in this strategic game; they were holding the dominating position in the campaign, since they were constantly attacking Allied shipping without having to meet the Allied destroyers, while the Allied destroyers were dispersing their energies over the wide waste of waters. But the facts in the situation, and not any superior skill on the part of the German navy, were giving the submarines this advantage. The British were most heroically struggling against the difficulties imposed by the mighty task which they had assumed. The British navy, like all other navies, was only partially prepared for this type of warfare; in 1917 it did not possess destroyers enough both to guard the main fighting fleet and to protect its commerce from submarines. Up to 1914, indeed, it was expected that the destroyers would have only one function to perform in warfare, that of protecting the great surface vessels from attack, but now the new kind of warfare which Germany was waging on merchant ships had laid upon the destroyer an entirely new responsibility; and the plain fact is that the destroyers, in the number which were required, did not exist.

The problem which proved so embarrassing can be stated in the simple terms of arithmetic. Everything, as I have said, reduced itself to the question of destroyers. In April, 1917, the British navy had in commission about 200 ships of this indispensable type; many of them were old and others had been pretty badly worn and weakened by three years of particularly racking service. It was the problem of the Admiralty to place these destroyers in those fields in which they could most successfully serve the Allied cause. The one requirement that necessarily took precedence over all others was that a flotilla of at least 100 destroyers must be continuously kept with the Grand Fleet, ready to go into action at a moment's notice. It is clear from this statement of the case that the naval policy of the Germans, which consisted in holding their high seas battle fleet in harbour and in refusing to fight the Allied navy, had an important bearing upon the submarine campaign. So long as there was the possibility of such an engagement, the British Grand Fleet had to keep itself constantly prepared for such a crisis; and an indispensable part of this preparation was to maintain always in readiness its flotilla of protecting destroyers. Had the German fleet seriously engaged in a great sea battle, it would have unquestionably been defeated; such a defeat would have meant an even greater disaster than the loss of the battleships, a loss which in itself would not greatly have changed the naval situation. But the really fatal effect of such a defeat would have been that it would no longer have been necessary for the British to sequestrate a hundred or more destroyers at Scapa Flow. The German battleships would have been sent to the bottom, and then these destroyers would have been used in the warfare against the submarines. By keeping its dreadnought fleet intact, always refusing to give battle and yet always threatening an engagement, the Germans thus were penning up 100 British destroyers in the Orkneys—destroyers which otherwise might have done most destructive work against the German submarines off the coast of Ireland. The mere fact that the German High Seas Fleet had once engaged the British Grand Fleet off Jutland was an element in the submarine situation, for this constantly suggested the likelihood that the attempt might be repeated, and was thus an influence which tended to keep these destroyers at Scapa Flow. Many times during that critical period the Admiralty discussed the question of releasing those destroyers, or a part of them, for the anti-submarine campaign; yet they always decided, and they decided wisely, against any such hazardous division. At that time the German dreadnought fleet was not immeasurably inferior in numbers to the British; it had a protecting screen of about 100 destroyers; and it would have been madness for the British to have gone into battle with its own destroyer screen placed several hundred miles away, off the coast of Ireland. I lay stress upon this circumstance because I find that in America the British Admiralty has been criticized for keeping a large destroyer force with the Grand Fleet, instead of detaching them for battle with the submarine. I think that I have made clear that this criticism is based upon a misconception of the whole naval campaign. Without this destroyer screen the British Grand Fleet might have been destroyed by the Germans; if the Grand Fleet had been destroyed, the war would have ended in the defeat of the Allies; not to have maintained these destroyers in northern waters would thus have amounted simply to betraying the cause of civilization and to making Germany a free gift of victory.

Germany likewise practically immobilized a considerable number of British destroyers by attacking hospital ships. When the news of such dastardly attacks became known, it was impossible for Americans and Englishmen to believe at first that they were intentional; they so callously violated all the rules of warfare and all the agreements for lessening the horrors of war to which Germany herself had become a party that there was a tendency in both enlightened countries to give the enemy the benefit of the doubt. As a matter of fact, not only were the submarine attacks on hospital ships deliberate, but Germany had officially informed us that they would be made! The reasons for this warning are clear enough; again, the all-important rôle which the destroyers were playing in anti-submarine warfare was the point at issue. Until we received such warning, hospital ships had put to sea unescorted by warships, depending for their safety upon the rules of the Hague Conference. Germany attacked these ships in order to make us escort them with destroyers, and thereby compel us to divert these destroyers from the anti-submarine campaign. And, of course, England was forced to acquiesce in this German programme. Had the Anglo-Saxon mind resembled the Germanic in all probability we should have accepted the logic of the situation; we should have refused to be diverted from the great strategic purpose which meant winning the war—that is, protecting merchant shipping; in other words, we should have left the hospital ships to their fate, and justified ourselves and stilled our consciences by the principle of the greater good. But the British and the American minds do not operate that way; it was impossible for us to leave sick and wounded men as prey to submarines. Therefore, after receiving the German warning, backed up, as it was, by the actual destruction of unprotected hospital ships, we began providing them with destroyer escorts. This greatly embarrassed us in the anti-submarine campaign, for at times, especially during the big drives, we had a large number of hospital ships to protect. As soon as we adopted this policy, Germany, having attained her end, which was to keep the destroyers out of the submarine area, stopped attacking sick and wounded soldiers. Yet we still were forced to provide these unfortunates with destroyer escorts, for, had we momentarily withdrawn these protectors, the German submarines would immediately have renewed their attacks on hospital ships.

Not only was the British navy at that time safeguarding the liberties of mankind at sea, but its army in France was doing its share in safeguarding them on land. And the fact that Britain had to support this mighty army had its part in making British shipping at times almost an easy prey for the German submarines. For next in importance to maintaining the British Grand Fleet intact it was necessary to keep secure the channel crossing. Over this little strip of water were transported the men and the supplies from England to France that kept the German army at bay; to have suspended these communications, even for a brief period, would have meant that the Germans would have captured Paris, overrun the whole of France, and ended the war, at least the war on land. In the course of four years Great Britain transported about 20,000,000 people across the Channel without the loss of a single soul. She accomplished this only by constantly using many destroyers and other light surface craft as escorts for the transports. But this was not the only responsibility of the kind that rested on the overburdened British shoulders. There was another part of the seas in which, for practical and political reasons, the British destroyer fleet had to do protective duty. In the Mediterranean lay not only the trade routes to the East, but also the lines of supply which extended to Italy, to Egypt, to Palestine, and to Mesopotamia. If Germany could have cut off Italy's food and materials Italy would have been forced to withdraw from the war. The German and Austrian submarines, escaping from Austria's Adriatic ports, were constantly assailing this commerce, attempting to do this very thing. Moreover, the success of the German submarine campaign in these waters would have compelled the Allies to abandon the Salonika expedition, which would have left the Central Powers absolute masters of the Balkans and the Middle East. For these reasons it was necessary to maintain a considerable force of destroyers in the Mediterranean.

For the British navy it was therefore a matter of choice what areas she would attempt to protect with her destroyer forces; the one thing that was painfully apparent was that she could not satisfactorily safeguard all the danger zones. With the inadequate force at her disposal it was inevitable that certain areas should be left relatively open to the U-boats; and the decision as to which ones these should be was simply a matter of balancing the several conflicting interests. In April, 1917, the Admiralty had decided to give the preference to the Grand Fleet, the hospital ships, the Channel crossing, and the Mediterranean, practically in the order mentioned. It is evident from these facts that nearly the entire destroyer fleet must have been disposed in these areas. This decision, all things considered, was the only one that was possible; yet, after placing the destroyers in these selected areas, the great zone of trans-Atlantic shipping, west and south of Ireland, vitally important as it was, was necessarily left inadequately protected. So desperate was the situation that sometimes only four or five British destroyers were operating in this great stretch of waters; and I do not think that the number ever exceeded fifteen. Inasmuch as that represented about the number of German submarines in this same area, the situation may strike the layman as not particularly desperate. But any such basis of comparison is absurd. The destroyers were operating on the surface in full view of the submarines; the submarines could submerge at any time and make themselves invisible; and herein we have the reason why the contest was so markedly unequal. But aside from all other considerations, the method of warfare adopted by the Allies against the U-boat was necessarily ineffective, but was the best that could be used until sufficient destroyers became available to convoy shipping. The so-called submarine patrol, under the circumstances which prevailed at that time, could accomplish very little. This little fleet of destroyers was based on Queenstown; from this port they put forth and patrolled the English Channel and the waters about Ireland in the hope that a German submarine would stick its nose above the waves. The central idea of the destroyer patrol was this one of hunting; the destroyer could have sunk any submarine or driven it away from shipping if the submarine would only have made its presence known. But of course this was precisely what the submarine declined to do. It must be evident to the merest novice that four or five destroyers, rushing around hunting for submarines which were lying a hundred feet or so under water, could accomplish very little. The under-water boat could always see its surface enemy long before it was itself seen and thus could save its life by the simple process of submerging. It must also be clear that the destroyer patrol could accomplish much only in case there were a very large number of destroyers. We figured that, to make the patrol system work with complete success, it would be necessary to have one destroyer for every square mile. The area of the destroyer patrol off Queenstown comprised about 25,000 square miles; it is apparent that the complete protection of the trans-Atlantic trade routes would have taken about 25,000 destroyers. And the British, as I have said, had available anywhere from four to fifteen in this area.

The destroyer flotilla being so small, it is not surprising that the German submarines were making ducks and drakes of it. The map of the sinkings which took place in April brings out an interesting fact: numerous as these sinkings were, very few merchantmen were torpedoed, in this month, at the entrance to the Irish Sea or in the English Channel. These were the narrow waters where shipping was massed and where the little destroyer patrol was intended to operate. The German submarines apparently avoided these waters, and made their attacks out in the open sea, sometimes two and three hundred miles west and south of Ireland. Their purpose in doing this was to draw the destroyer patrol out into the open sea and in that way to cause its dispersal. And these tactics were succeeding. There were six separate steamship "lanes" by which the merchantmen could approach the English Channel and the Irish Sea. One day the submarines would attack along one of these lanes; then the little destroyer fleet would rush to this scene of operations. Immediately the Germans would depart and attack another route many miles away; then the destroyers would go pell-mell for that location. Just as they arrived, however, the U-boats would begin operating elsewhere; and so it went on, a game of hide and seek in which the advantages lay all on the side of the warships which possessed that wonderful ability to make themselves unseen. At this period the submarine campaign and the anti-submarine campaign was really a case of blindman's buff; the destroyer could never see the enemy while the enemy could always see the destroyer; and this is the reason that the Allies were failing and that the Germans were succeeding.

IV

To show how serious the situation was, let me quote from the reports which I sent to Washington during this period. I find statements like these scattered everywhere in my despatches of the spring of 1917:

"The military situation presented by the enemy submarine campaign is not only serious but critical."

"The outstanding fact which cannot be escaped is that we are not succeeding, or in other words, that the enemy's campaign is proving successful."

"The consequences of failure or partial failure of the Allied cause which we have joined are of such far-reaching character that I am deeply concerned in insuring that the part played by our country shall stand every test of analysis before the bar of history. The situation at present is exceedingly grave. If sufficient United States naval forces can be thrown into the balance at the present critical time and place there is little doubt that early success will be assured."

"Briefly stated, I consider that at the present moment we are losing the war."4

And now came another important question: What should the American naval policy be in this crisis? There were almost as many conflicting opinions as there were minds. Certain authorities believed that our whole North Atlantic Fleet should be moved immediately into European waters. Such a manœuvre was not only impossible but it would have been strategically very unwise; indeed such a disposition would have been playing directly into Germany's hands. What naval experts call the "logistics" of the situation immediately ruled this idea out of consideration. The one fact which made it impossible to base the fleet in European waters at that time was that we could not have kept it supplied, particularly with oil. The German U-boats were making a particularly successful drive at tankers with the result that England had the utmost difficulty in supplying her fleet with this kind of fuel. It is indeed impossible to exaggerate the seriousness of this oil situation. "Orders have just been given to use three-fifths speed, except in case of emergency," I reported to Washington on June 29th, referring to scarcity of oil. "This simply means that the enemy is winning the war." It was lucky for us that the Germans knew nothing about this particular disability. Had they been aware of it, they would have resorted to all kinds of manœuvres in the attempt to keep the Grand Fleet constantly steaming at sea, and in this way they might so have exhausted our oil supply as possibly to threaten the actual command of the surface. Fortunately for the cause of civilization, there were certain important facts which the German Secret Service did not learn.

But this oil scarcity made it impossible to move the Atlantic Fleet into European waters, at least at that time. Since most oil supplies were brought from America, we simply could not have fuelled our super-dreadnoughts in Europe in the spring and summer of 1917. Moreover, if we had sent all our big ships to England we should have been obliged to keep our destroyers constantly stationed with them ready for a great sea action; and this would have completely fallen in with German plans, for then these destroyers could not have been used against her submarines. The British did indeed request that we send five coal-burning ships to reinforce her fleet and give her that preponderance which made its ascendancy absolutely secure, and these ships were subsequently sent; but England could not have made provision for our greatest dreadnoughts, the oil burners. Indeed our big ships were of much greater service to the Allied cause stationed on this side than they would have been if they had been located at a European base. They were providing a reserve for the British fleet, precisely as our armies in France were providing a reserve for the Allied armies; and meanwhile this disposition made it possible for us to send their destroyer escorts to the submarine zone, where they could participate in the anti-submarine campaign. In American waters these big ships could be kept in prime condition, for here they had an open, free sea for training, and here they could also be used to train the thousands of new men who were needed for the new ships constructed during the war.

I early took the stand that our forces should be considered chiefly in the light of reinforcements to the Allied navies, and that, ignoring all question of national pride and even what at first might superficially seem to be national interest, we should exert such offensive power as we possessed in the way that would best assist the Allies in defeating the submarine. England's naval resources were much greater than ours; and therefore, in the nature of the case, we could not expect to maintain overseas anywhere near the number of ships which England had assembled; consequently it should be our policy to use such available units as we possessed to strengthen the weak spots in the Allied line. There were those who believed that national dignity required that we should build up an independent navy in European waters, and that we should operate it as a distinct American unit. But that, I maintained, was not the way to win the war. If we had adopted this course, we should have been constructing naval bases and perfecting an organization when the armistice was signed; indeed, the idea of operating independently of the Allied fleet was not for a moment to be considered. There were others in America who thought that it was unwise to put any part of our fleet in European waters, in view of the dangers that might assail us on our own coast. There was every expectation that Germany would send submarines to the western Atlantic, where they could prey upon our shipping and could possibly bombard our ports; I have already shown that she had submarines which could make such a long voyage, and the strategy of the situation in April and May, 1917, demanded that a move of this kind be made. The predominant element in the submarine defence, as I have pointed out, was the destroyer. The only way in which the United States could immediately and effectively help the Allied navies was by sending our whole destroyer flotilla and all our light surface craft at once. It was Germany's part, therefore, to resort to every manœuvre that would keep our destroyer force on this side of the Atlantic. Such a performance might be expected to startle our peaceful American population and inspire a public demand for protection; and in this way our Government might be compelled to keep all anti-submarine craft in our own waters. I expected Germany to make such a demonstration immediately and I therefore cautioned our naval authorities at Washington not to be deceived. I pointed out that Germany could accomplish practically nothing by sporadic attacks on American shipping in American waters; that, indeed, if we could induce the German Admiralty to concentrate all its submarine efforts on the American coasts, and leave free the Irish Sea and the English Channel, the war practically would be won for the Allies. Yet these facts were not apparent to the popular mind in 1917, and I shall always think that Germany made a great mistake in not sending submarines to the American coast immediately on our declaration of war, instead of waiting until 1918. Such attacks, at that time, would have started a public demand for protection which the Washington authorities might have had great difficulty in resisting, and which might have actually kept our destroyer fleet in American waters, to the great detriment of the Allied cause. Germany evidently refrained from doing so for reasons which I have already indicated—a desire to deal gently with the United States, and in that way to delay our military preparations and win the war without coming into bloody conflict with the American people.

There were others who thought it unwise to expose any part of our fleet to the dangers of the European contest; their fear was that, if the Allies should be defeated, we would then need all our naval forces to protect the American coast. This point of view, of course, was not only short-sighted and absurd, but it violated the fundamental principle of warfare, which is that a belligerent must assail his enemy as quickly as possible with the greatest striking power which he can assemble. Clearly our national policy demanded that we should exert all the force we could collect to make certain a German defeat. The best way to fight Germany was not to wait until she had vanquished the Allies, but to join hands with them in a combined effort to annihilate her military power on land and sea. The situation which confronted us in April, 1917, was one which demanded an immediate and powerful offensive; the best way to protect America was to destroy Germany's naval power in European waters and thus make certain that she could not attack us at home.

The fact is that few nations have ever been placed in so tragical a position as that in which Great Britain found herself in the spring and early summer of 1917. And I think that history records few spectacles more heroic than that of the great British navy, fighting this hideous and cowardly form of warfare in half a dozen places with pitifully inadequate forces, but with an undaunted spirit which remained firm even against the fearful odds which I have described. What an opportunity for America! And it was perfectly apparent what we should do. It was our duty immediately to place all our available anti-submarine craft in those waters west and south of Ireland in which lay the pathways of the shipping which meant life or death to the Allied cause—the area which England, because almost endless demands were being made upon her navy in other fields, was unable to protect.

The first four days in London were spent collecting all possible data; I had no desire to alarm Washington unwarrantably, yet I also believed that it would be a serious dereliction if all the facts were not presented precisely as they were. I consulted practically everyone who could give me essential details and wrote a cable despatch, filling four foolscap pages, which furnished Washington with its first detailed account of the serious state of the cause on which we had embarked.5

In this work I had the full co-operation of our Ambassador in London, Mr. Walter Hines Page. Mr. Page's whole heart and mind were bound up in the Allied cause; he was zealous that his country should play worthily its part in this great crisis in history; and he worked unsparingly with me to get the facts before our Government. A few days after sending a despatch it occurred to me that a message from our Ambassador might give emphasis to my own. I therefore wrote such a message and took it down to Brighton, where the American Ambassador was taking a little rest. I did not know just how strong a statement Mr. Page would care to become responsible for, and so I did not make this statement quite as emphatic as the circumstances justified.

Mr. Page took the paper and read it carefully. Then he looked up.

"It isn't strong enough," he said. "I think I can do better than this myself."

He sat down and wrote the following cablegram which was immediately sent to the President:

From: Ambassador Page.

To: Secretary of State.

Sent: 27 April 1917.

Very confidential for Secretary and President.

There is reason for the greatest alarm about the issue of the war caused by the increasing success of the German submarines. I have it from official sources that during the week ending 22nd April, 88 ships of 237,000 tons allied and neutral were lost. The number of vessels unsuccessfully attacked indicated a great increase in the number of submarines in action.

This means practically a million tons lost every month till the shorter days of autumn come. By that time the sea will be about clear of shipping. Most of the ships are sunk to the westward and southward of Ireland. The British have in that area every available anti-submarine craft, but their force is so insufficient that they hardly discourage the submarines.

The British transport of troops and supplies is already strained to the utmost, and the maintenance of the armies in the field is threatened. There is food enough here to last the civil population only not more than six weeks or two months.

Whatever help the United States may render at any time in the future, or in any theatre of the war, our help is now more seriously needed in this submarine area for the sake of all the Allies than it can ever be needed again, or anywhere else.

After talking over this critical situation with the Prime Minister and other members of the Government, I cannot refrain from most strongly recommending the immediate sending over of every destroyer and all other craft that can be of anti-submarine use. This seems to me the sharpest crisis of the war, and the most dangerous situation for the Allies that has arisen or could arise.

If enough submarines can be destroyed in the next two or three months the war will be won, and if we can contribute effective help immediately it will be won directly by our aid. I cannot exaggerate the pressing and increasing danger of this situation. Thirty or more destroyers and other similar craft sent by us immediately would very likely be decisive.

There is no time to be lost.

Page.

But Mr. Page and I thought that we had not completely done our duty even after sending these urgent messages. Whatever might happen, we were determined that it could never be charged that we had not presented the Allied situation in its absolutely true light. It seemed likely that an authoritative statement from the British Government would give added assurance that our statements were not the result of panic, and with this idea in mind, Mr. Page and I called upon Mr. Balfour, Foreign Secretary, who, in response to our request, sent a despatch to Washington describing the seriousness of the situation.

All these messages made the same point: that the United States should immediately assemble all its destroyers and other light craft, and send them to the port where they could render the greatest service in the anti-submarine campaign—Queenstown.