n the high seas, the drowning of women and
children, the destruction of the property of neutrals, there still
remained the question of expediency. America, they asserted, was certain
to enter the war if unrestricted submarine warfare was decreed. These
men were denounced as cowards and von Tirpitz finally triumphed.

The submarine employed by the Germans was of the type designed by Simon
Lake, an American. The Germans bought two submarines built by Mr. Lake
at Kronstadt for the Russians during the Russian-Japanese war. Various
improvements upon the Diesel engine and special training for submarine
crews enabled the German navy to strike terrible blows during the early
part of the war.

Little by little, however, the Allies discovered the answer to the
submarine menace. One of these was the convoy: fleets of merchant
vessels surrounded by fast destroyers made life a misery for the
submarine crews. In the early days vessels of all character fled from
the approach of the submarine. The destroyers of the convoys, however,
adopted a different method. They rushed at the periscopes in efforts to
ram the submarine, and as they raced over the spot where the submarine
had been at the rate of twenty-two knots or more an hour, they dropped
huge containers, dubbed "ash cans", containing depth charges of
trinitrotoluol.

Sea planes carrying bombs, small dirigible balloons known as "blimps,"
observation balloons moored on the decks of warships, steel nets, and
especially devised anti-submarine mines, were also factors in the
general work of submarine destruction.

In addition to all these, every ship, both cargo carrier and war vessel,
had its well-trained gun crew, and hundreds of thousands of keen-eyed
mariners daily and nightly swept the seas with binoculars watching for
anything that resembled a periscope.

As a consequence of this combination of destructive agencies the British
Admiralty was enabled to announce at the close of the war that more than
150 German submarines had been destroyed.

The names of the commanding officers of the German submarines which had
been disposed of were given out by the government in order to
substantiate to the world the statement made by the Prime Minister in
the House of Commons on August 7th, and denied in the German papers,
that "at least 150 of these ocean pests had been destroyed." The
statement included no officers commanding the Austrian submarines, of
which a number had been destroye