Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. THURSDAY, MARCH Ist, 1917. SUBMARINE FRIGHTFUL.

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 March 1917, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. THURSDAY, MARCH Ist, 1917. SUBMARINE FRIGHTFUL.

I NESS. Tiie Gorman Press professes to be not the lea'st perturbed at the Turks' loss of Kut-el-Aniara because, as they maintain, the war will be won by Germany at sea and in France. The Huns have | always been characterised by i optimism, and, if word's count i'or ■•anything, they have met-with a i series of unbroken victories on ! sea and. on land ever since the : war commenced. The campaign 1 of submarine f rightfulness in which they recently embarked was to .reduce Britain to starvation within a few weeks, but they very soon found it necessary to modify their calculations in this respect, and they now forecast that Britain will be down and out within twelve months. Let us see how these assertions are borne out by actual facts. The Germans declared that Britain would be el- : fectively blockaded, and that.who- ;

ev& penetrated tho barred zone would perish. Sir Edward Carson, in a statement made in the House of-Commons, lias given the lie to this, for from February Ist to February 18th, (1,176 ships arrived in the ports of Great Britain and 5,878 had left, and at one time there were 3000 vessels in tho danger zone. We are inclined to be; pessimistic when wo read the daily record of vessels being sunk, but when we compare this with the number thai run the gauntlet successfully we see that there is no cause for alarm, much less for panic. It will also be noticed that neutral ships are suffering much more from the ravages of the XT boats than are British merchantmen. This is principally due to the facj thai neutral vessels are unarmed, and therefore fall very easy victims to the pirates. The Huns are very cautious now in approaching a vessel flying the Onion Jack, for they know that the ship is armed with one or more 4.7-inch guns, which are manned by men who have served their time in the Navy and who know how to shoot accurately. Xo tot urn has yet been made of the submarines that have been sunk by shell-fire by armed merchantmen. The Admiralty is now largely increasing the auxiliary navy, and the seas around the coast of Britain are carefully patrolled by swift boats and aeroplanes. The English Channel is guarded most carefully, and very i'ev. T marauders are able to get through without being detected. Too much importance must not be attached to the fact that German destroyers have on several occa-

sions got through the cordon and bombarded undefended British towns. Fogs are very heavy at this time of the year, and if the enemy are prepared to take the risk there is a very good chance tit their eluding the watching destroyers. It is significant that no further details have come to hand of the engagement between the British and German destroyers in which the enemy fared so badly. The enemy were evidently completely surprised, and the British Admiralty are determined that the Berlin authorities shall obtain no particulars as to how the coup was brought about. The Germans have also tried unsuccessfully to ascertain how many 17 boats had been snared by the British. When they found that tho Admiralty would make no statement they attempted to call "a bluff," and boldly asserted that since the beginning of the

super-frightfulness campaign not a single U boat had been lost. The British naval authorities still remained silent. The Berlin Press then admitted that: sixteen II boats that had gone a-hunting had failed to return to receive the Kaiser's iron crosses. The only statement that, the British First Lord would make was that during February there had been forty encounters with IT boats. How manv of these' were sunk,

Sir Edward Carson refrains from saying. He admits that tlm submarine problem is a grave one, and that it has not yet been completely solved, but- he says that measures have "been devised to mitigate it gradually. Mr Winston Churchill, on the other hand, is rather pessimistic, tor lie says that time is not on our side. By this he probably means that under present conditions the Ger mans are turning out submarines much more rapidly than the Bi.i + ish can destroy them. The Hur.s arc quite determined to revolutionise naval warfare, and make the supremacy of the sea be decided under the water instead of on the surface. The submarine problem will not be solved until some Britisher discovers a means" of enabling us to see objects well under the surface of the water. Here is'a chance for patriotic New Zcalanders who are debarred by some physical defect from going lo the front. Let these set their brains to work and solve the problem. The task which they set themselves is not an impossible

one. The X-rays will penetrate objects that are. opaque under ordinary conditions. Here is a starting point at any rate. Once the U boat menace is scotched, the Germans will have to throw in the towel. Their last hope will be gone.