"Spotting" is everything, for once spotted there is little hope for the monster. A signal calls to his lair the neighbouring patrols and surrounded by a swarm of hostile craft he is quickly given the choice of ascending to surrender or descending for ever. To this mastery the comparative freedom of the English Channel from submarine depredations is largely due. Life aboard such a craft is not without its terrors and bad moments, while it creeps through channels where the water is shoal or puts up its periscope in an unlucky spot. We may be sure that black care sits in the cabin with the crew, a justified uneasiness. The end may be very sudden and of a kind one hardly likes to think of. Mistakes—and mistakes with half trained crews are inevitable—bring quick disaster. The deep sea pirates aboard super-submarines operating on the trade routes have lighter hearts no doubt than those engaged in the narrow seas, but exits and entrances are not without peril, as the North Sea depths could reveal. Yet their work goes forward, and the last sentences of this barbaric sea history are not yet written.
What of the defence in this crafty and lawless war, and what counter measures have been taken? Apart from the continual patrolling of dangerous areas and the vigilant antisubmarine warfare conducted by the warders of the sea routes, the secrets of which none may reveal, broadly stated, the only present reply to torpedo attack consists in some form of evasion. A thousand busy brains are at work, but were an answer discovered to-day how many months would be needed to prepare and supply the necessary gear to some three or four thousand ships? Meanwhile traffic instructions form a separate and highly developed section of Admiralty work. Shipping Intelligence Officers at the ports, in close conjunction with the Customs Officers issue route orders, varying with the needs of the hour, to each British ship outward bound. To neutrals advice is tendered. Orders for homeward bound vessels are now issued at foreign ports in the Western hemisphere or elsewhere by the Consular officers, assisted by men of sea-faring experience specially instructed. In addition, masters have very precise schooling in the arts of avoiding hostile craft. That these arts have their value experience proves, and of the various devices zigzagging has been found perhaps the most effective. The attacking submarine sights her prospective prey and notes the course. She then manœuvres to bring her torpedo-tubes to bear, and submerges. But the helm on the approaching vessel is meanwhile put over to port or starboard and the favourable position is lost. Reduced in speed and turning power by submersion, the submarine commander is thrown out. Again he manœuvres for position but finds his target has again shifted her helm and escaped him. Zigzagging however adds materially to the length of the voyage and the time consumed by it is cordially disliked by skippers. A temptation naturally assails men of their breed to make a dash for it. Time, too, is always a consideration, and the risks to a vessel of less than 10 knots speed are not appreciably diminished by its adoption. For an 8 knot boat, and many of the most valuable traders can hardly attain a greater pace, the increase in the length of the voyage and the time involved balance or eliminate the advantage of this and other palliatives. In the nature of the case there can be no immediate remedy for the disease. Merchant ships—that is the root of the trouble—are not built to resist torpedoes. Possibly such ships might be built, possibly a cure for this sea malady may yet be found. But to combat a new plague or pestilence the physician must have time to study the devastating organism and its peculiar properties. The study proceeds. The arming of merchantmen, a preliminary and successful measure, was necessary to drive the U-boat below the surface. There, capable only of torpedo attack, it loses half its observing, half its striking powers. But the true defence is a vigorous offensive, which is the business not of merchantmen but of patrol and fighting ships. They are at work in daily increasing numbers, they employ new and ingenious devices, they are happy and confident. But the veil is never lifted. A deep, gloomy, mysterious silence prevails. Where her submarines are lost, how they are lost Germany is ignorant. Each goes forth on its mission, with uncertainty at the prow and misgiving at the helm. All the enemy knows is that vessel after vessel fails to return, that they run like sand through the fingers. How many submarines does Germany possess? Probably, including the mine-layers, the number does not much, if at all, exceed two hundred, and of these only a proportion can be at sea in any given week or month, perhaps a third. Submarines, despite Germany's boasts, one of her favourite weapons, cannot be built in a day nor yet a month, and crews are worse than useless with less than half a year's training. The end is not in sight but the barometer of hope must already be falling fast. "If the submarine attack against England be defeated," said Herr Ballin, "it will be a miracle, and I do not believe in miracles." One looks forward with interest to the conversion of Herr Ballin to a less sceptical theology. His philosophical countrymen will no doubt supply him with the necessary metaphysic.
As for ourselves and our lack of foresight in this matter, let us not be too critical. We misjudged human nature, that is all. We believed some species of it were extinct. We believed there were things of which white men were not capable. For this noble error, and it was noble, we pay the price, and are not without compensation. Since none can judge of a vessel's seaworthiness in harbour, none can judge of the spirit of a man or race until it encounters the storm. And if again the superb courage and shining of the British sailor has been proved, if we have been reminded that as a nation with him we stand or fall, we may be magnanimous, and return polite thanks to an enemy that has made these things clear, who has liberated yet again the flashing spirit of liberty. The stars still shine for us above the wild weather of the world.
THE MINE-FISHERS
In any weather
They flock'd together,
Birds of a feather,
Through Dover Strait;
The seas that kiss'd her
Brought tramp or drifter
From ports that miss'd her
In flag and freight;
Trawler and whaler
And deep-sea sailer,
They would not fail her
At danger's gate.
Almost before a gun had spoken the fishermen rallied to their country's aid. Some few indeed were off the Danish coast or far North, Iceland way, unconscious that a more feverish business than fishing had begun, and heard the astonishing news only on their return from waters already troubled. Which of us knows anything of this community or thought it essential to our naval efficiency? Yet if anywhere the spirit of personal independence survives, they cherish it these men, Britons to the bone, wedded to freedom since their ancestors came in their long galleys out of the North East to harry the Saxon farmers. Take English and Scotch together and you may number the East Coast fishermen at a hundred thousand, and their ships, trawlers and drifters, accustomed to voyage to the Polar ice or the White Sea, at some three thousand six hundred. Of these perhaps four hundred of the slower and more ancient craft, the lame ducks of the flotillas, some of them of outlandish type and antiquated gear, manned by boys and men past service in the wars, still drag their trawls or lie to their nets to keep the markets supplied. Since eighty per cent of our spoils of the sea go abroad in normal times, the home supplies can be maintained by the reduced fleet. The rest, over three thousand, steamers and rare sea-boats all, are in national employ, often with their crews complete and handled by the skippers who know them, proud warrant officers now in His Majesty's fleet, and working for the most part in groups commanded by some Lieutenant of the Royal Naval Reserve, a Commodore, in his way, with a squadron admirals might envy. Many of the fisher folk belonged to the Reserve and joined the fighting fleets, and practically all of military age are long since involved in the sea affair. Two things belong to the story—these men, whether of Grimsby or Hull, Cardiff or Leith, or any other of the great centres, were volunteers, and assess their motives for what you will, it was not the Government wage that brought them. Their fellows, old men, still on the fishing grounds, do a thriving business compared with that for which the Government pays its few shillings a day. It is well that the country should know that the work for which no gold can pay was not undertaken for gold, and that they have held on as mine-sweepers when as fishermen they would have lain snugly in harbour. "If there have been frozen feet in the trenches there have been frozen fingers on the sea," says one. "Fifteen hours of drenching and buffeting were our portion that day. The vessel with the pull of the tackle and the drive of the engines keeping her like a half tide rock, never clear of sweeping seas. Thud, slap, crash and swish as they came over our bows and swirled along the deck, never ceasing." They were needed, every man of them. For it happened that in this most civilised warfare machines were employed with which, search the world round for them, no other men could effectively deal. But for their never resting labours the seas about these islands would have been as impassable for ships as a tropical forest for a motor car. Let us open our eyes and acknowledge the grandiosity of the German mind, the spaciousness of its schemes. It is not characteristic of Germany to do things by halves and the simple may well be amazed at the grandeur of her mine-laying campaign.