Mr. Lake has organized a company to build a fleet of undersea merchantmen, each boat of which will be ten times as large as the Deutschland and can carry a cargo of 7,500 tons. Mr. Lake says that with the co-operation of the Government he can build 100 of these giant craft in the first year, and that at the end of three years he can have a fleet of 500 of them built and in service. That is to say, in this short time he can have 4,000,000 tons of cargo sailing the seas with absolute safety.
This plan of the great submarine builder is the key which will unlock the horns of our dilemma. The only drawback seems to be the ability of a company to turn out so complex a mechanism as the submarine, and of such an enormous size, fast enough to make up for the rapidly disappearing tonnage of the Allies.
In the meantime the submarine chasers and the wooden and steel ships that are now being built may help to some extent to take care of our shipping until the great commercial submarines of Lake can be built and put into the trans-Atlantic service.
When Submarine Meets Submarine.—When Greek meets Greek then comes the tug of war, so the old saw goes, and it is just as true that the way to break the blockade of the U-boats is to pit the cunning of submarines against them.
With all our shipping going by the undersea route, the U-boats will lose their sting, the blockade will be broken, the power of the Allies will outweigh that of Germany, and the war will speedily come to an end.
And may that time come soon!
THE END