The great German commerce-destroying submarine navy is now no more. Its fate will be a reminder to strategists of the future that a guerre de course never won a war yet, and that there is no easy road to victory. It may be easier "to attack merchant ships rather than men-of-war," but if the result is the surrender of one's own Navy, the policy seems hardly profitable.
However, our own submarine strategy was, in spite of the enemy's example, kept on correct lines; our leaders saw the possibilities and the future of this type of craft far more clearly than did Admiral Tirpitz. Our boats were built and used for military purposes only, and their work was all part of the main strategical policy of the Navy.
IV
I
Facing each other across the southern part of the North Sea were the opposing submarine bases of Harwich and Flanders. The boats from these bases occasionally met and fought, but in the main their duties lay well apart. Harwich boats worked off the Bight, while the Flanders ports were bases for U-boats to start from on their way down channel to the traffic routes. The losses of the Flanders boats were heavy—so were the losses of the VIIIth Flotilla at Harwich, especially in 1916. In that year the VIIIth Flotilla submarine officers passed a self-denying ordinance to reduce their consumption of alcohol. (Now what I am leading up to is a comparison of British and German mentality, because I think the question of personnel to be infinitely more important than that of material.) The fact is, that heavy losses do affect those who are left to carry on the work. A boat comes back to harbour with her officers and crew tired and glad to be home again; they are perhaps met with, "Did you see anything of Seventy-six? He's been overdue three days. He was next to you—off Ameland. You didn't hear anything go up? Oh, well, you'll probably have that billet next week and you may find out…."
Well, it does affect people, and there is undoubtedly a great feeling of relief at getting back to harbour safely. In the Navy, where wines and spirits are free of duty, alcohol is cheap and obtainable, and alcohol is a relief from worry and an opiate for tired nerves. But the war has never seen a case of disciplinary action being necessary to control our submarine officers. It is a difficult question to approach in print, as the temperance argument seems to call out such strongly-expressed opinions from the advocates pro and con; but while I have no idea of holding up submarine officers as paragons of abstinence (for I hardly know any who are teetotallers), there is no doubt that they fully realised that only moderation could keep them efficient for war.
Over in Flanders it was the rule for U-boats to base at Bruges, and to use only Ostend and Zeebrugge as they passed through on their way to and from the sea. At Bruges the U-boat officers had a mess at the house of M. Catulle—a large, well-furnished, and comfortable building near the docks. There the officers had made the cellars (three inter-connected vaults) into an underground Rest for Tired Workers. All around the walls are painted frescoes illustrating the minds of the patrons. The frescoes are over two feet in depth, and are well executed in the type of German humour one meets in the Berlin comic papers. There are mines, projectiles, etc., with the conventional faces and hats of John Bull, France, and other Allies; dancing with the mines are torpedoes, some of which carry on them the faces of dead U-boat officers. Beneath the frescoes are mottoes—such as, "Drink, for to-morrow you may die"—"Life is short, and you'll be a long time dead." Between the pictures are smaller paintings of monkeys drinking champagne.
After dinner, according to witnesses, the officers would retire to these cellars and drink. There is little ventilation, and the atmosphere must have been fairly thick with smoke and fumes. Drinking sometimes continued till 8 A.M.—a horrible hour at which to be drunk. It is reported by Belgians that the officers got through four thousand bottles of wine in three weeks. Taking the high estimate of an average of twenty officers always present, this means ten bottles per head a day—which is absurd. It is probable, however, that the competitors broke or gave away a good many bottles. But there is no doubt they went at it pretty fast; one officer was drunk and incapable for five days on end, and (as apparently there was considered to be a limit of four days for states of coma) on the fifth day was ordered to sea by the Captain of the Flotilla "to cool his head." The whole impression one gets from the local stories is one of fear, morbid excitement, and drink. The pictures conjured up are unpleasant: the early morning scene in the cellars when a few hiccoughing stalwarts still sat over their wine—the guttural attempt at song—the pale glow of electric lamps through swirling smoke—the reek of alcohol—the litter of bottles—and the frightened face of the Belgian chambermaid peering round the angle of the cellar stairs. "Karl and Schmidt have not returned—God punish the English! Open more bottles, fool, and let us forget that our turn is coming!"
How the flotillas were able to do efficient work at all is a puzzle; but the Flanders Flotillas did the Allies a lot of harm. Had it not been the custom of the officers to throw off restraint in harbour, we might have suffered a good deal more—how much more only a student of psychology can guess. But there is no doubt of this—and a comparison of the Harwich and Flanders Flotillas shows it—the British take to games to soothe their nerves and the Germans to drink.
It is possibly something to do with this trait that brought the major part of the U-boat successes into the hands of a few special officers. The greater part of the captains did little; a few "aces" compiled huge lists of sunken tonnage to their credit (or otherwise). Judged by British Admiralty standards of efficiency, those few are the only ones who in our Service would have been retained at all.