March 2, 1916. 
LAND AND W A T E R 
A TEST OF NERVE, 
By Arthur Pollen. 
BEFORE these pages are in the reader's hands, 
the second chapter of the submarine war that 
commenced just over a year ago will have 
begun. As ' has been pointed out in these 
columns many times, the only novelty we may expect in 
the attack on the ships that now supply Great Britain 
and her Allies, is that it may be carried out by means 
more effective for their purpose than those which Germany 
has hitherto employed. There will be no addition to 
our enemy's ruthlessness, for the simple reason that he 
has exhausted ruthlessness already. The threat to stick 
at nothing is not a new threat, nor is his excuse that 
British ships are armed a new pretext. The whole pro- 
gramme will be found complete in the Note sent to the 
United States a week before the first submarine campaign 
was due to begin. As 270 British, Allied and Neutral 
vessels have been sunk or attacked by submarines, mines 
or aircraft, xmtkout waniins, it is a programme that can- 
not have any new f rightfulness added to it. The only 
question then is : are the new German submarines likely 
to be very greatly more effective than their predecessors ? 
It is well to remember that they might be twice and 
three times as effective without coming near bringing 
any of the Allies to the straits they must be brought 
to if Germany is to benefit materially by her new effort. 
I say " materially " advisedly, because it is clear that 
she may benefit morally if losses on a new scale at sea result 
in any serious disturbance of the public mind. The success 
of the Zeppelin raids in creating the appearance of a 
])anicky condition will no doubt fortify the Germans in 
the ho]:)e that a larger and more destructive \ o icy at sea 
must intensify whatever unsettlement of opinion is 
already manifest. And if, as seems not unlikely, the 
stroke at Verdun is the beginning of a determined effort 
to do something decisive, then we may expect that the 
new submarine campaign will be far from being the only 
naval effort that Germany will make. For that matter 
the Moewe is still at large, and only last week we heard 
of further victims that have fallen to her. Their pas- 
sengers and people were c.irried to Teneriffe by the 
Wcstbwn, which was subsequently scuttled. My con- 
jecture of February loth that the Moewe would operate 
Trinidad 
Aug. 18 
Jan.lO.i9is 
in the hunting grounds of the Karlsruhe has been con- 
firmed. And it may interest the reader to be rerninded 
of the previous captures which have been made in this 
neighbourhood. The sketch map shows the sequence of 
the Karlsmhe's successes between August and October, 
1914, and of the captures made by the Kronprinz Wilheltn 
and the Prinz Eitcl Friedrich in December of the same 
year and in the spring of 1915. The great majority of 
these captures, it will be noted, were taken withii) a 
hundred miles or so of Fernando de Noronha, in the 
neighbourhood of which the Moewe's new victims have 
been captured. Running down a ship like the Moeivc is 
never a simple business even when the area of activities 
can be almost exactly defined, simply because the 
area is so extensive. A larger question is : does she 
carry guns for equipping other German ships that may 
have escaped from internment ? As to this we have no 
information, but the thing is clearly not impossible. In 
addition then to a fresh submarine campaign, we may 
have to prepare ourselves for further depredations by 
surface ships. 
But if Germany's effort on land is to be supplemented 
by the utmost she can do at sea, she can hardly confine 
herself solely to the destruction of merchant shipping, 
although in destroying merchant shipping, it is hardly 
necessary to remind the reader, she would be doing much 
more than inflicting so much commercial loss upon her 
jcnemies. For it is on this shipping that France and 
Great Britain are wholly dependent for their ability to 
carry on the war with success— a point that those should 
remember who arc tempted, when they hear that our 
shipbuilders' activity has been deflected from war ships 
to merchant ships, to jeer at "Commerce" being pre- 
fen^ed to war. F'or obviously our command of the sea, 
even if established by an overwhelming naval victory, 
would be a Pyrrhic success if we were unable to use the 
highways of the sea which we command. 
Chances of Battle. 
The question, then, remains : will Germany dispute 
this command ? She might challenge Sir John Jellicoe's 
fleet to a decisive battle. The challenge might 
take the form of a sortie of the whole High Seas 
Fleet, with every auxiliary in the way of destroyer 
and submarine at its disposal, and with every ship 
furnished with all the mines it could carry. This 
fleet might either attempt to break north about, thus 
making an engagement with the Grand Fleet inevitable ; 
or it might strike boldly into the Channel, cut our com- 
munications with France, and thus drive us to defend 
those communications by a Fleet action. An alternative 
course, the possibility of which I have already discussed, 
is a delaying action in northern waters, half of the high 
seas fleet being sacrificed to enable the other half to 
gain the Atlantic. The objective of the escaped vessels 
would be to join hands with as many as possible of the 
fast liners now interned in North American ports ; to 
arm them, and then attempt a complete if only a temporary, 
blockade of the coasts of France and Great Britahi. If 
this mixed fieet of battleships and armed meichantinen 
could isolate Great Britain and cut off the whole of its 
supplies, it would obviously not be many weeks before 
the country would be reduced to very serious straits. 
Neither of these alternatives seems to me in the least 
degree probable. I disbelieve in the first because I 
cannot persuade myself that Germany can have so 
redressed the inequality of her naval forces as to make 
a set battle a likely undertaking. We saw last week 
that if both sides completed their known programmes as 
they stood in August, 1914, our numbers would be more 
than double the German numbers now, and our gun 
power considerably more than three times as great. 
We do not know what either side has done in the way of 
shipbuilding bej^ond their known programmes. 
The following table shows the date (in Roman figures) 
of the laying down of each German Dreadnought, and (in 
Arabic numerals) of its completion. From this it appears 
that Germany has never completed more than four capital 
ships in one single recent year. Next, in the last three 
years, the average time that ha^; elapsed between the 
laying down and the completion of each ship, has been 
