NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17109, 14 March 1919, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

NEW LEVANT COMPANY. An important outcome of the preparatory measures already taken for proNoting the extension of British after-war trade is announced, in the formation of the Levant Company, Limited, with a capital of £1,000,000. It, aim is to revive, under modern conditions, the activities of the early British chartered company, the old Levant Company, which was the pioneer of trade in Turkey during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It will operate, on its own account or through subsidiary trading companies, throughout the Near East, where there « now so much scope for capturing for British trade the business formerly carned on by enemy firms, apart from the new opportunities provided by the open•»g up of new territory in Syria, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere, as a result of the war. The chairman will be Sir Maurice Bunsen, formerly British AmbasK«l°r m Spain, who recently returned from an extended commercial mission in South Amenca; and English business men of ong experience in Near Eastern trade wh J", Clßted With the co ««, which starts with the acquisition of the brtng Con.tanunople and Salonika firm of J. W. Whittall and Company, and has also entered into a do e workt arrangement with the National Ban of plated for the formation of subsidiary Levant companies in Greece, Egypt J! Sudan, and Mesopotamia, and?* * Servia, Roumania, and Bulgaria.

ANTI-SUBMARINE PATROL Little by little berets of Britain's war methods are being disclosed. Some of those war methods had to defeat the enemy submarine campaign, and did so The patrol of the coastlin* by the Royal Air force had an important share in that result, and it is with this work that authority's most recent disclosure deals. Day after day, we are told-winter and summer, from dawn to dark-the patrol of the coast by aircraft went on, only fogs or heavy gales interrupting it. Its effectiveneee was beyond question. Hard facts-very hard facts for the Germansprove it. Anti-submarine aeroplane patrol was of two kinds, one covering the War Channel, within which convoys hud to keep—an area extending some ten miles from the coast, and the other working farther out to pea, often to a distance of 30 miles, beyond which, again, went flying boats and airships. Every form of aircraft patrolled the War Channel, and it was there the German submarines were usually sighted. Elaborate measures were in use for contact with

British warships, and the skill of those engaged in the work \ gradually became such that few 6hips suffered submarine attack during flying hours. Between April 1 and October 31 of last year 216 submarines wero sighted from air and IS9 attacked. Of hostile aircraft 184 were destroyed by tho British air patrol, and 151 were damaged. Sixty-nine mines were spotted, 15,313 bombs were dropped, and 3441 convoy flights were made—and these figures refer merely to home waters, without any regard to tho vast air patrol above tho Mediterranean. Aeroplanes, seaplanes, airships, and flying boats wero all in use, and when in the early months of last year the submarine danger was at its worst, the aeroplanes became very numerous, and aerodromes came into being all round the coast.