haar. All at once, my ship gaed six points
aff her coorse, frae S. E. to E. N. E., and I jaloused that the
nets had been fouled by some muckle movin' body. I gave orders to
pit the wheel hard a-port, but she wouldna answer. Suddenly the
strain on the nets stoppit.

"I needna tell you what had happened. Of course, it was
preceesely what the Admiralty had arranged tae happen when
gentlemen in undersea boats try to cut their way through our
nets. Mind ye, thae nets are verra expensive."

A different situation, however, has lately developed in the more
unequal fight between submarines and merchant vessels. There the
submarine unquestionably has gained and maintained supremacy. Two
factors are primarily responsible for this: lack of speed and lack
of armament on the part of the merchantman. Of course, recently the
latter condition has been changed and apparently with good success.
But even at best, an armed merchantman has a rather slim chance at
escape. Neither space nor available equipment permits a general
arming of merchantmen to a sufficient degree to make it possible for
the latter to attack a submarine from any considerable distance.
Then, too, what chance has a merchant vessel unprotected by patrol
boats to escape the torpedo of a hidden submarine? How successfully
this question will finally be solved, the future only will show. At
present it bids fair to become one of the deciding factors in
determining the final issue of this war.

The first authentically known case of an attack without warning by a
German submarine against an allied merchantman was the torpedoing of
the French steamship _Amiral Ganteaume_ on October 26, 1914, in the
English Channel. The steamer was sunk and thirty of its passengers
and crew were lost. A number of other attacks followed during the
remainder of 1914 and in January, 1915. Then came on February 3,
1915, the now famous pronouncement of the German Government
declaring "all the waters around Great Britain and Ireland,
including the whole of the English Channel, a war zone," and
announcing that on and after Feb. 18th, Germany "will attempt to
destroy every enemy ship found in that war zone, without its being
always possible to avoid the danger that will thus threaten neutral
persons and ships." Germany gave warning that "it cannot be
responsible hereafter for the safety of crews, passengers, and
cargoes of such ships," and it furthermore "calls