ided but temporary
improvement, and the losses again became serious during the summer
months. I then deemed it desirable that the control of the traffic
should be placed in the hands of officers stationed at Malta, this being
a central position from which any necessary change in the arrangements
could be made more rapidly and with greater facility than by the French
Commander-in-Chief, who was also controlling fleet movements and who,
for this reason alone, was not in a position to act quickly.

A unified command in the Mediterranean would undoubtedly have been the
most satisfactory and efficient system to adopt, but the time was not
ripe for proposing that solution in 1917, and the alternative was
adopted of British control of the traffic routes throughout the whole
Mediterranean Sea subject to the general charge of the French
Commander-in-Chief which was necessary in such an eventuality arising as
an attempted "break out" of the Austrian Fleet.

Accordingly, with the consent of the French and Italian Admiralties,
Vice-Admiral the Hon. Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe, K.C.B., was
dispatched to the Mediterranean as British Commander-in-Chief; he was in
control generally of all British Naval forces in the Mediterranean, and
especially in charge of all the arrangements for the protection of trade
and for anti-submarine operations, the patrol vessels of all the
nationalities concerned being placed under his immediate orders for the
purpose, whilst the whole of the Mediterranean remained under the
general control of Vice-Admiral Gauchet, the French Commander-in-Chief.
Admiral Calthorpe was assisted by French and Italian officers, and the
Japanese Government, which had previously dispatched twelve destroyers
to the Mediterranean to assist in the protection of trade, also gave to
Admiral Calthorpe the control of these vessels.

In the requests which we addressed to the Japanese Admiralty I always
received great assistance from Admiral Funakoshi, the Naval Attache in
London. His co-operation was of a close and most cordial nature.

The services of the Japanese destroyers in the Mediterranean were of
considerable value to the Allied cause. A striking instance of the
seamanlike and gallant conduct of their officers and men was furnished
on the occasion of the torpedoing of a British transport by an enemy
submarine off the coast of Italy, when by the work of the Japanese
escorting destroyers the great majority of those on board w