SUBMARINE MOTIVES
The German submarines are standardised. The draughts and blue
prints of the most important machinery are multiplied and sent, if
necessary, to twenty different factories, while all the minor
stampings are produced at one or other main factory. The
"assembling" of the submarines, therefore, is not difficult.
During the war submarine parts have been assembled at Trieste,
Zeebrugge, Kiel, Bremerhaven, Stettin, and half a dozen other
places in Germany unnecessary to relate. With commendable
foresight, Germany sent submarine parts packed as machinery to
South America, where they are being assembled somewhere on the west
coast.
The improvement, enlargement, and simplification of the submarine
has progressed with great rapidity.
When I was in England after a former visit to Germany I met a
number of seafolk who pooh-poohed extensive future submarining, by
saying that, no matter how many submarines the Germans might be
able to produce, the training of submarine officers and crew was
such a difficult task that the "submarine menace," as it was then
called in England, need not be taken too seriously.
The difficulty is not so great. German submarine officers and men
are trained by the simple process of double or treble banking of
the crews of submarines on more or less active service. Submarine
crews are therefore multiplied probably a great deal faster than
the war destroys them. These double or treble crews, who rarely go
far away from German waters, and are mostly trained in the safe
Baltic, are generally composed of young but experienced seamen.
There are, however, an increasing number of cases of soldiers being
transferred abruptly to the U-boat service.
The education of submarine officers and crew begins in thorough
German fashion on land or in docks, in dummy or disused submarines,
accompanied by much lecture work and drill. Submarine life is not
so uncomfortable as we think. With the exception of the
deprivation of his beer, which is not allowed in submarines, or,
indeed, any form of alcohol, except a small quantity of brandy,
which is kept under the captain's lock and key, Hans in his
submarine is quite as comfortable as Johann in his destroyer.
Extra comforts are forwarded to submarine men, which consist of
gramophone records (mostly Viennese waltzes), chocolate, sausages,
smoked eels, margarine, cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco, a small
and treasured quantity of real coffee, jam, marmalade, and sugar.
All these, I was proudly told, were extras. There is no shortage
in the German Navy.
I learned nothing of value about the largest German submarines,
except that everybody in Germany knew they were being built, and by
the time the gossip of them reached Berlin the impression there was
that they were at least as large as Atlantic liners.
Now as to German submarine policies. The part that has to do with
winning the war will be dealt with in the next chapter. But there
is also a definite policy in connection with the use of submarines
for winning the "war after the war."
The National Liberal Party, of which Tirpitz is the god, is at the
head of the vast, gradually solidifying mammoth trust, which
embraces Krupps, the mines, shipbuilding yards, and the
manufactures. Now and then a little of its growth leaks out, such
as the linking up of Krupps with the new shipbuilding.
The scheme is brutally simple and is going on under the eyes of the
British every day. These people believe that _by building ships
themselves and destroying enemy and neutral shipping_, they will be
the world's shipping masters at the termination of the war. In
their attitude towards Norwegian shipping, you will notice that
they make the flimsiest excuse for the destruction of as much
tonnage as they can sink. It was confidently stated to me by a
member of the National Liberal Party, and by no means an
unimportant one, that Germany is building ships as rapidly as she
is sinking them. That I do not believe; but that a great part of
her effort is devoted to the construction of mercantile vessels I
ascertained beyond the shadow of a doubt.
I have met people in England who refuse to believe that Germany,
battling on long lines east and west, and constructing with
feverish haste war vessels of every description, can find
sufficient surplus energy to build ships which will not be of the
slightest use until after the war is finished. I can only say that
I personally have seen the recently completed Hamburg-America
liners _Cap Polonio_ and _Cap Finisterre_ anchored in the Elbe off
Altona. They are beautiful boats of 20,000 and 16,000 tons, a
credit to the German shipbuilding industry, which has made such
phenomenal strides in recent years. At Stettin I passed almost
under the stem of the brand new 21,000 ton Hamburg-South America
liner, _Tirpitz_--which for obvious business reasons may be
re-named after the war.
Both at Hamburg and Lubeck, where the rattle of the pneumatic
riveter was as incessant as in any American city in course of
construction, I was amazed at the number of vessels of five or six
thousand tons which I saw being built. Furthermore, the giant
North German, Lloyd liner, _Hindenburg_, is nearing completion,
while the _Bismarck_, of the Hamburg-America Line will be ready for
her maiden trip in the early days of peace.
Another part of the National Liberals' policy is the keeping alive
of all German businesses, banks and others, in enemy countries.
Some people in England seem to think that the Germans are anxious
to keep these businesses alive in order to make money. Many
Germans regard John Bull as extremely simple, but not so simple as
to allow them to do that. So long as the businesses are kept going
until after the war, when they can again start out with redoubled
energy, the Germans desire nothing more. The Deutsche Bank, for
example, which bears no comparison to an English or American bank,
but which is an institution for promoting both political and
industrial enterprise, is entrenched behind so powerful an
Anglo-German backing in London, I was informed on many occasions,
that the British Government dare not close it down. The mixture of
spying and propaganda with banking, with export, with manufacture,
seems so foreign to Anglo-Saxon ways as to be almost inconceivable.
Coincident with the destruction of foreign shipping, and the
maintenance of their businesses in enemy countries (England and
Italy especially) is the exploitation of the coal and other mines,
oil wells, and forests in occupied enemy territory. The French and
Belgian coalfields are being worked to the utmost, together with
the iron mines at Longwy and Brieux. Poland is being deforested to
such an extent that the climate is actually altering.
It is a vast and definite scheme, with such able leaders as Herr
Bassermann, the real leader of the National Liberal Party, Herr
Stresemann, and Herr Hirsch, of Essen. "We have powerful friends,
not only in London, Milan, Rome, Madrid, New York, and Montreal,
but throughout the whole of South America, and everywhere except in
Australia where that _verdammter Hooges_ (Hughes) played into the
hands of our feeble, so-called leader, von Bethmann-Hollweg, by
warning the people that the British people would follow Hughes'
lead."
So much for the commercial part of submarining.
U-boating close to England has long ceased to be a popular
amusement with the German submarine flotilla, who have a thoroughly
healthy appreciation of the various devices by which so many of
them have been destroyed. The National Liberals believe that the
British will not be able to tackle long-distance submarines
operating in the Atlantic and elsewhere. Their radius of action is
undoubtedly increasing almost month by month. From remarks made to
me I do not believe that these submarines have many land bases at
great distances--certainly none in the United States. They may
have floating bases; but this I do know--that their petrol-carrying
capacity altogether exceeds that of any earlier type of submarine,
and that their surface speed, at any rate in official tests, runs
up to nearly 20 knots.
The trip of the _Deutschland_ was not only for the purpose of
bringing a few tons of nickel and rubber, but for thoroughly
testing the new engines (designed by Maybach), for bringing back a
hundred reports of the effects of submersion in such cold waters as
are to be found off the banks of Newfoundland, for ascertaining how
many days' submerged or surface travelling is likely to be
experienced, and, indeed, for making such a trial trip across the
Atlantic and back as was usual in the early days of steamships.