8 
Land & Water 
March 
2 I 
1918 
This industrial district is. then, the economic heart of 
''XTe^/s also, of course, the industrial belt of Saxony and 
that of Silesia; there is the single '"dustnal distr ct of 
Bavaria in the Allied Empire to the south^ There is the 
intensely active little field in the Saar. important chiefly for 
its proximity to the iron of Lorraine and Luxemburg. Kut 
the kernel of modern German material power is here upon 
the Ruhr and its neighbourhood. 
The accident of tiie present war luis hitherto gnen this 
new district a complete security. It happens to he imme- 
<liatelv behind the most advanced sector of the German line^ 
jn France. Drop a perpendicular from Barmen to tho^,c 
lines-that is, take the place on the Allied or German hne in 
France nearest to Barmen (which, as we have seen, is tne 
geographical centre of the industrial district)— and you strike 
It Quentin 200 miles away. Again, the distance from the 
nearest point of this industrial group, the most western 
point to the closest of the Allied points of departure, is over 
180 miles. The southernmost point which, though not 
connected with the coalfiekl geologically, is socially its 
capital Cologne, is in a direct line more than 160 miles, and 
more hke 170 from the nearest practical point of departure. 
There lies in between the whole occupied belt of Northern 
France and Belgium, Luxemburg and Lorraine. 
A further point which must always be remembered is the 
difficulty of the intervening country in the way of land- 
marks. The waste and tumbled hill-land of the Ardennes 
and the Eifel lie between for anyone approaching from the 
south. A waterway, the great guide by night, is found only 
by following the Moselle and turning down the Rhine after 
Coblentz— a long addition to the direct line. But though 
the industrial district of the Ruhr is distant and difficult to 
find, it is not out of reach, and the test of whether the 
Germans were wise or no when they opened this new phase 
in the war will be made when the first considerable raids 
begin to be made upon it. The first severe punishment of 
Cologne will be felt throughout the world, and will be a new 
thing to the enemy, something quite distinct from what has 
hitherto happened upon the Upper Rhine, because Cologne 
is the gate of the neighbouring coalfield. 
There is another centre of very great social importance to 
Germany, lying but a short distance beyond Mayence, and 
that is Frankfort on the Maine. Frankfort is, more than 
anv other town in the German Empire, the financial capital 
of that Empire. Its wealthier inhabitants have probably 
long left it, and they would not be personally affected in any 
case, for those remaining would leave it at once in case of a 
raid. But it remains, none the less, the nerve-centre of 
German finance, and it is a town of over 400,000 people — a 
place on the same scale as, though little smaller than, 
Cologne. It is also the centre of a densely inhabited district. 
Comparatively close to the Allied points of departure, 
and therefore subject already to continual bombardment, is 
the small coal basin of the Saar. It is not so directly con- 
cerned with our present problem as the other Rhine towns 
because it is admittedly a military object, crammed as it is 
with munition works. But the effect of attacks upon the 
industrial district of the Upper Saar cannot compare with 
the effect of similar attacks when they can be made upon 
the Westphalian coalfield. 
H. Belloc. 
Convoys and Submarines: By H. Whitaker 
This article was compiled, by the author from first-hand 
information obtained during a cruise with the American 
destroyer flotilla in the submarine zone. 
OUT in the harbour a thirty-vessel convoy was 
nosing up to its anchors ; the rattle of the 
winches carried across the water and up the 
hill to where the Base-Admiral watched the 
departure from his office windows. His gaze 
centred on one ship, a fine steamer, which, with her cargo of 
twelve thousand tons of foodstuffs, was worth nearly a 
milUon pounds. Her potential values, however, far exceeded 
that figure, for the food stood for human flesh and blood — 
the flesh and blood of women and children in France and 
England and the thews and sinews of soldiers who must be 
fed if the world is to escape the German yoke. 
The ship was commanded by a Scot — an admirable 
character, upright, courageous, self-reliant, the finest of 
seamen, but hard in the mouth. Before the convoy system 
was estabUshed he had voyaged a score of times through 
the submarine zone, winning his way to safety by seamanship 
and daring. A torpedo had once shaved his bows. Another 
had almost clipped off his stern. He had fought half a 
dozen artillery battles with boats ; all of which had raised 
his opinion of himself and his ship fairly close to omni- 
potence. He hated the naval discipline of convoys as much 
as their slow sjjeed, and had bolted twice ; which fact was in 
the Base-Admiral's mind when he turned to his Chief of Staff. 
"McGregor, down there, has bolted twice. I have 
advised his owners to replace him, but they won't. Sooner 
or later the U-boats will get him. Wireless to N— — • to 
watch him closely." 
The order was duly noted by the Senior Commander of 
the destroyer group that escorted the convoy to sea ; and 
when his chief officer reported a few hours later that 
McGregor was edging out of his column, they went after him 
like dogs in chase of a bolting sheep. 
"Who do you think you are, anyway ? " the Senior Com- 
mander bawled out through a megaphone. "The Lord High 
Admiral, eh ? Try that again, and I'll put an officer on 
your bridge and recommend that your papers be cancelled." 
"That ought to hold him," he remarked to his chief officer ; 
"but I'll bet you the old chap is raving. His crew will 
need to step lively during the next few hours." 
And raving, McGregor surely was. If his remarks, as 
afterwards reported by his crew, were printed here they 
would bum a hole in the page. He, a master of twenty 
years' standing, to be ordered about like that ! He, that 
had out-fought, out-witted, out-run more U-boats than the 
entire flotilla had ever seen ! He, with a sixteen-knot ship 
to be held down to a six-knot crawl ! Put an officer on his 
bridge, would they ? Cancel his papers, eh ? And so forth, 
with profuse marginal notes and trimmings ! 
If a plausible excuse in the shape of a fog that fell like a 
grey blanket over the convoy had not been furnished, these 
fulminations, no doubt, would presently have subsided. He 
would hardly have dared violate such specific orders. But 
when the fog lifted towards evening, the convoy was scattered 
over the seas to the horizon, and came scuttering back like 
frightened chickens in response to the destroyer's wireless 
duckings — McGregor was out of sight. Next news of him 
came in a S.O.S. from a point just over the horizon. 
" I'm torpedoed. Sinking. Submarine shelling boats. 
Come at once. " 
Too late ! On the wide and lonely ocean that had just 
engulfed that fine ship with her sorely needed food, they 
found two shell-torn boats full of wounded and dying men. 
In the crest-fallen, troubled man who sat in their midst, it 
was difficult to recognise the old "hard mouth." He was 
repentent, of course ; but the tears that washed the iron 
furrows of his face could not restore his ship, nor heal the 
wounds of his crew. 
From one point of view his conduct was criminal. Yet 
it was natural, inspired by the same spirit that has kept a 
thousand of his kind voyaging these dangerous seas — the 
same spirit that had brought him and many another off 
best in U-boat duels — the same spirit that animated that 
fine old skipper of the North Sea who, with both legs shot 
off and his vessel sinking, ordered his crew to throw him 
and the code-books into the sea together. So allow him his 
repentence, and permit the incident to illustrate at once 
the merits and faults of the convoy system. 
Its merits, taking them first, have been proved by the 
decrease in mercantile sinkings since the old patrol system 
was abandoned. Under the latter, the destroyer and patrol 
fleets were scattered hke pawns over a vast checker board 
that ruled off British waters — across which merchant vessels 
moved from one patrol to another. Though they were 
hunted incessantly, the U-boats managed to pick up in 
those days anywhere between thirty and fifty ships a week. 
But after Allied shipping was grouped in convoys and sent 
through the danger zone under destroyer escorts, the weekly 
average fell to eighteen large ships and four or five small 
ones. During the last eight months of 1917, indeed, the 
British and American destroyer fleets convoyed over one 
hundred thousand vessels in and out of Allied ports with a 
loss of one-eighth of one per cent. As a matter of fact, the 
bulk of the U-boat weekly bag is taken from unescorted ships. 
