A great deal has been said and written to show that the Prussian Government was not the German People, that instead of Representation there was Misrepresentation. It is still extremely difficult to secure reliable information on any subject connected with intimate Germany, and the contemporary views of so-called neutrals are often more than suspect. A study of German newspapers at the time certainly led one to believe that opposition to the submarine campaign had been more or less negligible. A change of view only came when the people realized that ruthlessness did not pay, and it was the business of the British Navy to demonstrate this—as it did. Meantime the German official accounts of sinkings were grossly exaggerated, and the nation had no means of discovering the loss of submarines other than when relatives serving in them failed to return to their families. There was no one to contradict the grossly exaggerated statement made by Dr Helfferich, Minister for the Interior, that in the first two months of unrestricted U-boat warfare over 1,600,000 tons of shipping had been sunk at the cost of the loss of a mere half-dozen submarines.[[13]]
Dr Michaelis, a more noisy sabre-rattler than his predecessor in the Chancellorship, asserted that “the submarine warfare is accomplishing all, and more than all, that was expected of it.”[[14]] Like many other of his countrymen, to him the crews of the Imperial Pirate Service were more of the nature of soldiers than of sailors. Certainly their callous behaviour suggested that they were strangers to the proverbial comradeship of the sea, and one with the glorious band that hacked a way through Belgium, drove their bayonets through babies, and crucified their prisoners. Loud cheers followed the remark that “We can look forward to the further labours of our brave submarine warriors with complete confidence,” and also to a reference to greetings sent home to the Fatherland by “our troops on all fronts on land and sea, in the air and under the sea.”
As to the thoroughness with which commanders of U-boats performed their task, there is no need to speak. There is plentiful evidence to prove that so elementary a duty as that of examining a ship’s papers seldom interested them. They had no respect for law or life. Witness a case[[15]] that has a direct bearing on this matter. It arose in connexion with the salving of the s.s. Ambon, a neutral vessel bound for the Dutch East Indies, after having been torpedoed on the 21st February, 1916, when about seven miles off Start Point. A shell was fired from an enemy submarine. Immediately the engines of the steamship were stopped, a lifeboat was lowered, and the chief engineer sent off with the ship’s papers and instructions. The latter included a copy of a telegram from the owners advising that the steamer was to call at a certain port on a specified day, in accordance with an agreement between the Dutch and German Governments. The German commander did not so much as look at the documents, and peremptorily told the crew to leave the Ambon. “My orders admit of no variation,” he remarked. They were “to sink every ship in the blockade area.” The steamer was then torpedoed, but did not founder, and was subsequently towed into Plymouth.
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
A U-boat gliding, submerged, over her victim.
Montague Black
No reliance whatever could be placed on Germany’s word, as neutrals early discovered to their cost. Having provided a so-called ‘safe’ zone, the Dutch steamer Amsterdam was torpedoed within it. At Germany’s own suggestion, an International Committee, composed of Dutch, Swedish, and German naval officers, was formed to investigate the circumstances. Their finding was that the vessel had been sunk in the ‘safe’ zone.
There was a time when the French authorities seemed to be in favour of the submarine above all other types of naval ships. The result was that France lost her position in the race for second place in the world’s fleets, though it is to her credit that in 1888 she launched the Gymnote, the first modern submarine to be commissioned. Nordenfeldt, of gun fame, had already achieved a certain amount of success with steam-driven underwater boats, but they had many disadvantages when compared with those of Mr John P. Holland, who hailed from the same country as Fulton. The first submarines built for the British Government were of the Holland type, of 120 tons displacement when submerged, and having a speed of five knots when travelling below. Germany’s pioneer U-boat was built in 1890. In 1918 she boasted giant diving cruisers of 5000 tons, with a radius of action of 8000 miles, and mounting 5.9–in. guns.
As to the vexed question of the number of submarines possessed by Great Britain and Germany respectively at the beginning of the war, one can only say that authorities differ. According to an interview granted by Mr Winston Churchill to M. Hugues le Roux which appeared in Le Matin in the first week of February 1915, we then had more underwater boats than the enemy, but Lord Jellicoe afterward asserted that in August 1914 “the German Navy possessed a great many more oversea submarines than we did.”[[16]] Unless there is a subtle distinction between the general term used by the then First Lord and the oversea type referred to by the former Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, it is impossible to reconcile the two statements, for it is obvious that the leeway mentioned by the latter cannot have been made up in five months.
According to the Berlin official naval annual Nautilus, published in June 1914, the total number of completed German submarines up to the previous month was twenty-eight. Commander Carlyon Bellairs, R.N., M.P., estimated them at “fifty built, building, and projected.” Austria had six ready, four under construction at Pola, and five on the stocks in Germany. In the five years immediately preceding the beginning of the struggle Germany certainly spent more on underwater craft than Great Britain, the figure for the former being £5,354,206, and for the latter £4,159,670.