THE SUBMARINE CAMPAIGN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23951, 28 October 1939, Page 10

THE SUBMARINE CAMPAIGN

It is rather flattering to Great Britain that it is against her in particular that the venom of Nazi vituperation is being particularly directed. It implies, among other things, that the leaders of Germany recognise the seriousness for her of the ascendency of the Allies at sea, and the remorselessness with which it must continue to exert its pressure. There is more than a suggestion of desperation on Germany’s part, impotent as she is to challenge Britain’s naval power, in her attempts to strike effective blows at the maritime trade of the United Kingdom and in the mood in which she is making a target of unprotected neutral shipping. The reports of the sinkings of merchant vessels certainly indicate that the U-boats are doing a good deal of damage, but these losses have to be viewed in the light of their proportion to the shipping resources upon which they constitute an inroad, and, regarded in that aspect, they should present no cause for serious misgivings. At the rate of attrition which they signify they cannot be affording the Nazi High Command any reason for building buoyant hopes of effecting a rapid and heavy diminution of the twenty-one million tons recently estimated by Mr Churchill as the total of British shipping. Against losses of tonnage, moreover, has, to be placed the new merchant tonnage which Britain is placing in commission. Nor can the Germans found any hopes of seriously interfering with the transport of Britain’s supplies on the psychological effect of the submarine campaign. In his reference to this campaign in his latest review of the progress of the war Mr Chamberlain mentioned its intensification, and called attention to its growing lawlessness as made manifest in the circumstance that, as he stated, it seemed to have become the rule for merchant ships to be sunk without warning. The barbarity of these enemy tactics serves to give an added prominence to the operations of the U-boats, and argues desperation to secure results and make their own escape. But Mr Chamberlain’s observations on the U-boat activities are quite encouraging in the deductions which they permit. Against the convoy system the enemy submarines have been unable to make any impression thus far—they are even more the hunted than the hunters —and they have been driven to operate further and further from their, bases and from the points where trade is , bound to converge. With a characteristic abstention from anything that might seem to involve a possible over-statement, Mr Chamberlain has shown that the destruction of Üboats is proceeding at a sufficient rate to encourage a belief that the menace will eventually be completely surmounted. It is useful to recall that in the course of one month of the unrestricted submarine campaign during the previous war 430 British and Allied ships of an aggregate of 852,000 tons were sunk by U-boats. Yet that menace, for which there is no parallel in depredations representing less than one per cent, of Britain’s tonnage since the present conflict started, was overcome. If there is little reason to believe that the U-boats can do more in this war than they are doing at the present time, and there is ground for supposing that even now they are exerting what may prove to be their maximum effort, there should be equally little reason for any seriously disturbing view of their hostile potentialities.