SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, It was world tc base The ing mine the U- ¢ 'a squadron of hips, operating get a submarine s « it Journey, So one came out; and that but we knew and we its comy tails, went and 'we plotted Vv not onty which one it was, sessed the name of I other valus we knew when harts, on w to day the voy- fleets the ig nee -whiel feverywhere on the under! J of submarine warf: Eight U-Boats At Work. { Now in this densely packed ship ping area, extending, say, from north of Ireland to Brest, there I seldom more than eight or ten | marines operating at any one time |The largest number I had record of was fifteen; but this was exceptiona # the usual number was four, six, eight, lor perhaps ten. We estimated that the convoys and troo ips brought in ireports of sighting about 300 Imarines for every submarine act lin the field. We also est {for every hundred subr {the Germans possessed, V Ccou net ioe p-only-ten or a -dogen- at work in the open sea. The res r m t way to the hunting turning, or in port being resupplied. Could = Ger kept, let us say, fifty ines stantly at work on the g wer or re i and have con- at shipping : 28 in the winter and spring of 1917---before we had learned how to handle the situgtion--nothing could have prevented Her from winning the war. Instead of having sunk 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 might have won it! This circumstance, that so few sub- marines could accomplish such des- tructive results, shows how formid- able was the problem which we faced. Germany could do this, of course, be- cause the restricted field in which she was able to operate was so con- stantly and so densely infested with valuable shipping. * she In the above I have been deserib- ing the operations of the U-boats in the great area to the west and south of Ireland. But there were other hunting fields, particularly on the east toast vf England, in the area ex- * tending from Harwich to Newcastle. This was the headquarters of a great trade between the North Sea ports of England and Norway and Sweden, consisting of essential products like .Jumber and many manufactured ar- ticles. Every four days a convoy of from forty to sixty ships left this region for Scandinavia; [I use the word "convay", but the operation was a convoy only in the. sense that the ships sailed in bunches, for the navy Was unable to provide them with an adequate escort--seldom more than, one or two destroyers, or a. few * yachts and trawlers. Smaller types of submarines, known as UBs and VCs, came out of Wilhelmshaven and the, Skager Rack, and constant- Y. pres thi tbastal shipping: 'hese submarines differed {rom the U-boats in that they were smaller, of nbout 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 more quickly from their bases and get back, and they did an immense amount of dam- '®ge to this coastal trade. The value " of the shipping sunk, of course, did not compare with the losses which Great Britain suffered on the great Trans- Atlantic routes, but the prob- 3 was a serious' one, because the supplies which these ships brought 'Were essential to military operations. sides these two types--the U- . boats and the UBs andl UCs--the | Germans had another type of sub- marine---the great ocean cruisers. | These ships were a8 long as a small | surface cruiser and half again as long as a destroyer, and their displace- ment sometimes r@ached 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. t they were very unhandy vesse FY Lit took them a relatively long tine to submerge, and, for this reason, they could not operate ardind the el and other places where anti- avine-eraft were most numerous. ; act, these vessels, of whigh the Germans had in commission rhaps half a dozen when the armist was - accomplished little in: the k They were used mainly for strategic purposes. One or two were "usually stationed off the res, not in the expectation of get much shipping--they sank few merchant men---but in. the hope of diverting anti-submarine craft from the main theatre of operations. In this, how- 'ever, they did not succeed; in faet, I [cannot see that these great cruisers | accomplished anything that Justified , expense and trouble involved in building them. EL This, then, was the type of war fare which the German submarines were wiging upon Alli shipping. i What were the Allied navies done to check them In this teirible month of April, 1917? What anti-subma- the Vv WHAT THE U-BOAT PROBLEM REALLY WAS ar game on both antic was devising ing. thé underwater spaper magazine, man at his club for defeat- means of ship. Every public 'man & nad his ing th £ anyone ne was 'a North clear as dayl at of map of solution was as f us n of ne are y I a yo » tha she iKin't ee how ines -evuted operate in the nel, it was so narrow » bases and into the No apparently ir thing was ports and p the high t man in the advocating this pro Y talk with f fficials, in which th aske 3 tould not be done "1 can why if is img "We shall first have to capture their bases, and it would be simply sui- cidal to attempt it, and it would be playing directly into Germany's hands. Those s are protected by guns of 15, 11 and 8-inch calibre. The guns are secreted behind hill cated in pits on the se no appro: Moreove 40,000 yard 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 © can see and who has arms tvice long as his enemy's. "We can send as many ships as we wish on such an expedition, and they will lestroved, / The German guns would probably get them on the first salvo, certainly on the second. There is nothing the germans would go much like to have us try." give you fourteen reasons ore, all be «¢ Why Not Barrage Across arth Sea? Another idea suggested by a glance at the map was the construction of a Farrage across the North Sea from the Orkneys to the coast of No The distance did not seem so v great--on the map; in reality it was two hundred and thirty miles and the water is from 360 to 960 féet in dept} said the certainly--we ean do the -next- best thing; we can 'pen them up in the North Sea. Then we ean route all our shipping tao ppints on the west cbast of England, and the problem is solved. I discussed furs proposition British navy men and their was quite to the point. "If we haven't mines enough to build a successful barrage across the Straitsi.of Dover, which is only twenty miles wide, how can we con- struct a barrage : across, the North Yea which is 2307" 'A year afterward, as will appear, this plan. came up in more practical form, but in 1917 the idea was not among the possibilities-~there were Hot mines epough in the world te build such a barrage. with answer On our sidy of the Atlantic, and, to a certain extes & in England itself, there was a bel that placing guns and gun crews on merchantmen was the most effective means of meeting the submarine. Some of the old Bri- tish merchant salts held to this view. "Ci®e us a gun and we'll take care of the submarines all right," they 1£pt saying to the Admiralty. 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 discussion pro and con; so far as the protection of shipping was concerned, however, all this was wasted oratory. Those who advocated arming mer chant ships had simply failed to grasp the fundamental facts of sub- marine warfare. The quality that makes the submarine so difficult to deal with is its invisibility. The great political issue involved in the sub- marine controversy, and the issue that brought the United States into the wa¥, was that of sinking mer- chant Ships without warming. It was use the submarines sank without warning that a dozen guns placed on aimerchant ship afforded practi- cally no protection. The lcokout won a merchantman could not see the submarine for the very good' reason that the submarine was under the watén: it was only by a happy chance that he could see the periscope--provided one were expos ed. The first intimation 'whieh mérchantman usually had that a U- boat was in his neighborhood was the expldtef of the torpedo in his All that the I answered, | or lo- where ching vessel can see them. hose guns have' a range of but the guns on no ships not pen the rats up in their|2 newspaper strategist, THE DAILY BRITISH WHIG % ICT By ADMIRAL WILLIAM SOWDEN SIMS 3 - < Ld ee Flag; 772 Moy Lor Two British, ond American, merchantmen were torpedoed and sunk off Queenstown, #nd in no case was a periscope of a confing tower seen. The English never trusted their battleships at sea without des troyer escort, and certainly if a bat- | tleship, with its powerful armament, j could not protect itself from subma- {rines, ft was too much to expect that ordinary © armed merchantman would be able to do so. 1 think the fact that few American armed ships were attacked and sunk in 1917 creat- ed the impression that their guns afforded some protection But this was, policy on Germany's part. She expected, as I have said, to win the war long before the United States could play an effective part in it. She was «therefore refraining from any unnecessary acts that would still fur- ther embitter the American people against her. She was also playing up to the pacifist elements in our coun- try in order to keep us from using against her such forces as we already had at hand. The reason American armed merchantmen were not sunk was because they were not seriously attacked. I have already shown how casily Germany could sink them when she tried. Besides, the chief argu- ment against relying upon armed ships was that this was a defensive measure, whereas' the. extremely grave situation we were then facing demanded the most energetic offen- sive methods. Yet the arming of me.chant ships was justified as a Ainor measure. It accomplished one end--it forced the submarine to sub- merge and to use torpedoes instead of gunfire. This in itself was a great ain, because the Germans much pre- oad to sink ships with projectiles than with torped for their sup- ply of these latter missiles was lim- ited, . Fighting U-Boats, In_April, 19177 the British navy was fighting the submarine mainly in two ways: it was constantly sowing mines off the ent~ Me to the sub- Zoran: aie Tad , and rugge, and in - Heligolan Bight--operatiohs that accomplished little, for the Germans swept them up almost as fast as they were planted; and it was patrolling the submarin infested area with anti-submarine craft. The Admiralty was depend- almost exclusively upon this pa- trol, yet this, the only means which then seemed to hold forth much prom- ise of defeating the submarine, was a-go- | strategy would consiiit in so eo most anything that could carry a wireless, a. gun, and depth charges. At this time the ve: al chiefly used was the destroyer. The naval war hull. "In six weeks, in the spring and early summer of 1917, thirty armed RErITInG 7 the Jr75h Ses, Mines and Patrols. Two Ways of 3 -------- - | StrEawera Corson First Lordor the. when Aadmiral SIMS arrived InLErngland rn Aoril Z 927 7 fT 53 Horstingdarmiral SIMS. weeks Se was ihe sepremd comnanender ofall Lorcés, man fleet seriously attempted a great Aamiralty 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 which regulated whole anti-sub- marine campaign. The destruction of the submarine was highly probable in case the destroyer could get a fair chance at het. It is evident, there fore that a proper German strategy would consist in so dis sing its sub- marines that they cou) / conduct their operations with the r.inimum risk of meeting their "ost effective enemies while a nropeny , ceived Allied ling the situation that the submarinas would have constantly to meet them. Frankness compels me to say thst, in the early part of 1917, the Germans had, the upper hand in this strateric game; that is, they were =o domina- ting the campaign that they were constantly attacking Allied shipping } ers were dispersing their over the wide waste of waters. the facts in the situation, part of the German navy, submarine this advantage, tish were most Percical sty against the difficulties imposed mighty task which they iype of warfare, the submarine warfare as well. can ple terms' of arithmetic. troyers. The problem, which proved so em- i be stated in the sim- Everything reduced itself to a question of des- In April, 1017, the British navy had in commission hbout 200 of this indispensable type of warship; many cf them were old, and others | had - been pretty badly worm and] weakened by three years of particus larly racking service. It was the problem of the Admiralty to place! these destroyers in thete fields where | they could best serve the Allied cause. | The one fact that apparently rose su- perior to all others, was that a flo- | tilla of at least 100 destroyers must | be continually kept with the Grand | Fleet, ready to go into action®at al moment's notice. The whole strategy | of German naval operations 'as well | as British centered upon this! destroyer situation, since if was chief- | ly the destroyer that could defeat the submarine campaign. German Policy of Defeating Destroy- - ers, It was therefore the part of wis- dom for the Germans to handle their navy strategically in the: way that would best promote this general aim --that is, to resort to every possible move that would keep British de- stroyers from attacking German sub- marines. The policy of the German High Seas Fleet, that of keeping the battleships land-lecked in German harbors; promoted this end more than any single manoeuvre. Had the Ger- sea battle, it would unquestionably have been defeated, ygand such a de- feat would have meant an even greater disaster than the loss of the battleships, for it would have rele ed more than 100 British destrovers which could have heen used most of fectively against German submarines. By keeping its dreadnaught fleet in- tact, always refusing to give battle and yet always threatening an en- gagement, the Germans penned up 100 British destroyers in the Orknevs ------gdestroyers which otherwise right Ps, BB Be A ees v - AB gaps Your upset stomach will feel fine! No waiting! When your meals don't | fit and you feel uncomfortable, when | you belch -gases, acids or raise. sour | undigested food. When you feel | lumps of indigestion pain, heartburn | or headache from acidity, just eat a! tablet of harmless and reliable Pape's | Diapepsin and the stomach distress! is gone. . Militons of p 2 INDIGESTION 2 "'Pape's Diapepsin" relieves Sour, Gassy, Acid Stomachs at once--no waiting! Read. En Be BB os ee es es & , have done most destructive work against 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, constantly suggested the likelihood that the attempt might be repeated , and was thus an influences which tended to keep these destroyers at Scapa Flow. Many times during that éritical period the Admiralty dis- cussed the question of releasing those destroyers, or a part of them, for the anti-submarine campaign; yet they always had to decide--and decid isely--against any such di- v . At that time the German Inaught fleet was not immeas- urably inferior to the British: it had a protecting screen of about 200 des- troyers; and it would have been mad- ness for the British to have gone into battle with its own destroyer screen placed several hindred miles away, off the coast of Ireland. How Hospital Ships Were Attacked. Germany likewise practically - im- mobilized a considerable number of destroyers by attacking hospital ships. It was impossible for Ameri- cans and Englishmen to believe at first that these dastardly attacks were intentional; they so callously violated all the rules of warfare and all the agreements for lessening the horrors of war to which Germany her- self had become a party, that there was a tendency in our enlightened country to give her the benefit of the doubt. As a matter of fact, not only were the submarine attacks on hospital ships deliberate; but Gear many officially informed us that they would be made! The reasons for this warning are clear enough. Until we received such warning hospital ships had put to sea unescorted by war- ships, depending for their safety upon therutes of the Hague Conference. pat ee AAA Act gars ed «+ EF A ns frei sere eB WA Be Bei ree eee ol el of Pape's Diapepsin as an antacid. They know that most indigestion and disordered stomach are from acidity. 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