ritain, and a shortage of many other things
besides. Writing about the middle of February, an important German
newspaper raised a shout of jubilation. "The whole sea was as if swept
clean at one blow"--by the announcement of the intensified "blockade" of
the first of February. So the German scribe. But again the facts shoot
up, hard and irreducible, through the sea of comment. While the German
newspapers were shouting to each other, the sea was so far from being
"swept clean," that twelve thousand ships had actually passed in and out
of British ports in the first eighteen days of the "blockade." And at
any moment during those days, at least 3,000 ships could have been found
traversing the "danger zone," which the Germans imagined themselves to
have barred. One is reminded of the _Hamburger Nachrichten_ last year,
after the Zeppelin raid in January 1916. "English industry lies in
ruins," said that astonishing print. "The sea has been swept clean,"
says one of its brethren now. Yet all the while, there, in the danger
zone, whenever, by day or night, one turns one's thoughts to it, are the
three thousand ships; and there in the course of a fortnight, are the
twelve thousand ships going and coming.

Yet all the same, as I have said before, there is danger and there is
anxiety. The neutrals--save America--have been intimidated; they are
keeping their ships in harbour; and to do without their tonnage is a
serious matter for us. Meanwhile, the best brains in naval England are
at work, and one can feel the sailors straining at the leash. In the
first eighteen days of February, there were forty fights with
submarines. The Navy talks very little about them, and says nothing of
which it is not certain. But all the scientific resources, all the
fighting brains of naval England are being brought to bear, and we at
home--well, let us keep to our rations, the only thing we can do to help
our men at sea!

How this grey estuary spread before my eyes illustrates and illuminates
the figures I have been quoting! I am on the light cruiser of a famous
Commodore, and I have just been creeping and climbing through a
submarine. The waters round are crowded with those light craft,
destroyers, submarines, mine-sweepers, trawlers, patrol boats, on which
for the moment at any rate the fortunes of the naval war turns. And take
notice that they are all--or almost all--_new_; the very latest products
of British ship-yards. We have plenty of battle-sh