s 
LAiND & WATER 
Februuiy i, i<jij 
Creating a Panic 
By Arthur Pollen 
IX times like these it is extraordinarily difficult to 
see J;hings in their right proportions, and to main- 
tain any balanced and steady view of the progress 
of the war as a whole. There are two reasons why 
tills is so. Few of tis have the mental equipment that 
gives a firm grasp of all the principles involved ; no 
one of us has any complete knowledge (jf e%en the most 
material facts of the case. It must then be almost 
normal to oscillate between too great confidence and too 
great alarm, according as our hopes or our fears are fed 
by sudden and more or less unexpected information. 
^Vhen war began there can have been no country in 
Europe so little prepared for thinking rightly about -war 
as Great Britain. And. as there was no country to which 
the war set such complicated problems, it would not have 
been surprising had the last two and a half years pro- 
duced succassi\e phases of popular opinion running from 
extremes of confidence to extremes of panic. 
These commonplaces are excellently illustrated for us 
bv the recent development of interest in the submarine 
campaign. For the last six months or more the 
authorities have forbidden the publication of exact 
statistics either of the niunber or of the tonnage of the 
ships destroved by the enemy's .submarines. It is not 
surprising, therefore, that the campaign that began in 
August grew to very large proportions before we at all 
realized what was going forward. As there was no steady 
and regular information gi\en to the public as to what 
was happening, as no precise interpretation of it was per- 
mitted, it inevitably happened that the realisation of the 
facts was partial and sporadic, and that there arose that 
least desirable of all public conditions during war, a 
situation in which a comparatively small number of 
people were obsessed with the notion that a desperate 
public danger was threatening us and were irritated and 
alarmed to find that the great majority of their fellow 
countrymen, if they could be judged by their actions, 
seemed i:> be quite unaware of an\- new development 
having taken place-. There followed, then, what we 
have seen so often : violent efforts to agitate the public 
conscience and the pubJic will into appreciating the gravity 
of the facts and the insisting on Govenmient action to 
meet them. The submarine campaign was undoubtedly 
one of the factors that contributed to the fall of Mr. 
Asquith's cabinet. .\nd as it has continued unchecked 
ever since, it is possible that unless some measures are 
taken to inform and therefore steady public opinion, 
an effort may be made to stampede us into further and 
more \iolent changes in the machinery of government. 
How is this danger to be averted ? 
As it arises very largely from the pxiblic having been 
kept too long in 'ignorance of what was happening, I 
cannot myself doubt that the first step should be to 
remove once and for all the veil of mystery that shrouds 
the submarine campaign. There have been two stages 
in concealing the facts from us. When the war began 
the .\dmiralty issued weekly statements of the numbers 
of ships entering and leaving British ports, and the number 
of casualties, and it attributed these casualties to their 
several causes, action bv enemy ships, action by enemy 
submarines, and loss by mines. When the .submarine 
campaign proper ojjened in February iqi.T, this infor- 
mation was supplemented by ;i pretty exact indication 
(tf the point at which each submarine attack had been 
delivered. Up to July 1915, then, our information about 
the giuvi'c dc to?f/'SC was reasonably complete. We knew 
exactly u.'liat ships were being lost, we knew how they were 
being lost, and we knew whci-c they were being lost. The 
first cut was made in tht: last item. After July, we were 
no longer told where ships were sunk. Sometimes it 
would be said that the survivors had reached this or that 
port in boats, or had been brought in by some passing 
ship that had picked up the boats at .sea, and from this 
it was possible to gather whether the sinking had taken 
place in the \orth Sea, the Atlantic or the ^lediterranean. 
It was still possible, then, to indicate the general lields of 
activity, and to note the periodic increases and decreases 
in the intensity of the campaign as they occurred. But 
last June a second cut was made. \\'hile the bare fact 
of each loss as it occurred might, in most cases, still be 
recorded, the press was forbidden to tabulate the infor- 
mation so given, or to interpret events to their rcadei-s, 
.Vnd it should be added that from the beginning of the 
submarine campaign.no information has been given, of 
liie success of the counter-campaign, save in about half a 
(I'izen instances. 
Results of Secrecy 
li i.> not difticult tu see the military and national argu- 
ment for a certain reserve and a ccridin .secrecy in these 
matters. It would have been obvious folly to have told 
the enemy of e\cry submarine of his that we have cap- 
tured or sunk, or believed we had sunk. It would ha\o 
been still greater folly if we had told him where the boat 
was when we attacked it. Similarly we can see excellent 
reasons why, when merchant ships are sunk by submarines, 
we should not let the enemy know, immediately, the 
t^xact area in which this success has been won. Again, we 
can fully appreciate the fact that as the credit of all and 
each of the Allies is founded upon the judgment that 
neutrals form as to the ultimate issue of the war and, as 
it is upon merchant .shipping— and nothing else — that 
the possibility of our victory rests, it is an obvious allied 
interest to minimise news of this character. All these 
considerations are obvious enough and, if in obedience 
to them there Imd been a total denial of some form of 
information — as, for instance, as to the number of German 
submarines sunk, and a certain delay in the publication 
of other — as, for instance, uhcrc our .ships Avere sunk — • 
and a careful supervision of the accuracy of all tabulated, 
statistical or general statements about the campaign, then, 
it seems to me, there could have been no cause for com- 
plaint. But these are not the things that were done. 
The Admiralty quite rightly has stuck to its policy of 
not publishing any list of German submarines sunk and 
captured. But tlie authorities are, 1 submit, wrong in > 
concealing for eighteen months tht; locality of each sink- 
ing, and have completeh' defeated their own ends in 
stifling the publication of accurate statistics. By doing 
• so they have indeed prevented any intelUgent inter- 
pretation of the campaign to the British public — which 
is bad enough. What is worse, a fair field has been left 
for enemy fabrication. It need not be said that this was 
an opportunity that he has not hesitated to use. He has 
put forward his own statistics of the campaign, and these 
have not only gone uncontradicted and uncorrected to 
neutral countries, but have been rejieated. and actually 
been exaggerated in some of the most wideh' read organs 
of British opinion. Thus German exaggeration got a 
British authority and so gained circulation in America 
ev<.Mt among.st our friends, with a maximum danger to otir 
credit abroad, and a threat to stable judgment at home. 
By a curious coincidence an extreme example of 
this perversion has occurred, just when our third War 
I o n is in issue — a time at which, if ever, both the 
importance of impressing the neutral world with the 
certainty of our ultimate victory and of strengthening 
further confidence at home is at its highest. In the 
survey of the position, which The Observer issues each 
Sunday to its readers, the subject chosen for its last 
number was Great Britain's fcapacity to thwart and miti- 
gate the submarine campaign. To establish his case the 
writer had to explain how formidable was the attack on 
merchant tonnage. 
"Nothing ' he tells us. " but mischief was done, 
in our opinion, when the late (ioverument stopped pub- 
lishing the weekly returns of shipping losses. That resort 
only helped to lull and deceive ourselves, but concealed 
no information from the enemy. When the chiinge of 
Government occurred the tierman submarines were sinking 
daily an average of jroin 10,000 to i.i.000 tona of British 
merchant shipping. The destruction of neutral vessels 
•trti> far hizhcr, and this last factor counts fully, of course. 
