REVELATIONS!

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1388, 21 November 1918, Page 5

REVELATIONS!

PERSIUB ON THE GERMAN navy. WHY IT WOULDN’T COME OUT. Australian-New Zealand Cable Association. Received November 21, 9.45 a.m. COPENHAGEN, Nov. 19. Captain Persius in the Tageblatt makes sensational revelations. Only misty weather and Von Scheers good leadership saved tne wnoie fleet irom destruction at Skagerrack (Jutland), otherwise the British long-range guns would nave smasned up tne ug.aer Germans. As it was, the German msses were enormous. By tne beginning of 1918 twentythree battlesnips had ueen disarmed owing to the scarcity of metal, and by tne beginning or 1918 only me Dreadnoughts and battle-cruisers remained intact. The rest were destroyed and the metal taken. Eighty-tnree submarines were constructed in 1917, ot wmen sixty-six were destroyed. In October, 1917, Germany had 14b submarines; in June, 191b, lib, but only about 12 per cent were actively engaged. Thirty per cent or the submarines were in harbour, 3b per cent repairing and 20 per cent incapacitated. The crews were insufficiently trained and it was very difficult to get men during the last months of the war. The seamen regarded the submarine as political stupidity. When the navy was ordered out for a second Skagerrack mutiny broke out. If the seamen had obeyed innumerable lives would have been lost.