LAND AiND WATER. 
June 26, 1915. 
tenth part of the distance over which this officer 
had the torpedo under view that sank his ship. 
There have been two small Austrian raids; 
one on the coast railway between Rimini and 
Ancona, the other at Togliainento, at the mouth of 
the river of that name, which is opposite Trieste, 
and about five-and-twenty miles awav from it. In 
neither case were the Austrian raiding forces 
destroyed. 
The French Admiralty has announced that 
the English. French, and Italian naval forces are 
co-operating in the Adriatic with a special view 
to hunting out and destroying German and 
Austrian submarine bases, but beyond this there 
is no news, either of any success by the German 
submarines at the l^ardanelles, nor any successful 
raids on the Turkish communications by our sub- 
marines. There is, indeed, a story published in 
Kome of the successful expedition of a British sub- 
marine in the Sea of Marmara. But there has been 
no official allusion to it, and it is probably merely 
a repetition of the achievements either of El4 or 
of Ell. There is a touch in the rejiort of the land 
attacks on the Turkish positions of June 6th tliat 
is of naval interest. It seems that, amongst other 
captures, officers of the Goehen and Breslau were 
taken, together with a macJiine gun from the 
latter ship. This is a little confusing, because we 
know from llussian sources that the Dresliv was 
engaged on June 11 with some destroyers. If any 
. naval achievements had been looked for from 
either of these ships, surely neither a gun nor a 
man would h.ave been removed from them. 
•\ I drew attention last week to the fact that, 
judging by Mr. Churchill's Dundee speech and 
Mr. Runcimans Parliamentary reference to the 
forthcoming wheat supplies from Odessa, the 
Ministers seem to be very optimistic about the 
Dardanelles. This optimism has since been 
strongly emphasised by the Prime Minister. On 
the 15th Mr. Asquith declared that he was not in 
the least indisposed, in due course, to explain and 
justify what had been done (or was being done) at 
the Dardanelles, but he asked the House to excuse 
his doing so, because such a discussion was not in 
the best interest of the country. 
THE SUBMARINE CAMPAIGN. 
The inquiry into the loss of the Lnsitania 
and the extraordinary increase in the number of 
Rubmarine victims in'the first two weeks of June 
maJ 3 it worth while to examine the whole of this 
question a little more closely. There is, there- 
fore, published on the opposite page a graphic 
statement in chronological order of the 
total number of submarine victims, ships and 
trawlers, British, Allied, and neutral, each loss 
being set down to its approximate date. I believe 
both the numbers and the dates to be substantially 
accurate, but it is impossible to make them abso- 
lutely so. The record includes a great many more 
ships than figure in the weekly return issued by 
the Admiralty, which is limited to British ships 
only, and excludes the twenty-four allied ships 
and thirty-seven neutrals that have been either 
attacked or sunk. 
For this idea I am largely indebted to Mr 
CJ T^kley, the editor of the Motor Boat, who was 
the first to draw attention to the periodicity of the 
Bubmarine attacks, and to suggest an explanation. 
To understand the extraordinary intensity 
*8 
of the submarine attack on our merchant ships 
and trawlers in the first fortnight in June it is, 
it seems to me, necessary to bear in mind the main 
facts of the naval position, for it is out of these 
facts that this campaign arose. If Germany, pos- 
sessing an inferior number of the capital ships 
on which comnyind of the sea depends, had deter- 
mined to make war on Great Britain, as well as 
on France and Russia, she would have taken 
two precautions. There are certain measures 
that she would have taken as a preliminary 
to making war, and she would have waited 
to make war until circumstances were favour- 
able. She would have secured, if it had been 
possible to do so, a concentration of the naval 
forces available to her and to her Allies. Some 
excuse would have been made for bringing the 
three Austrian Dreadnoughts to Wilhelmshaven, 
for their junction with the German fleet would 
have made a very material difference to the rela- 
tive strength of the battle squadrons. Besides this 
she would have seen that eA'-ery cruiser she could 
S})are was jilaced on the trade routes, and she 
would have armed every liner for which she could 
spare guns and men, and distributed these scien- 
tifically over the world. Having made these pre- 
limiuaiy [)repa rations, she would have chosen a 
moment for making war when the British battle 
fleets were scattered, so that a surprise attack of 
the German High Seas Fleet, reinforced by the 
Austrian Dreadnoughts, could have fallen upon 
one or more of our squadrons and annihilated 
every ship. A simultaneous attack would have 
l)een made upon our trading ships the world over. 
We should then have found ourselves suddenly 
involved in a naval war, with our .strength in 
battleships reduced either to equality or below 
it. and with the whole command of the sea, and 
w;ith it security for our trade and communica- 
tions, still to win. No immediate military expedi- 
tion abroad would have been possible. We should 
have been useless as allies. 
But what the German and Austrian staffs 
intended in July last was not war on Great 
Britain, but war on Europe, with Great Britain 
remaining neutral. So confident were thev of our 
neutrality that they precipitated the crisis at a 
moment when, as' they had known for some 
months would be the case, the British Navy was 
mobilised on a scale and with a completeness 
entirely unprecedented in our historv. It was not 
necessary for the Chancellor Hollweg to express 
his terrified incredulity when the British Ambas- 
sador in Berlin informed him than an invasion of 
Belgium would mean our participation in the war. 
It was not due to any sudden act of genius by our 
Admiralty. It followed inevitably from the situa- 
tion. The German High Seas Fleet was instantly] 
and for the rest of the war confined to its harbours. 
The fate of such cruisers as were at large, includ- 
ing von Spec's China squadron and the Goehen, 
was theoretically sealed. How soon they met their 
fate, and what mischief they would be able to do 
before meeting it, depended on the dispositions 
of the British Admiralty and the skill and deter- 
mination of the various British commanders-in- 
chief. If the thing was badly blundered, their run 
might be longer. But the final issue was never in 
doubt. It came with the battle of the Falkland 
Islands. Germany then had to face the naked 
fact that the war found her without effective 
naval force and faced by an unexpected enemy on 
land as welL 
