r the millennium makes future wars impossible. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, in a recently published, prophetic short story,
written before the war, pictures vividly to us an England beaten,
compelled to submit to an ignominious peace, by a very small Power
that makes unrestricted use of submarine warfare. He foresaw the
danger, but thankfully acknowledges in his preface that he did not
foresee the extraordinary ingenuity with which our Navy overcame this
danger.

Among its other functions, the Harwich Force, in a variety of ways,
took an important part in this task of keeping the seas open to
ourselves and closed to our enemies.

Firstly, to deal with that essential duty--the convoying of merchant
vessels. This was part of the routine work of the destroyers of the
Harwich Force. For some time the destroyers of the Force did all the
escorting between Dover and Flamborough Head. They used also to convoy
vessels along our East Coast, across the North Sea, and occasionally
through the Straits down Channel to the westward. For example,
throughout the war they kept open the traffic between England and
Holland. This particular duty was known in the Navy as the "Beef
Trip," owing to the fact that in the first stages of the war the
convoyed vessels were largely employed in the carrying of meat from
Holland to England. It was a dangerous duty; enemy minefields had to
be traversed, and the convoys were liable to be attacked by
submarines, light craft, and seaplanes, for the Germans were ever on
the lookout to intercept them.

The following method was pursued--and be it remembered that no lights
were shown by destroyers or merchantmen. At night the destroyers and
the mine-sweepers would pass through a swept channel off Orfordness to
an appointed rendezvous outside, where they fell in with their convoy,
which sometimes was made up of as many as twenty merchantmen, but more
usually of about twelve. The destroyers now took up a position to
protect the convoy, surrounding it on all sides. The merchantmen were
then formed into a column, three abreast, and proceeded to steam
across the North Sea, a flotilla-leader and a convoy-guide heading
the column, another flotilla-leader following close astern, and the
destroyers on either flank zigzagging about, and ever watchful for the
appearance of an enemy. When the convoy, on the further side of the
North Sea, approached the area that had been mined by the Germans, the
formation was altered. Th