Our Navy in the War

by Lawrence Perry

Thoughts of launching the torpedo vanish. Safety first is now the dominant emotion. Additional water flows into the tanks and the craft begins to settle. But as she does so there is a sudden flood of water into the control-room; a hoarse cry goes up from the crew. The officers draw their revolvers. Evidently the injured periscope has caused a leak. Before anything can be done there is a tremendous grinding, rending explosion; the thin steel walls contract under the force of the released energy. Above them the destroyer crew gazing eagerly at the geyser-like volume of water arising from the sea descry pieces of metal, dark objects of all sorts. The sea quiets and up from the depths arise clouds of oil, spreading slowly over the waves. The U-47-½ has joined many a nobler craft upon the wastes of subaqueous depths.

But not always has the outcome of a submarine attack been so fortunate for us. There have been thousands of instances—many more of them in the past than at present, fortunately—where the U-boat returned to her base with a murderous story to tell. While it is certain that when the totals for the present year are compiled an engaging tale of reduced submarine effectiveness will be told; yet—as the British Government has announced—any effort to minimize what the submarine has done would work chiefly toward the slowing up of our ship-building and other activities designed to combat directly and indirectly the lethal activities of the submarine. And from a naval standpoint it is also essential that the effectiveness of the undersea craft be fully understood.

It was on January 31, 1917, that the German Government suddenly cast aside its peace overtures and astonished the world by presenting to the United States Government a note to the effect that from February 1 sea traffic would be stopped with every available weapon and without further notice in certain specified zones. The decree applied to both enemy and neutral vessels, although the United States was to be permitted to sail one steamship a week in each direction, using Falmouth as the port of arrival and departure. On February 3 President Wilson appeared before Congress and announced that he had severed diplomatic relations with Germany on the ground that the imperial government had deliberately withdrawn its solemn assurances in regard to its method of conducting warfare against merchant vessels. Two months later, April 6, as already noted, Congress declared that a state of war with Germany existed.

The German people were led to believe that an aggregate of 1,000,000 tons of shipping would be destroyed each month and that the wastage would bring England to her knees in six months and lead to peace. The six months went by, but the promises of the German Government were not fulfilled. Instead the submarine war brought the United States into the struggle and this, in the words of Philipp Scheidemann, leader of the German majority Socialists, has been "the most noticeable result."

None the less, the submarine, used ruthlessly, without restrictions, proved itself to be an unrivalled weapon of destruction, difficult to combat by reason of its ability to stalk and surprise its quarry, while remaining to all intents and purposes invisible. It has taken heavy toll of ships and men, and has caused privation among the peoples of the Entente nations; it is still unconquered, but month by month of the present year its destructiveness has been impaired until now there may be little doubt that the number of submarines destroyed every month exceeds the number of new submarines built, while the production of ship tonnage in England and the United States greatly outweighs the losses. In other words, the submarine, as an element in the settling of the war in a manner favorable to Germany, has steadily lost influence, and, while it is not now a negligible factor, it is, at least, a minor one and growing more so.

Secret figures of the British Admiralty on submarine losses and world ship-building issued in March, 1918, show that from the outbreak of war, in August, 1914, to the end of 1917, the loss was 11,827,080 tons. Adding the losses up to April of the present year—when the submarine sinkings began to show a markedly decreased ratio—and we get a total of 13,252,692 tons. The world's tonnage construction in the four years 1914-17 was 6,809,080 tons. The new construction in England and the United States for the first quarter of 1918 was 687,221 tons, giving a total from the beginning of the war to April 1 of 1918, 7,750,000 tons built outside of the Central Powers since the beginning of the war, with a final deficit of about 5,500,000 tons. Of this deficit the year 1917 alone accounted for 3,716,000 tons.

From the last quarter of 1917, however, the margin between construction and loss has been narrowing steadily. In the first quarter of 1918 the construction in Great Britain and America alone was over 687,000 tons and the losses for the whole world were 1,123,510 tons. Here is a deficit for three months—the first three months of the present year—of 436,000 tons, or an annual average of 1,750,000 tons, which is a deficit one-half less than that of the black year of 1917. When figures at the end of the present year are revealed we may find that we have reckoned too little upon the ship-building activity of both England and the United States, in which event the deficit may prove to be even less. But in any event the dry figures as set forth are worth perusal inasmuch as they point not only to the deadly effectiveness of the submarine in the first year of unrestricted activity, but show how valiantly the Allied sea power has dealt with a seemingly hopeless situation in the present year.

In the House of Commons not long ago a definite statement that the trend of the submarine war was favorable to the Allies was made. The one specific item given was that from January 1 to April 30, 1917, the number of unsuccessful attacks upon British steamships was 172, a weekly average of 10. Last year in the ten weeks from the end of February to the end of April there were 175 unsuccessful attacks, or a weekly average of 18. This statement was not exactly illuminating. For of itself a decline in the weekly number of unsuccessful attacks would imply an increase in the effectiveness of the U-boat—which we know is not so. What the House of Commons statement really meant, of course, was that the number of successful attacks had been declining as well as the number of unsuccessful attacks—or, in other words, that the German sea effort as a whole was declining. The U-boats are not hitting out as freely as they did a year ago. This argues that there are fewer of them than there were in 1917. For actual tonnage losses we have the word of the French Minister of Marine that the sinkings for April, 1918, were 268,000 tons, whereas in April of the previous year they were 800,000 tons, an appalling total.