Land & Water 
June 20, 191 8 
what he liints, viz., that tlic warning ho uttered in October, 
1916, as to the result of unrestricted U-boat warfare, lias 
proved him to be right and his critics wrong. It has made 
an irreconcilable opponent of America without disposing of 
the other irreconcilable, England. Germany is left, then, 
still needing a peace by understanding, but is further off 
than ever from any possibihty of getting it. The people 
are being fooled by being told that the mihtary successes 
are decisive \ictories, and their war passion excited by the 
prospects of annexations and indemnities. But the truth, 
he says, is that the bulk of Germany wants only German 
rights, and that annexations, in the interest of scientiiac 
frontiers, have no meaning in these days of long-range guns 
and aeroplanes ; and that all this talk only postpones the 
only finish of the war that can help his country. 
Now it seems to me quite a remarkable thing that three 
men, so different in origin, experience, and environment, 
should show agreement on an issue so fundamental as this. 
They all see as clearly as possible that the tiling Germany 
must have — or perish— is exactly the thing which cannot be 
obtained by force of arms on land. If Germany is to .turn 
her conquests in the East into permanent realities profitable 
to herself, she must first come to a working agreement with 
aU the rest of the world. Without wool, cotton, rubber, 
hides, vegetable oils, and a host of other products, she cannot 
regain that industrial vitality without which the exploitation 
of the Russian and Rumanian conquests will be impossible. 
Without a free sea, no internal industry can bring national 
wealth. Now, these two indispensable things — raw materials 
and free sea commerce — do not follow automatically from the 
only kind of victory dangled before the German vision. 
If Gennany could conquer the armies of Italy, France, 
England, and America on land, and beat all our fleets, too, 
then the countries of the outer world would have to come to 
the same kind of "peace by understanding" with Germany 
to wluch Russia, the Ukraine, and Rumania — not to mention 
Poland and Finland — have already been driven. But there 
is no prospect of sea victory on this or any other scale. Max 
Cohen, indeed, will have it still that the U-boat will win ; 
but he speaks to a formula in which no one trusts. It is 
significant that Erzberger, while speaking respectfully of the 
efficiency and the gallantry of the submarine personnel, is 
under no illusions as to any chances of submarine victory. 
Dernburg is silent on the subject altogether, and Kiihlmann, 
while talking glibly of the freedom of the seas, suggests no 
means by which the rest of the world is to be free of the 
peaceful use of the seas, if Germany is to remain free to 
renew her piratical sabotage whenever she thinks fit. 
The growth of German opinion on these subjects will be 
well worth watching. It is something, at any rate, to have 
a Secretary of State admitting that it is peace on sea and 
not peace on land that Germany needs, and one of the fore- 
most of her political thinkers asseverating that peace on sea 
is not a thing that can be the fruit of land victory. 
Rizzo's Achievement 
On the night of June S-gth, Commander Luigi Rizzo, of 
the Royal Itahan Navy, was cruising off the Dalmatian 
coast in a m6tor boat in company with another of the same 
craft under the command of Midshipman Aonzo. At 3.15 
on Sunday morning, he perceived a column of smoke in the 
distance, and was soon able to distinguish two dreadnoughts 
escorted by a squadron of ten destroyers. He determined to 
go for them at once, and ordered Aonzo to attack "as he 
thought best." He managed to slip between the destroyers 
and get within between 400 and 600 feet of the leading ship, 
and was soon under fire from the destroyers, which then per- 
ceived him. But, unaffected by this, he.let his two torpedoes 
go from their dropping gear, and both took effect. Aonzo, in 
the meantime, got in one hit on the second battleship. All 
this w;is astonishing enough, but the miracle is that, having 
got inside the destroyer line and torpedoed both ships, these 
tiny motor boats were then able to pass out again untouched. 
Beyond a couple of torpedoes and depth charges each, they 
carried no weapons. It was with one of these latter, the 
first having failed to explode, that Rizzo stood off the only 
destroyer that tried to ram him — the light, one imagines, 
was too bad for effective gunnery. The second depth-charge 
was nicely timed and lifted the destroyer, so that she "rolled 
like a drunken man." She was doubtless out of action, if 
pot destroyed; but Rizzo, now defenceless, did not wait to 
see, and slipped through the gap, and both motor boats 
escaped. This reads more like the ground work of a magazine 
story than an event in real life, and but for the Austrian 
admission that the Szent Istvan had been sunk, with the loss 
of several officers and eighty men, one would be tempted 
to wonder if it could possibly be true. 
It is confidently stated that another Austrian battleship 
has been lost already, and Aonzo is positive that a hit was 
made on Szent Istvan' s consort. 'It looks, then, as if there 
were now no Austrian battle fleet to cause concern. It is 
unnecessary to dwell upon the change this makes in the 
Mediterranean. We saw a month ago that, if the old Russian 
battle fleet could be annexed and put under the command of 
the Goeben, a j unction between such a fleet and the Austrian 
would create a very serious situation in the Middle Sea. On 
Friday came the news that two of the ex- Russian battleships 
had already been surrendeied — not to the Turks, to their 
great chagrin, but to the Germans. But Rizzo's feat has 
transformed the situation, and though the enemy may yet 
try a diversion, the graver possibilities need trouble us no 
longer. 
U-Boats in American Waters 
The submarine attack in American waters that began a 
fortnight ago has not been continued at its first intensity, 
no doubt because prompt measures were taken to deal with 
it. But it has not ceased altogether, and obviously it can be 
renewed, quite ^jossibly with greater effect. The Navy 
Department has, to my personal knowledge, been ready for 
such a campaign for a twelve-month past, and something 
much more serious than the raid on the coastwise shipping, 
that has actually taken place, was expected. The fact that 
even this was postponed, imtil American forces were in the 
field, seems to indicate that German policy was prompted 
by a hope to end the war, before the American war spirit 
was reinforced by national action on so large a scale, that 
going back on the President's professions would become 
impossible. There may have been a forlorn sort of hope 
that if American resentment were not aroused, a return to 
real peace conditions might be easier. Now, Germany is 
undeceived, and realised, what those who knew America 
said from the first, viz., that once in, she was in till the end, 
and the end as she defined it. It is, therefore, a clear possi- 
bility of the situation that a concentrated submarine attack 
may now develop, not only against American trade, but 
against American transports and the coast towns. Indeed, 
it is a necessity of the mihtary situation that a concentration 
against the transports should be made before it is too late. 
For, obviously, the Channel and North Sea barrages, now~ 
openly proclaimed — not to mention the other elements of 
the offensive now being developed, largely with American 
help ! — are not things that can be made effective on the 
instant, but are measures of slow growth. When they are 
mature^, it \vill not be easy for many submarines to get 
through, and a high proportion of those that try will 
never be heard of again. To get any success worth 
having, the U-boats will have to take chances of a very 
severe order. With diminishing numbers and a moral 
strained by a rapidly growing percentage of loss, to 
suppose that they will now embark upon tactics of a more 
daring and hazardous kind than ever, may look hke anti- 
cipating the least probable of things. ' But we must remember 
that all alternatives may appear desperate. The German 
papers are apparently instructed to deny, first of all, that 
the submarines that have been operating in American water.s 
are of the cruiser type, in the sense of differing materially 
from those hitherto in use ; next, that there is a distinct 
cruiser type at all. The so-called cruiser, is, we are told, 
simply a 2,000-ton submarine built to secure a larger radius 
of action ; but the denial ceases to be convincing when the 
inspired statement goes on to say that the high surface speed 
is 15 knots only ; for at Newport in 1916, the officers of 
U 53 made it one of their principal boasts that their craft 
could do over 20 knots in smooth water. And, for that 
matter, many a merchantman has been brought down by 
submarines capable of 16 and 17 knots in the open sea. 
Whether the larger submarines will ever be employed in 
baby-kilhng on the American sea board is another question. 
We do not know what correspondence, if any, srill continues 
between the Germans in the United States and the Father- 
land. But one imagines that they would like to be consulted 
before the All Highest exhibits this form of German Kultur 
m the land of their adoption. Every traveller to the United 
States testifies gratefully and with enthusiasm to the lavish 
hospitahty and kindness that Americans of every social 
grade extend to their friends— no matter how slight their 
claim to such self-sacrifice. But it is not every visitor who 
knows that this gracious quality is not unaccompanied bv 
a compensatmg capacity to be extraordinarily disagreeable 
to those whom they dislike. The German emigrants would 
probably prefer not to have American talent in this respect 
put to too searchmg a test. And it is likelv, therefore, that 
they ha^e begged that the U-boats campaign, if kept going 
at all, should be maintained as a strictly maritime affair. 
