GERMANY'S U-BOATS

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 113, 8 November 1918, Page 10

GERMANY'S U-BOATS

DESCENT TO BLACK PIRACY

STRIKING AT THE LIFE OF THE ALLIES

HOW THE MENACE WAS MET

I™ , t Germany's appeal to the submarine as ' her chief naval weapon followed directly from the failure of her original naval strategy as expressed in the High Sea fleet,, and her subsequent slower, but equally obvious, failure to carry on cruiser warfare, which, indeed, depended upjon some measure" of success in fleet actions as a preliminary. Mines, to winch the enemy clearly attached great importance at first, wore on the whole singularly ineffective, for the minefields were continually being destroyed by the Allied patrols, and shipping was carefully shepherded. ' Counter-mining by the British in the North Sea 1 had the double result of hindering the movements of the enemy's mine-layers and of further restriding the movements of non-hostile shipping and enabling it to be the better guarded. This process reached a crisis in November, 1914, when the whole of the North Sea was declared'by the

liner. This flagrant and disgusting crime sent a wave of horror round the world. In particular it- incensed the United States, many of whose citizens were among the victims; and then began that long and involved series of diplomatic interchanges between the President and ■the German Government that, however it puzzled and annoyed the public, led in the end to the American declaration of war, twenty-three months later..

In the new year of 1917, after two years of the Tirpitz "blockade," the German Government announced that a new campaign of "unrestricted" submarine warfare was to begin. The U-boats had so far not _ succeeded in seriously distressing Britain., They had failed utterly to terrify the seamen who manned tho threatened ships v But these failures had undoubtedly encouraged the opinion that nothing the submarines could do need cause any worry; and the

British Government to be a war area, in which vessels moved, except within spe- : cified narrow zones, in peril of being , fired upon. This was especially a measure agUinst the German device of oovjering mine-layers with neutral flags. The first definite announcement of.the submarine policy came from the notorious AdmiTal yon Tirpitz, "on the 22ud December, 1914, when ho t announced ■ that he would "starve England" by means of U-boats; and German press and publicists proceeded to justify this policy by declaring it a simple reprisal for the "frightfulness" of Britain and her Allies in starving the helpless women and children of Germany. The absurdity of this contention alongside of their con-. tinued assertion that Germany was not being starved did not seem to be emI phasised' in Germany at all. On 4th [ February, 1915, Germany declared all the waters round the British isles a. "danger zone," in which peaceful yessels would bs exposed to attack as if thoy were warships; and Germany re- , pudiated responsibility for the safety ' of passengers or crews of such vessels, j This "campaign" came into' operation on 18th Febrnarv; but it was on the ; wholo disappointing. There was noth- ' ing new in the method, for ships had ] been sunk "ruthlessly" for a long time beforo, and the rate of destruction increased very little. Tho result was, as ifc appeared later, a most injurious :ist sumption that the submarine "blockade" . was not a thing to be treated i seriously, and the Allies failed to take , adequate measures to . deal with the peril in the way that before long proved necessary. THE' DAWN OF " RUTHLESS- "„,, „ "*^'"Cl . On tho Btb May. In- mvr, a new turn j was given to tile situatinN by the sinking , of the liusitiinin. in wjjicii 1154 lives vnro lost, ftftdf Oot'inttny liafkblfttftntly tej iijtcntiou' to deetrpv;

enlightenment of tha ensuing months was all the more terrible for that. The new campaign began on 18th February, and reached; an almost terrifying climax in April. It j s O p en t<) fae gravest-doubt whether the German leaders, having studied the submarine question thoroughly, ever j expected to be able to use their new weapou humanely. The submarine gained I power solely from their power to hide; and they were unable to carry prize crews or refugees; nor were ports open for the reception of captured ships, Their victims therefore had to be sunk; and, if tho . campaign was to succeed, they must bo sunk in barbarous circumstance. The crime of Germany lay originally in the adoption of the submarine at all,, since its methods were essentially murderous. But the Germans took little qr no trouble to reduce the the sufferings of their victims. On rare occasions boats were. towed. U yards safety or given some, other slender assistance- In the vast majority of cases the ■ crews were simply abandoned to their > 'n a great many they were del.Hberately murdered in cold blood,. The «nemy even instituted the shocking pollev of destroying ships—including neutrals—so as to leave no trace whatever, i j"111.use(J the services of neutral Embassies to facilitate it. No distinction was made as to the nationality of a yicjtt ime '> a sI"P was a £hip, and anything | that »oated was regarded an a legitimat. a tar.f et- .Germany has a long list of s«»kel1 hospital ships standing to her ete'-'nal disgrace. * THE SrfOCK OF APRIL, 1917. • . ; , T. hu set itself a standard of deetrurtiou ot a million tons a month. This was never reached] but the sinkings grew with terrible 'rapidity in the early part of thft campaign. April was the worst month. The month's total (s'uldiigß ivinouotod to 891,000 ton* s and for April, May, and Juno the total .was_

2,237,000 tons—far more than Britain had ever built in a year. Nothing more than the figures was needed to awaken the world to the reality of the danger. Measures had of course been taken from the first to meet the German campaign, but it was impossible for tnem to keep pace at once with activity on this scale. The Germans were fought with a double campaign, destruction of U-boats on the one hand, and increased construction of ships on the other. The navy was added to by ■ enormous numbers of small fast craft of all types; new instruments for the detection of submarines hidden by the sea. and for their destruction, were invented and brought into service in great variety; minefields were laid, including an enormous area sixty miles wide, extending from tho Norwegian coast almost to the coast of Scotland, and contaming about a, quarter of a million mines. Slowly, but very slowly, the enemy s submarine ■ activity was - cut down/ till aboul the middle ot 1918 the destruction of U-boats had about met wie rate of issue of new ones." Early in August. 1918, Mr. Lloyd George an nounced that at least 155 U-boats had been accounted for, out of a total of 356 of all types. This was certainly an under-estimate, for it included only cases in which the evidence of destruction was positive or of capture; and the "doubtfuls must have included a large number of others lost. . WORK OF THE SHIPYARDS. The indirect campaign against the submarines, fought in the shipyards, had some surprising features, and its mark will long be visible in the history of the worlds commerce. The United Kingdom, which owned at the beginning of the^war about 21,000,000 grots tons out of the world's total of 49,000,000 tons, had throughout the history of modern stopping been the greatest producer of tonnage; and the British yearly output, particularly in the last half century, Vm_?roWn by leaps and bounds. In ■IVlo it reached the record of nearly two million tons. If that rate had been maintained throughout the war, the general shipping situation would etill have been ' tight," owing to the enormous military and naval requirements; but/it would have been very much less acute. Actually the -British output slumped heavily. Labour was transferred from the morchant yards to the essential'work of building warships; and skilled workers were 'drafted wholesale into the army. In 1915. the total output from British yards was 651,000 tons; in 1916, 041,000 tons. As soon as the enemy's acelerated U-boat campaign began, this output was seen to be intolerably low; in fact, the nation's shipyards were committing national- suicide. Herculean efforts were made in every possible direction^to speed up the output. "Standardwed construction was adopted; private builders added to their number of slips; national yards were laid down. But the labour problem was the greatest, and its itnensity is made clear by the fact that even when labour set itself most earnestly to work, the wartime British output of merchant ships never, in any twelve months, reached the two million mark. It was practically hopeless for most of the other shipbuilding nations of the world.to contribute extensively to the general fund of tonnagei Germany, of course, was out of court. The Scandinavian countries were crippled by the intense economic distress caused by the war; France and Italy had no energy to spare for increased, or even for normal shipbuilding. Japan increased her output considerably, but was >■ only ; a small contributor because she has no adequate native supply of.steel. The world was.rescued by the United States; The United States had not in recent years been an important shipbuilder, and her biggest output for a rear was 402,000 tons, in 1901; in 1913 the turnout was 346,155 tons. But America wao alone in having enormous available sup plies of capital, material, and labom An extraordinarily large "programme" was laid down by the Government unHer the direction at first of the famous Colonel Goethals, and later under the Federal Shipping Board, of which Mr. Edwin Hurley became chairman. Contrary to a very widespread opinion, ♦.he programme was not too large for the amount of energy and determination behind it. A great number of shipyards of enormous size were built, .and ships of steel, wood, and composite structure began at first slowly but with everincreasing speed to take the water. The results-l, of the combined outputs was that in the second quarter of 1918 the world's output exceeded ' the world's losses from all causes for that period by almost 300,000 tons. THE CONVOY SYSTEM. Notwithstanding the use of an enormous number.of vessels solely engaged in U-boat hunting, the comparatively small number of submarines operating were able to carry on their work with remarkable success against vessels not specially protected. The first stage in direct protection was the arming of merchantmen with guns, accompanied by the use of "camouflage," the painting of ships so as to mislead attackers as to distance, course, or position. These were, however, only-partially successful, and were of no avail when a'U-boat was able to attack without warning. The system of convoy, as practised in former .wars, was adopted, aiiH immediately the losses were greatly reduced. Convoying, was very elaborately carried out, and the saving of tonnage undoubtedly outweighed, the loss of efficiency in the use of ships caused! by the inevitable delays in the case of vessels held back to join the con voys, The Scandinavian traffic, the first' to be covered by the systenii was twite specially attacked by the Germans. On 17th October, 1917, a convoy of twelve ships, escorted by two destroyers, was attacked by two heavily-armed light crnisei's. The destroyers and nine of thn merchantmen were sunk. On 12th Decem ber a second convoy was similarly attacked and practically destroyed. But apart from these two disasters,- the ■ convoy system was carried out with very few losses. Only on rare occasions did torpedoes get home; and U-boats which attacked convoys were often destroyed by the escorts by gunfire, or depth, bombs, or ramming. An interesting feature of the submarine campaign was the way in which the U-boats were forced to disperse their energies. In the British home waters the enormous number of hostile ships soon made tho campaign excessiveIly costly; and, as the enemy had to use craft with a large fuel capacity to get round the British Isles "north about," he soon' extended his operations far out into the Atlantic. This reduced his offensive poweT, but it also rendered protection more difficult until the problem was solved by the development of the convoy system. The less complete protection of shipping in the Mediterranean, too, tempted the submarines, and a very high proportion of losses was suffered there, because for a long time it was impossible to provide sufficient forces to patrol this great hunting ground on the same scale as in the North Sea. Germany made experiments also as far away as the coast of the United States. Tha first venture was the despatch of tho Deutschland,- professedly a commercial vessel, but almost certainly a pioneer to test the possibility of such cruises. A second vessel of the kiud, the Bremen, never reached America. But in October, 1916, U53, after claiming the hospitality of Newport, Rhode Island, proceeded to sink a number of vessels 45 miles from l the coast, in . the presence of American Wiwship!, which rescued many of thosa jet adrilt,._Ait«r ths United SUtu had.

entered the war, other submarines crossed the Atlantic, but their work ■was but trifling in comparison with the campaign as a whole. The acute.shipping position was relieved in many wajs. German and Austro-Hungarian vessels which had sought refuge in neutral ports were taken over by the Allies in instalments as one nation after another joined the belligerents or broke its "friendship" with the Central Powers. About 400.000 tons ( of Dutch tonnage was reauisitioned by the Allies because it was lying idle in foreign ports. Still more important, the whole shipping system was reorganised under the direction of the Allied transport authorities, so as to secure that the maximum amount of material should be moved by the tonnage available. The world owned, at the beginning of the war? about 49,000,000 tons of shipping, of which .a considerable proportion was unsuitable for ocean service. Out of this, according to Mr. Atchibald Hurd, the total quantity actually available during the war for Allied civilian purposes was only about 8,750,000 tons; and this wu reduced by the losses, in spite of new construction, to about five million tons in the early part of 1918. This quantity of shipping, of course, had to be grossly over-worked according to prewar standards, and naturally the proportion lost by "marine risk" was increased as one of the consequences. The output of new American tonnage had. less effect in reducing the acuteness of the shipping crisis than was popularly positive or of capture; and the "doubted by the vast requirements of the American army. ' '* ~ . ■ UNFORESEEN RESULTS. Under the policy forced upon her by the war, the United States has become one of the great shipowning nations of' the world, and is potentially .the greatest, if she pursues to the' full her new biisi ness of building tonnage. This is one of the notable results of the war, and. ii one of the aspects of the intricate economic problems set by the submarine to be solved in the near future. Germany, however, faces the ugliest problem of all. She left peace as the second maritime' Power. .. She re-enters it with a- vastly •educed merchant marine, witli which «he must enter into competition not with' one rival greater than herself at sea, but with two. And that is by no means the end of her shipping difficulty,, for. , the great British community that lives, on and by the sea has declared an independent boycott of Germany and Germans as a calculated reprisal for the particular sufferings it. has sustained. This, great boycott, inspired by the vigorous personality of Mr. Havelock, Wilson—lately elected to ParUament-^is an expression of national sentiment that has found no vigorous opposition, though it has not yet the State's approval; and ifc is a force that the Germans will probably find to be greater than they now' realise. .. Disregarding the morality of the sub 1 j _marine campaign against shipping in the form adopted by the Germans, as to which there can be only one opinion, it still remains to be determined whether the enemy gained or lost by it in the j purely military sense. Without it, the Allies, freed from the enormous costs ! in labour and material imposed by the campaign, would have won the war. By enlistinsr the submarine, the Germans secured an apparent advantage'; but the submarine was the Allies' most powerful recruitine; agent and was the direct means of brimming the United States into the ranks. Once adopted, however, it could not be abandoned; Germany was.j -literally hoist with .her own torpedoes; . and.;she goes down in history-wearing the brand of Cain. ; ' THE LESSON OF THE SUB' MARINE; The whole lesson of the submarine, especially with respect to insular States dependant; largely upon sea-transport for their existence, cannot yet be set out; but some of it« teachings are evident. In the war, the- Germans had to build their U-boat fleet as they went; and the defence measures grew with it. One shudders to think what would have'happened if in 1914 Germany, with concealed purpose, had possessed a large fleet of submarines as effective as those built during her great campaign, and had used it against the unprepared merchant marine. But the submarine is now seen in true perspective. Just as, before the day of the U-boat, a nation which, built disproportionate numbers of fast' light cruisers (as Germany had in fact begun to do) would /stand sospect of designing a special« war on trade-routes, so an inordinate submarine programme will in future announce its purpose and call for remedy on the menaced 6ide. What that remedy must be is still to be seen; it is one of the matters in which the League of Nations is intimately concerned. But an insular State is henceforth unsafe unless it guards, better than Britain did, against depletion of its food supply by blockade. When the war began, the British Government controlled certain stocks of foodstuffs, but they, were negligible in amount compared with 'the national needs. It is true that the supplies of the world were waiting for shipment; but when the prior claims of the fighting sources were met, the amount of shipping available was not enough' to carry the required quantities of food. And this ."surplus" of shipping had to stand the losses inflicted by the euenvy. The result was that the British nation was compelled, as a war measure, to begin growing foodstuffs on a much larger scale than before, arid to meet the shortage by strict rationing. Fortunately, the pinch, though . severe and in many respects , distressing, never reached a really acute stage. But in the end it was plain that the submarine had thrown fiscal argument, the war of the protectionist and the freetrader, into a background against which national safety stood out clearly as tbe real object to be kept in view in future. A nation may perhaps wait for a while befow ite army is moved beyond its confines; it cannot wait for food. The technical aspect of defence against submarines has to a considerable extent been solved by experience in the war, and as long as the possibility of their use in the German way remains, navies /must apply, in some large measure, the experience of the past few years. And it will remain the burden, especially of tho insular State, liable to be crippled by the destruction of shipping, to maintain such protective measures at the highest state of development and availability. ' •