October 3, 1918 
LAND ^ WATER 
The Unbeaten Submarine: By Arthur Pollen 
IN the last two months a change has taken place in the 
military situation at once so sudden and so great that 
there is a tenjptation to believe that we need concern 
ourselves with nothing except the supply of men and 
arms, so that the good work, so gloriously begun, may 
be quickly and triumphantly ended. But if we are to keep a 
balanced view of the wax, we must try to escape from the 
glamour of our recent and rapid successes, and remind our- 
selves that, after all, our operations in France, Palestine, 
and in Bulgari? are conditioned by our command of our sea 
communications. There is, perhaps, little danger of our 
forgetting this, for the enemy, at any rate, makes no secret 
to his own people that all hope of victory by land-fighting 
is abandoned, and that it is to the U-boat alone that he still 
looks for that final blow which will make the Powers encom- 
passing him desist from attack and grant the peace he so 
sorely needs. We are inclined to treat the enemy's boasts 
as being just as vain as his threats, and to do so without 
e.xamination. And, indeed, if we go into the particulars of 
this particular threat, an examination of the available figures 
seems to show conclusively that the U-boat campaign has, 
for some months now, ceased to afford any real basis for 
German hopes. Yet the examination is worth making, not 
to prove in detail what we already know to be generally true, 
but first, to obtain an index as to the enemy's intentions, and, 
next, to find, if we can, not only the best method of thwarting 
these, but of turning the position to his greater discomfiture 
by using tlie results of this examination for an attack on his 
already tottering moral. 
It was noted here a fortnight ago that Germany's final 
attempt to win on land was founded on the two' suppositions 
that her campaign at sea had so weakened the French and 
British armies that, once the forces released on the Eastern 
front could be picked and trained for the task, a decisive 
victory was possible, and that no American army, in sufficient 
numbers to redeem the situation for the Allies, could be 
landed in France, in view of the attrition which the world's 
shipping had undergone. And it seemed a somewhat startling 
proof that the enemy's hopes had all been sea hopes, that on 
realising their disappointment in the third >veek in July, he 
at once recognised the failure, not as a military, but as a 
naval failui'e, and so dismissed, not Hindenburg or Luden- 
dorff, but, first, von Holtzendorff, and then von Capelle. 
The Disillusionment of Germany 
It is important to keep these points in view, because t^iey 
show that the German Higher Command actually was 
deceived over the position at sea, and is, therefore to the 
e-xtent of this disillusionment, already demoralised. This 
gives us a clue as to whether propaganda work would be 
effective, even if it stood alone. But the proceedings before 
the Main Committee of the Reichstag confirm the position 
for us in a very striking manner. For now the new naval 
regime has spoken. Von Hertling's words followed the 
precedent already set for him by the military leaders. " The 
attack has failed, but the defence is impregnable. The 
situation is serious, but gives no ground for deep depression. 
The iron wall in the West cannot be broken. The U-boat 
is slowly but surely fulfilling its task." All this was, so to 
speak, in common form. But when the spokesman of 
Scheer's new administration joined in to give " verisimiHtude 
to an otherwise bald and unconvincing tale," he had to go 
a great deal furtlier. The governing facts of the situation, 
he said, were that the U-boat was sinking more cargo space 
than could be built ; that the tonnage requirements of 
Germany's enemies, both military and economic, were rising 
day by day ; that the U-boats were increasing in numbers. 
The German Navy always had been and was still convinced 
that this was the sole means by which the Anglo-Saxons 
could be brought to reason. The position, then, was good ; 
but it would be still better " if the U-boat war and its immense 
•concomitant effects upon the life of Germany's opponents 
could be generally utUerstood by the German people." The 
whole thing is, of course, a last desperate effort to bolster up 
■civilian courage and resolution. It is impossible to suppose 
that either von Hertling or the Admiralty Staff can believe 
a word of what they say. And Mr. Schwab is quite justified 
in calling the Imperial Chancellor the "damned liar" that 
he is. ; 
But we. can hardly leave it at this. It is surely worth 
while giving chapter and verse to show the actual state of 
things. Now, this is exactly what the Allied Governments 
do not do. We get a great deal of infonpation ; indeed. ^1 
the information that is actually necessary. But it is nowhere 
given out in a graphic or tabular form, so that the position, 
as a whole, is made immediately plain. Thus, in one day 
in the month we get a return of the ships lost from all causes 
in the previous month. But the return does not distinguish 
between marine losses and submarine and mine losses, thoufeh 
from time to' time we are told, as, for instance, in the AugiTst 
return, that the marine losses are unduly high, and losses oy 
enemy action actually less in August than they were ^in 
June. There can surely be no reason for not giving the 
exact figures, if the broad facts can be generally com- 
municated. Witliout these, no exact estimate of our counter- 
campaign is possible. Then, on another day in the month 
we have a second return giving the tonnage of the ships 
completed. But the only official figure published in this 
country is that for British ships. The American figure; is 
published in the United States, but only creeps into the 
British newspapers as a news item that stands by itself, 
and very few people take the trouble to compare these 
figures, month by month, or to add these totals together 
and compare them with the losses. Tlie fact seems to be 
that we proceed in this matter exactly as we did at the end 
of the month of March, when, in point of fact, the situation 
was extraordinarily unsatisfactorj-. For 1917 had ended 
with a sharp drop in the rate of loss, and a still sharper rise 
in the rate of replacement. But in January and February 
the loss-curve fell very 'little and the production-curve fell 
shockingly. It is no wonder if, in March, the Governments 
began to repent of their publicity, and determined first of 
all to hold up the weekly returns of losses and, next, to issue 
all the figures so as to make them mean as little as possible. 
But at th- end of May the whole situation was changed. 
The replacement-curve cut the loss-curve, and in the last 
three months there has been a net gain in the world's tonnage. 
The fact that the curves had crossed became generally 
known. 
Increased Losses, Decreased Output 
But even now, though the critical point was passed three 
months ago, there is no official set of figures to show Where 
we stand. Two facts only seem to stick in the public mind. 
While the July losses showed a marked increase over June, 
August has now passed July ; on the other hand, it is dinned 
into us at every turn that the rate of British shipbuilding 
becomes, month by month, increasingly disappointing. In 
March we were told that we ought to build at least 1,800,600 
tons this year, and attain a rate of three million tons before 
the end of the year. To reach the first figure we ought to 
have maintained a steady 165,000 tons a month, whereas, 
in point of fact, we have in eight months reached this figure 
only once. The public, therefore, is left with the impression 
that the menace of attrition is far greater than it is. Now, 
when you get the German Government proclaiming its 
continued faith in the U-boat as an agency that can stop 
our pushing our attack to the point of victory, when we 
have to admit that its claim to the possession of a laEger 
number of submarines than ever is well founded, and when 
we see the losses actually increasing, and are told, on the top 
of all this, that our shipbuilding is a failure, is it surprising 
that very confused inferences are drawn, and that qyite 
unnecessary encouragement is given to the enemy just when 
he needs it most ? 
If the present system has been persisted in with the hope 
of frightening the shipbuilders into greater efforts, it siirely 
has not succeeded, for on the Clyde, at least, strikes are 
going forward as merrily as ever. I suggest, therefore, for 
the hundredth time, that the right thing to do is to tell not 
only the truth, but the whole truth ; and not only to tell it, 
but to put it in a form which will be both intelligible and 
convincing. And, as an essay in this direction, I submit 
the following diagram and tables, which put together the 
only facts available to ais from the public figures, viz., the 
monthly losses and the monthly replacements made by 
British and American yards during the last eight months. 
In this diagram the line A (in solid black) shows the losses 
month by month during the year ; B (the dotted line) gives 
the tonnage replaced by the British and American yards ; 
C (the dot-and-dash line) shows the net losses from January 
to May, 'and then the net gains during the three succeeding 
months. The arrows A, B, C, on the left of the diagram, 
show the average monthly loss for the last quarter of 1917 ; 
