CHAPTER I

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THE VICTORY AT SEA

REAR-ADMIRAL W. S. SIMS

U.S. NAVY

THE VICTORY AT SEA

[Illustration: _Rear Admiral William Sowden Sims U.S. Navy_

_G. Vandyk Ltd. photographers_]

THE

VICTORY AT SEA

BY REAR-ADMIRAL WILLIAM SOWDEN SIMS

U.S. NAVY

COMMANDER OF THE AMERICAN NAVAL FORCES OPERATING

IN EUROPEAN WATERS DURING THE GREAT WAR

IN COLLABORATION WITH

BURTON J. HENDRICK

WITH PORTRAIT AND PLANS

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1920

FIRST EDITION _November 1920_

_Reprinted_ _December 1920_

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Printed by Hasell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, England._

TO

THE GALLANT OFFICERS AND MEN

WHOM I HAD THE HONOUR TO COMMAND

DURING THE GREAT WAR

IN

GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF

A LOYAL DEVOTION TO THE CAUSE

THAT GREATLY LIGHTENED THE

RESPONSIBILITY

BORNE BY

"THE OLD MAN"

PREFACE

This is not in any sense a history of the operations of our naval forces

in Europe during the Great War, much less a history of the naval

operations as a whole. That would require not only many volumes, but

prolonged and careful research by competent historians. When such a work

is completed, our people will realize for the first time the admirable

initiative with which the gallant personnel of our navy responded to the

requirements of an unprecedented naval situation.

But in the meantime this story has been written in response to a demand

for some account of the very generally misunderstood submarine campaign

and, particularly, of the means by which it was defeated. The interest

of the public in such a story is due to the fact that during the war the

sea forces were compelled to take all possible precautions to keep the

enemy from learning anything about the various devices and means used to

oppose or destroy the under-water craft. This necessity for the utmost

secrecy was owing to the peculiar nature of the sea warfare. When the

armies first made use of airplane bombs, or poison gas, or tanks, or

mobile railroad batteries, the existence of these weapons and the manner

of their use were necessarily at once revealed to the enemy, and the

press was permitted to publish full accounts of them and, to a certain

extent, of their effect and the means used to oppose them. Moreover, all

general movements of the contending armies that resulted in engagements

were known with fair accuracy on both sides within a short time after

they occurred and were promptly reported to an anxious public.

But this situation bore almost no resemblance to the struggle between

the U-boats and the anti-submarine forces of the Allies. Barring a few

naval actions between surface vessels, such as the battles of Jutland

and of the Falkland Islands, the naval war was, for the most part, a

succession of contests between single vessels or small groups of

vessels. The enemy submarines sought to win the war by sinking the

merchant shipping upon which depended the essential supplies of the

allied populations and armies; and it was the effort of the Allies to

prevent this, and to destroy submarines when possible, that constituted

the vitally important naval activities of the war. By means of

strategical and tactical dispositions, and various weapons and devices,

now no longer secret, such as the depth charge, the mystery ship,

hydrophones, mine-fields, explosive mine nets, special hunting

submarines, and so forth, it was frequently possible either to destroy

submarines with their entire crews, or to capture the few men who

escaped when their boats were sunk, and thus keep from the German

Admiralty all knowledge of the means by which their U-boats had met

their fate. Thus the mystery ships, or decoy ships, as the Germans

called them, destroyed a number of submarines before the enemy knew that

such dangerous vessels existed. And even after they had acquired this

knowledge, the mystery ships used various devices that enabled them to

continue their successes until some unsuccessfully attacked submarine

carried word of the new danger back to her home port.

Under such unprecedented conditions of warfare, it is apparent that the

Allied navies could not safely tell the public just what they were doing

or how they were doing it. All articles written for the press had to be

carefully censored, and all of these interesting matters ruthlessly

suppressed; but now that the ban has been removed, it is desirable to

give the relatives and friends of the fine chaps who did the good work

sufficient information to enable them to understand the difficulty of

the problem that was presented to the anti-submarine forces of the

Allies, the manner in which it was solved, and the various means

invented and employed.

The subject is of course largely technical, but an effort has been made

to present the story in such form that the layman can readily understand

it. As it is difficult, if not quite impossible, for a naval officer to

determine just which of the details that are a part of his daily life,

and what incidents of sea experience would interest his civilian

friends, the story has been written in collaboration with Mr. Burton J.

Hendrick, to whom I am greatly indebted for invaluable assistance; and

who, being an experienced hand at this writing business, deserves all

the credit the reader may be disposed to accord him for both the form

and such graces of descriptive style as he may be able to detect.

While opinions may differ to a certain extent as to the influence

exerted upon the campaign by the various forms of tactics, the means and

weapons employed, and the general strategy adopted, I have given what I

believe to be a consensus of the best informed opinion upon these

matters; and I have taken advantage of all of the information now

available to insure accuracy in the account of the conditions that

confronted the European naval forces, and in the description of the

various operations that have been selected as typical examples of this

very extraordinary warfare.

It is probably unnecessary to add that this book is published with the

full approval of the Navy Department. My correspondence on this subject

with the Secretary will be found in the Appendix.

W. S. S.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. WHEN GERMANY WAS WINNING THE WAR 1

II. THE RETURN OF THE "MAYFLOWER" 40

III. THE ADOPTION OF THE CONVOY 78

IV. AMERICAN DESTROYERS IN ACTION 99

V. DECOYING SUBMARINES TO DESTRUCTION 141

VI. AMERICAN COLLEGE BOYS AND SUBCHASERS 168

VII. THE LONDON FLAGSHIP 204

VIII. SUBMARINE AGAINST SUBMARINE 224

IX. THE AMERICAN MINE BARRAGE IN THE NORTH SEA 244

X. GERMAN SUBMARINES VISIT THE AMERICAN COAST 266

XI. FIGHTING SUBMARINES FROM THE AIR 275

XII. THE NAVY FIGHTING ON THE LAND 289

XIII. TRANSPORTING TWO MILLION AMERICAN SOLDIERS TO FRANCE 294

APPENDIX 316

INDEX 347

THE VICTORY AT SEA

CHAPTER I

WHEN GERMANY WAS WINNING THE WAR

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 manoeuvre 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 role 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 role 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

manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres

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 manoeuvre 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The statements published were not false, but they were inconclusive

and intentionally so. They gave the number of British ships sunk, but

not their tonnage, and not the total losses of British, Allied, and

neutral tonnage.

[2] See Appendices II and III for my cable and letter to the Navy

Department, explaining the submarine situation in detail.

[3] See Appendix IV for my statement to Washington on arming merchant

ships.

[4] For specimens of my reports to the Navy Department in these early

days see Appendices II and III.

[5] See Appendix II.