10. 
LAND & WATER 
April 20, 1916 
WAR BY SUBMARINES 
By Arthur Pollen 
LORD MONTAGU has made it quite clear that he is 
not askinj,' for an Air Ministry to control the use 
of all aircraft in the war, but only to reorganise 
and concentrate national effort for producing 
I'loro^ and better flying machines of e\ery kind. His 
effor;- to straighten this muddled state of things should 
have a nuich better chance of success now that its 
ultimate object is defined. 
But it is evident that he has far higher hopes of the 
influence of aircraft on war than more conservative 
thmkers are likely to endorse. He tells us, for instance, 
that the mark of the present condition of the war is 
(ieadlock. It is so. he says, on the Western front, at 
Salonika and in the North Sea. It is an inevitable result 
of the power of defence being so much greater than the 
power of offence. The worst of it seems to be that this 
deadlock must continue, until determined by aircraft in 
land warfare, and by submarines in sea warfare ! Ob- 
itiously, if this theory is right, we cannot begin too 
soon or work too hard to bring our aii equipment to 
tlie highest possible. But is it right ? 
If we test it by sea war, it hardlv seems to coincide 
with an impartial view of the facts. There never has 
been and there is not now any deadlock in the naval war. 
We took the strategic offensive at the outbreak of war, and 
from midnight on August 4th, Germany has been im- 
of any of our trading ships practically impossible. They 
.speak as if what had been done during the last month 
might be multiplied by three or four, and kept up for 
weeks and months. 
We should then have this extraordinary state of affairs. 
We should be unable to use the sea because of submarines, 
and the Germans, imable to use it because of the British 
fleet. The advantage would be, of course, all to the 
( iermans— for we are dependent upon the sea absolutely 
and entirely, and they are not. Do facts or reason justify 
such apprehensions ? For some months before March 
20th — when the Tubaniia and Palcmhang were sunk, 
and the new submarine compaign may be said to have 
begun — the average of merchant steamers, British, 
Neutral and Allied attacked and lost in home waters 
was appro.ximately one per diem. In the first eight days of 
the new campaign, the average rose to 2% ; in the next 
week to 2J ; in the third week to 2^ ; and in the past 
week it fell again to just over ij. Over the whole period 
then, the average is nearly 2h per day. This rate, if it 
could be kept tip, would destroy qoo steamers a year. 
Were they all British we should lose at this rate between 
one-sixth and one-fifth of our steamers engaged in foreign 
trade. Were we dependent on British steamers only 
and were we unable to replace any of our losses, it would 
mean that, in the course of the next year of the war, we 
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1 34 56 T 8 9101111131415-16 
April 
Submar... 
and Apr! 
"f iH'.l^ 1 Corrected diagram of British, Neutral and Allied steamers attacked by submarines cr mines between March :flh 
)nl 17th; total ,2, .n 29 days, of vvh.ch 42 were British. 27 Neutral snd .^ Allied. In August 191.S, 66 ships ivere attacked in 
dl days. I he largest number in any / days, was between August 18-24;h, wh;n 29 victims w.-re recorded 
potent on the surface of the sea. Her roving— and 
doomed— cruisers did some slight damage to our trade, her 
runaway capital ships did some still more trifling damage 
to a few coast towns. But no (ierman battleships or battle 
cruisers have sought an action with ours. No squadrons 
have attempted to dispute the passage of our armies or 
our transports; no effort has .been made to convoy 
German merchantmen to sea. Germany's confession of 
sea impotence has, then, been absolute. It is possible 
^he may still dispute our command. But it does not seem 
probable that her equipment can so increase relatively to 
ours as to give her a better chance in the future than 
she has enjoyed in the past. So that the only stagnation 
in this field of war — that is. in the command of the 
surface of the sea — ^has been a continuous maintenance 
of British supremacy, with all that it canies with it. 
Possibly Lord Montagu believes that submarines may 
turn this supremacy to defeat. Ifhe means this, he can 
hardly have intended to imply that defeat will be brought 
about by Sir John Jellicoe's ships being destroyed. How- 
ever badly equipped we were at the outset to defend the 
' ".rand Meet against these craft, the entire lack of casualties 
by submarines in twenty months of war seems proof positive 
that there is now, at any rate, no danger to our fleet that 
need cause us great uneasiness. Lord Montagu must 
have quite a different form of submarine success in view. 
lo some people it is not inconceivable that Germany 
might have so many submarines at work and orgiinise 
them so successfully, as to make the continuance at sea 
should have to reduce our imports by, say, one-fifth ; 
in the following year by one-quarter, aiid so on. In two 
years the situation would become very critical. 
But this prospect, dismal enough 1 admit, need not 
frighten us for various excellent reasons. In the first 
place, we are not dependent upon British steamers alone. 
Of the 72 steamers attacked between the 20th March and 
the 17th April, 27 were neutral. If we assume neutral 
shipping engaged in the service of these islands to be a 
little under three-quarters of our own, it would make the 
total number of steamers upon which we are dependent 
8,750 instead of 5,000. So the present rate of destruc- 
tion, instead of being two-elevenths, would only be just 
under one-tenth ; which, though inconvenient, would 
not really be very formidable. And in the second year 
of war, on the same scale of destruction, there would 
be a reduction of one-ninth, and so on. So that we could 
possibly carry on for at least three years without any 
renewal of our own or neutral shipping, and without being 
brought to a serious jwint of want. Even then, if the 
rate of destruction of two and a half a day could be kept 
up, we should be a long way from stagnation being 
turned into defeat. 
But it seems obvious that the rate will not and cannot 
be kept up. Note to begin with that it has not been 
kept up. It was 2i a day during the second, and 
2jin the third week, and it is only just over one and 
a half in the past week, and this is not so very far from 
normal. We must no* forget that in July, .Aiigust, and 
