'BLOCKADE' AND BLUFF.

Bruce Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 43, 4 June 1917, Page 5

'BLOCKADE' AND BLUFF.

BEHIND THE U BOAT WAR. WHAT IS TO OOME? H. C. Ferraby, 'Daily Express' naval correspondent, discussed early, in the campaign the problem which has since become very acute: — The result of the first seven days of the newest yersion of the German 'sub marine blockade' are now before us, and it will perhaps be a good thing to analyse the figures for comparison with that previous 'great push' under water in February, 1915. That, too, was intended to starve Britain out and bring her to her knees. It did not, nor will the present attempt. The new onslaught is not so very much worse than the old in its effects ou our own mercantile marine. This fact ought to be thoroughly appreciated, because there has been a tendency in some'quarters to emphasise the number of ships of all nations and of all sizes that have been sunk in the past few days. It is the fact that on one day, out.of seven ships announced as sunk, there were five that were trawlers or fishing smacks, but oil seven were lumped together by the unthinking. The losses of neutrals are more heavy now than they were in the corresponding period of 1915. Protected Neutrals. These facts are significant. Their truo relationship to our resources cannot bo determined, of course, unless the Admiralty issue, as they did two years ago, a weekly total of arrivals and departures of shipping in our ports. Nor can wo really estimate the full effect of the attack on seaborne commerce under the present nebulous way of announcing losses, by which vessels that have been sunk on several different days are posted as lost iu the same announcement. Nevertheless., it is quite clear from these first rough estimates that some form of Bxitish protection for neutral shipping was necessary unless neutral shipowners were to be scared away from our ports—which is, of course, the real object of the frightfulness campaign. That protection ha 3 been, in fact, devised-by a scheme of insurance, under which neutral owners can co/or their Bhips against loss when trading between British ports and certain other parts of the world by premiums w'rch are in no case higher than £5 per £IOO. The temporary suspension of neutral sailings when the German proposals were first announced was natural; owners could hardly be expected to send their ships to sea in defiance of the edict without some sort of guarantee from us that the ships would be safe, or their value would be refunded.

That guarantee lias been given to them, not only in the financial sen-je, but in the even more important sense of personal security. The very significant worda used by Lord Curzon in the House of Lords in the first Government speech of the session will have carried the message to every port in the neutral world: —

'We are exerting ourselves to protect neutral shipping from the dangers by which they are threatened. We are organising the sea routes in the endeavour to provide lanes of safety through the danger zone.' Real Control. That could not be done, it could not oven be attempted save by a Power that had an all but complete control of the seas. No one who has any understanding of sea matters can fail to understand at what Lord Curzon was hinting. The neutral shipping world especially will understand him. In the discussions on tko new dangers that confront sea traffic to this country in the next few months it has been almost exclusively assumed that the weapon that is to strike us is the submarine. There is no warrant for this assumption. The German Note and its acompanying memorandum were both .particularly insistent on the use of the phrase 'all weapons' in describing the new attack. That implies more than the submarine. It implies the use of mines which will not be laid us formerly, by German surface ships disguised as neutrals, but by the now flotillas of submarine minelayers. It implies, too, an intention to let loose upon the high seas corsairs of the Moewe type if that can be accomplished, as we know it can under certain conditions of weather.

Moreover, Lord Curzon warned the country that we must expect deeds to bo attempted that will surpass in horror and atrocity anything that the enc;jiy has hitherto essayed. Gorman writers have not hesitated in the past few weeks to hint openly that Germany will not be satisfied until 'Britain has undergone the same sufferings as France, Eussia Belgium, and Sorvia. . That threat is no idle one. No naval student has ever pretended that it was. Behind the bluff and "bluster of the new 'submarine blockade' there lies a very definite danger. It was to this that Lord Curzon referred.,. It is against this that the Navy is ever on guard.