AND AND WATER. 
April 17, 1915. 
fore, not very probaiale that these soldiers would go out of 
tiiuir way to continue or demaud uaval operations which 
— Ijcing devoid of military significance in the way of asset-;— 
would merely lie a sort of free advertiseoieut of the existence 
01 the German Navy. 
Similarly we cau discard as rather improbable the theory 
of the German Fleet driven desperate and prepared to 
resort to any and every expedient. There are no indications 
that the German Fleet i;> yet ho driven ; while experience has 
now taught us that several seemingly (from the war stand- 
point) purposeless niovcmeats had really considerable method 
in their apparent madness. And so we shall not go far wrong 
if we suspect that the apparently futile submarine blockade, 
with its curious occasional strivings to observe some kind of 
tcchaical legality, is devised with some ulterior object in view. 
Place this alongside the fifty or sixty odd new sub- 
marines which are now nearing completion, and it needs no 
great stretch of imagination to see in the submarine blockade 
something of the nature of a feint intended to cover a future 
great and concerted submarine attack on our warships. 
At any rate, this is by far the safest hypothesis to adopt : 
the tendency to regard the German Fleet as a more or less 
negligible factor, which prevails in so many quarters, being a 
very dangerous one. The battle fleet is intact and has been 
added to since war was declared. It is too much to hope that 
the big battle cruisers are damaged beyond repair; there are 
certainly as many new destroyers added as those which have 
been lost, while submarines are on the verge of being very 
considerably increased numerically. Only in light cruisers 
is tliere any deficiency that matters. 
This deficiency has its serious side, for the German Fleet 
is to that extent deprived of "eyes." But since all the 
indications are that the intention is to rely upon the sub- 
marine as the capital arm, the lack of light cruisers should 
not be built on too much. Substantially the German Fleet 
remains " in being " just as much as it was six months ago. 
By all the lessons of history its morale, from confinement to 
harbour, should have deteriorated; but here again we will 
be wiser to assume too little rather than too much. The 
German Navy, manned mainly from an inland population, is 
not and never has been permeated with " sea sense." In the 
past the confinement to harbour of a shut-in squadron gener- 
ally worked out at a deterioration of "sea sense." The non- 
existent, however, cannot be liable to deterioration. 
DARDANELLES AND BLACK SEA. 
Tlie dearth of news from this area of operations more or 
less continues. Whether it be due to suspended action or to 
the withholding of news till some tangible result can be re- 
ported it is idle to speculate too deeply, though the former 
may be suspected because of the bad weather just now pre- 
vailing. Mostly we have to be content with more or less 
reliable stories of a large French expeditionary force and the 
presumption of considerable military operations in the early 
future. 
Mine-sweeping is proceeding, but large-scale bombard- 
ments are no longer reported, and we may take it that any 
attempt to emulate what Sir John Duckworth did by rushing 
in the past is now definitely abandoned, if, indeed, it were 
ever contemplated. Forts — owing to their extraordinary re- 
cuperative power — have, as the more thoughtful generally 
anticipated, proved themselves a match for ships, despite the 
advances of modern gunnery. 
There is some reason, however, to hope that the Turkish 
moral n has suffered somewhat during the last month; so that 
a gradual wearing-down of resistance may be anticipated. 
This, perhaps, is evidenced most by the curious proceedings 
of the Gothen. She has been patched up in some way, and 
was sent into the Black Sea recently — presumably as a species 
of bogey rather than aught else. At any rate, on meeting 
some of the Russian Black Sea Fleet — which theoretically she 
should have been able to destroy in detail — she turned tail 
and ran for it, being under fire for some hours without doing 
or receiving (apparently) any particular damage. The pre- 
sumption is that owing to injuries previously received her 
speed has considerably deteriorated — for she seems to have 
been only just able to get away. The Russian guns were 
probably outranged. The bad shooting of the Goehen may be 
attributed in part to damaged turrets, in part to deteriorated 
morale 
How far her crew are Turkish and how far German is 
not known, but it is fairly apparent that this ship is incapable 
of securing for Turkey the command of the Black Sea. 
It remains to be seen how far the Ru.ssians will use their 
command of the sea. Their reported exploit of having pene- 
trated mine fields in order to engage forts at close range does 
not impress one as having been either useful or particularly 
reasonable. For the rest, without a laud force in co-cperation 
it is clear that the ships alone cannot accomplish anything 
again.st even merely moderate resistance in the Bosphorus. 
Here, then, matters as regards Constantinople may 
remain for some confiiderable while— possibly till, as in the 
Crimean War and in the American Civil War, vessels are 
extemporised capable of dealing with the particular situation 
involved. In both these campaigns forts were dealt with 
by towing, or slowly propelling, what were virtually heavily- 
protected floating forts into close proximity with the work* 
to be destroyed. 
THE HIGH SEAS GENERALLY. 
The armed German liner Eiicl FrUdrlch is now definitely 
interned at Newport News, U.S.A., where the solitary 
remaining corsair, Kronprinz Wilhelm, has since put in — her 
supplies having been cut cff. Here she, too, v.ill probably b« 
interned, as once having been located she has little or no 
chance of leaving harbour without encountering a British 
cruiser. 
So ends ingloriously the great Commerce War from which 
Germany at oue time hoped so much. Though immature, to 
the extent that the number of ships participating was less 
than had been hoped, it was conducted with a skill, thorough- 
ness, and forethought beyond reproach. Supply ships were 
everywhere, and the means of conveying information were 
remarkable. Retiring to unknown bases was brought to a 
fine art. But out of it all only about sixty merchant ships 
were accounted for, at a cost which one way and another must 
have equalled the damage done. Mahan's dictum as to the 
folly of commerce warfare has been fully borne out. 
In concluding remarks on this phase of the war, a passing 
reference may be made to the statement that the Eitel Fried- 
rich had run out of 8.2 ammunition, and interned herself 
because this was unprocurable in America. So large a gun 
sounds very improbable for a merchant ship, but it is worth 
recording, that before the war there were plenty of circum- 
stantial statements as to German liners being fitted to mount 
such guns. How and in what way the Eitel Friedrich used 
up her heavy ammunition has not transpired. So far as ia 
known, she sank very few merchant ships, and that cannot 
have consumed much in the way of projectiles, even suppos- 
ing them to have been used. Probably British naval activi- 
ties prevented her from ever obtaining her necessary supplies 
of ammunition. The mounting of 8.2's would suggest an 
intention to render armed liners capable of decisive action 
not only against British armed liners bn*^ ilso against small 
British cruisers. 
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
D. C. T. (London, N.W.).— If a submarine has been 
rammed or fired at and oil is subsequently seen on the water, 
the assumption is that she has been disposed of, but this 
assumption is not necessarily invariably correct. 
HiBEBNicus. — (1) Your scheme is not novel. (2) You 
may take It that the Admiralty knows what it is doing, and 
there is no reason to believe that the apparent waste of time 
is anything more than apparent. 
E. N. B. (London, N.E.). — Arming merchantmen 
against privateers was a common practice in the old days. To 
be frank, I do not think that it would answer to-day against 
German submarines, except for the first time or two. The 
best safely for merchantmen is for several to travel in 
company, and even if one is submarined the odds are even 
that one of the survivors will ram the submarine. See, how- 
ever, the legal point alluded to in the text. 
Ignokamcs. — (1) It is practically impossible for either 
side to lay a minefield without the other side coming to know 
of its location tolerably quickly. The chances of trapping a 
German submarine into a minefield are consequently small. 
(2) The same answer applies; the sea is too big a place for 
any entire closure to be possible. (3) It is not advisable to 
answer this question. (4) The first two answers explain why 
the idea, though ingenious, is somewhat outside the zone of 
practicability. 
Landlcbbek (Cork). — Unfortunately, German sub- 
marines possess an intelligence which is not shared with the 
whale 1 Everything else which you suggest has been tried 
since the war began, but the results achieved have been very 
slight. 
C. M. (Dulverton). — -I trust you will forgive my disagree- 
ing with you, but I am afraid that the only chance of ft 
merchant ship against a submarine is being able to ram her* 
Y'ou may take it for certain that if fired at, a hostile buIh 
12* 
