us, to a certain extent,
the advantage of continuous railroad communication which was enjoyed
by the Teutonic allies "inside" the arena of military operations was
offset by the naval communication maintained by the Entente Powers
"outside" the arena of military operations.

CHAPTER XXXIII

FIGHTS OF THE SUBMARINES

When, on the 5th of February, 1915, the German admiralty proclaimed a
"war zone" around the British Isles and announced that it would fight
the sea power of the Allies with submarines, a new era in naval
warfare had opened. In all previous wars, and in the earlier months of
the Great War, submarines were employed as auxiliaries to the larger
naval units. The Germans were the first to use them as separate units.
The idea of sending a fleet of submarines out on to the high seas was
a new one, and had been impossible in the last war in which they had
been used--that between Russia and Japan. But the improvements which
had been made in their design and equipment since then had made an
actual cruising submarine possible, and made possible the new phase of
naval warfare inaugurated by the German admiralty.

While Germany was the last great sea power to adopt the submarine as a
weapon, both England and Germany, in the years immediately preceding
the war, had spent the same amounts of money on this sort of
craft--about $18,000,000--but while the Germans had later given as
much attention to them as to any other sort of naval craft, the
British authorities did not figure on employing the submarine as a
separate offensive tactical unit being sufficiently equipped in large
ships carrying large guns. And being weaker in capital ships Germany
was compelled to rely upon underwater warfare in her campaign of
attrition. Not only were the naval authorities of the rest of the
world uninformed about the improvements that German submarines
carried, but they were fooled even as to the actual number which
Germany had built.

The most modern of the German submarines at the time had a length of
213 feet and a beam of twenty feet, these dimensions giving them
sufficient deck space to mount thereon two rapid-fire guns, one of 3.5
inches and another of 1.4 inches. Their displacement was 900 tons, and
they could make a speed of 18 knots when traveling "light" (above
water), and 12 knots when traveling submerged. These speeds made it
possible for them to overtake all but the fastest merchantmen, though
not fast enough to ru