February 28, 1 9 1 8 
Land & Water 
of expense beyond which it would be dangerous to go, and 
persuaded himself that it would be better to spend the money 
on Dreadnoughts than on cruisers and destroyers and measures 
for safeguarding the bases. If it was the civilian chief who 
took this line, one is left wondering exactly what the seamen 
did about it. And here certainly Lord Jellicoe can enlighten 
us, for of the nine years preceding the war he spent, if I 
remember rightly, no fewer than six and a half at the Admiralty 
— -two and a half as Director of Naval Ordnance, two as Third 
Sea Lord and Controller, and nearly two as Second Sea Lord. 
This last period of office was from the end of 1912 till he took 
command of the^Grajid Fleet almost on the day war was 
declared. It is hardly credible that he and his professional 
colleagues stood by without protest and trusting to luck while 
utterly inadequate provision was being made in the matter 
of light forces— without which a battle fleet cannot operate — 
while our bases were being left absolutely open to submarine 
attack, and while no measures of any kind were being concerted 
for a protection of trade against U-boat warfare. Surely 
there must have been protests and strong protests, and the 
public has a right to know when and by whom these were 
overruled. 
And is it not just a little hard on the naval historians that 
Lord Jellicoe should, in the vernacular phrase, blame this 
Dreadnought delusion of the public on to them ? It is true 
that the historians, or some of them, have thrown into very 
vivid relief the incidents of the great naval battles, but surely 
the lesson of this emphasis was not that battleships only were 
wanted. I prefer to think that their reason for dwelling on 
these great events was of a different kind altogether. Not 
the least interesting part of Lord Jellicoe's speech was his 
statement of the objects to achieve which sea power exists, 
and first of the three he put the destruction of the enemy's 
armed fdrces. We are certainly getting on in the develop- 
ment and teaching of naval doctrine. Two and a half years 
ago the then First Lord of the Admiralty published a brilliant 
letter on the naval position, and in it set out categorically 
the purposes for which a navy is brought into being. It 
was considered remarkable at the time that it did not include 
the destruction of the enemy's navy amongst the five or six 
.purposes it enumerilted. Little more than a year later an 
ex-First Lord, in an apology for the events of May 31, told 
us first that there was nothing we could obtain by destroying 
the enemy's forces which we did not possess without their 
destruction being accomplished, and then went on to tell us 
that the destruction of these forces was impossible, because 
the risk to our own ships was prohibitive. It is a good thing 
for the public education that so high an authority as Lord 
Jellicoe now tells us that victory is the first and the main 
purpose of sea power. It is a truth that was not only familiar 
but ever present in the minds of our forefathers. And if the 
historians in describing the amazing achievements of the 
seamen of old had dwelt more upon their battles than upon 
any other topic, was it not precisely because it was battle 
and nothing else that they were always seeking, and seeking 
because it was to bring battle about that all their other 
efforts were directed ? It has no doubt taken some years of 
war for the public of to-day to releam these ancient and obvious 
^truths. And they cannot be, reassured too often, as Lord 
Jellicoe assured them a week ago, that they might be perfectly- 
confident that our battle fleet would " on the next occasion " 
do its very best to inflict the kind of defeat upon the enemy's 
fleet which would carry with it 'to-day^ — as it always ha^ in 
the past — that nearer approximation to a complete command 
of the sea, which without battle cannot be possessed at all. 
Arthur Pollen. 
Hunting the U-Boats : By Herman Whitaker 
Mr. Herman Whitaker, the narrator of this thrilling 
story of the work now being done by American destroyers 
round the coasts of the British Islands, is a novelist of 
high reputation in America and was recently a special 
correspondent in -Mexico. A Yorkshireman by birth, he 
served for three years in the British Army, afterwards went 
to Canada, and did pioneering work in Hudson's Bay 
territory. Twenty-two years ago he settled in California 
and devoted himself to literature and travel. 
When Commander Farragut issued to his fleet at Mobile the 
famous order "Damn the torpedoes; steam right ahead," he 
could not foresee that fifty years later it would become the every- 
day watchword of a combined British and American Fleet. 
MAY you visit the American flotilla base ?" 
Admiral Sims repeated my question before 
acceding to it with a hearty, " To be sure ! " 
He also granted a further request to go for 
a cruise on a destroyer. 
From the train window approaching the Base I obtained 
my first astonished view of the flotilla. The last time I had 
seen it the ships were painted a modest grey, but now they 
glared and blushed in " dazzle " paint. Barred, striped and 
ring-straked in vivid pinks, arsenic greens, violent blues and 
reds, they put to shame all leopards, zebras and giraffes that 
were ever gathered together in the world's greatest menagerie. 
The exception to this blazing colour scheme, a new arrival, 
looked in her dull lead paint like a Puritan maiden that had 
fallen into a company of painted Jezebels. 
The object of this wanton display is, of course, to fool 
Fritz of the submarines. That it might, by hurting his eyes 
or shocking his artistic sensibilities, none would deny ; 
but I found it quite hard to believe that such rainbow colours 
could change their visibility. Yet they do. Whereas the 
Puritan maiden showed a clear black outline at sea the 
following day, the Jezebels presented at the same distance, 
a blurred, wavering mass of colour. It were difficult to tell 
bows from stern at four miles, or to judge their course. 
The vessel chosen for my cruise had struck America's first 
blow in the war by sinking one of the submarines that attacked 
our transports in mid-Atlantic. The thought was. warm in 
my mind when, after boarding her, my eyes wandered from the 
knife-like bows back over the shotted guns, grim torpedo tubes, 
along the low rakish hull to the stern where" depth mines 
hung poised for instant use. She looked the part- — fit and 
dangerous. 
From the bridge I watched her slip like a slender arrow out 
through the harbour heads to join other destroyers that were 
combing the offing for U-boats. They made a beautiful 
sight shooting at full speed like a school of flying fish over the 
long green seas ; now careening on sharp turns ; now coming 
about on swift circles ; laying always the white lace of their 
wakes ov?r sixty square miles of sea. Within a number of 
miles of the lightship that formed a pivot for their bird 
swoopings, a number of U-boats lie on the bottom, and 
while we manoeuvred over their graves, I heard their 
stories. 
One had been sunk by a " P" boaUthat chanced upon his 
wake. The " P " had only an old-style fifty-pound depth charge, 
but took a chance and dropped it at the head of the wake. Then 
he listened around for a while. Presently he heard caulking 
hammers at work on the bottom, and knew that Fritz was 
down there making repairs. So he wirelessed for a destroyer 
that came up and dropped a three hundred pound charge 
squarely on top of the " sub." Oil came up in gushes, and 
next day it was found by a diver, lying on its side like a dead 
whale, split open from stem to stem. Others had gone to their 
ends in similar ways, and while I was listening that ceaseless 
combing of the offing went steadily on. Words cannot 
describe the thorough watch that was kept upon the sea. 
Not an inch of it that escaped constant scrutiny, yet- — this 
strenuous eye-searching failed to find Fritz lurking below. 
For two days he hafl been lying there in wait for the convoy 
which was now filing through the heads, and when he attacked, 
it was like the leap of a wolf at a sheep with the subsequent 
rush of shepherd dogs at his tl;roat. We had passed over 
him, and as he rose to take his sight, the destroyer next in 
line almost ran him down. Indeed, it was in going full speed 
astern to avoid collision that his periscope showed. We did 
not see it. Neither did the second destroyer. But sharp, 
young eyes on the third picked up the " feather " it made 
on the water. Rushing along 'the wake — for Fritz dived at 
once — ^this destroyer dropped a depth mine that wrecked half 
his machinery, blew off his rudder, tipped his stem, and sent 
him two hundred feet straight down on a headlong nose dive. 
Afterward, the commander said that he thought he would 
never be able to stop till he was crushed in by deep sea pres- 
sure. To do it he had to blow out all four water ballast 
tanks, and so came shooting back up and leaped clear of the 
water like a breaching whale. Instantly the second and third 
destroyers opened fire. Out of control, with no radder, the 
U-boat could only " porpoise " along, the conning-tower 
now up, now down. Every time it showed a shell whistled 
past it. Perhaps half a dozen had been fired when a man 
popped out of the hatch waving a white shirt. On his heels 
the crew came pouring out and ranged along the deck with 
hands held up. 
Undoubtedly they must have opened the sea valves first, 
for the U-boat sank under their feet before they could be taken 
off by the destroyer that ranged alongside. They had to be 
hauled on board by lines — all but one, who could not swim. 
In vivid contrast to the German practice, two of our men 
