eport

Naval scientists learned much as a result of this war, but contrary to
popular theory the events of the four and a half years strengthened
belief in the battleship as the deciding element in sea power. The
submarine was frightful, and did a vast amount of harm, but not so much
as one might think. Against surface fighters it was not remarkably
effective; indeed the war proved that the submarine's only good chance
against a battleship or cruiser was to lurk along some lane which the
big surface craft was known to be following, and strike her quickly in
the dark. Within effective torpedo range a periscope, day or night, is
visible to keen-eyed watchers, and all told not a dozen British and
American sea fighters, of whatever class, were sunk as a result of
submarine attack.

In the battle of Heligoland Bight early in the war, as a matter of fact,
a squadron of British battleships passed right through a nest of
submarines and were not harmed. The most spectacular submarine success,
the sinking of the three fine cruisers, _Aboukir_ and _Cressy_ and
_Hawke_, was the result of an attack delivered upon unsuspecting craft,
which were lying at anchor, or at all events under deliberate headway.
The American Navy, as already pointed out, lost the _Jacob Jones_, a
destroyer, the coast cutter _Tampa_, and the _Alcedo_, together with one
or two smaller craft, but that is all.

It will surprise many when the statement is made that, of all the
Atlantic convoys, east or west bound, in the four years of the war,
aggregating a gross tonnage of some eighty-odd millions, only 654,288
tons were lost through submarine attack, considerably less than 1 per
cent of the total tonnage crossing the war zone during the war--0.83 per
cent, to be exact. Here are some specific figures:

Atlantic convoys between July 26, 1917, and October 15, 1918, a total of
1,027 convoys, comprising 14,968 ships east and west bound, were carried
with a loss of 118 ships--0.79 of 1 per cent.

For all seas, 85,772 vessels, 433 lost--0.51 per cent.

It really boils down to the fact that the greatest feat of the submarine
was in its success in _slowing up oversea freight traffic and in keeping
neutral freighters in port_. In this respect the submarine most
certainly was dangerously pernicious. But as a positive agency, as said,
the undersea craft was not a decisive factor in the war.

All of which, most naturally, is a graphic commentary upon the
inadequacy