The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-07-03
TASK AT SEA IS PRODIGIOUS ONE,
 SAYS ENGLISHMAN
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to secure these communications and I shall try to establish to you that this is not an economic or an industrial nor even a shipbuilding problem
 Tt is a problem of naval war hich will be settled by 'fightina methods by fighting navy. It propounds new problems, which will be solved by new means, but before we go into she de- tails of this let us ask first, how has the present situation arisen?
 STARTLING TRANSPORTATION
 Tt is, of course, a commonplace tha. the defeat of the submarine is the crux of the war. How has it grown to be such menace? In answer. ask your attention to two startling transforma- tions the war has seen
 "On the eve of the battle of the Marne, the Germans having advanced through France, driving the British and the French armies before them confidently assumed that the land war was over and a final victory was pro- claimed in Berlin. Ten days later the German chiefs knew that a final vic- tory was impossible.
 In December, 1915, the British navy had driven every German surface ship off the sea outside the Helgoland Eight. There had been but two small defeats.
 "The British merchantmen had been successfully armed The German high seas fleet had been challenged at Helgoland and the challenge had been refused. During the period of the war the British fleet had increased from "A capital ship units to 40 capital ship units and the German fleet had, so far as known, only increased from IS to 21 capital ship units. It was felt in England that if fleet action had not been sought by Germany by then it never would be. It was assumed that the British command of the sea was complete and final just as 1t had been assumed in Berlin that the German land victory was complete and final. But both in Berlin and in LondSn they learned their error.
 ENGLAND DECEIVED
 British complacency as to the naval situation in January, 1915, was all the greater inasmuch as it confirmed the the theory which had dominated Brit ish opinion before the war. This theory was that an invincib1e fleet equals ] victorious fleet; that supremacy in big ships, thick armor, long range guns and numbers give victory without bat. tie. But this belief rested upon a pure ly defensive theory of war, theory that tested not even the power of the guns to hit in battle conditions.
 Moreover, the theory entertained in London as to the offensive power of the submarine proved equally wrong. Even in 1916 we did not realize that it is the German fleet that covers the German bases and so makes submarine war pos sible. We misread the lessons of 1915-t6 submarine campaigns.
 Tn 1915 the Germans had few subma-  1916 there were more sub marines and there was more ruthlessness in 1917 there were 160 submarines and there was unlimited ruthlessness. Now we know that in 1915 and 1916 Germany was only developing her power to carry on underwater war We know that Germany yielded to the threat of the United States after the sinking of the steamer Sussex because Germany did not possess enough subma- rines to make her campaign fully eff fective. In 1917 Germany believed she had sufficient submarines in hand to starve England and to cut sea communi- cations so that she could in that way else render the belligerency of the United States ineffective. N THE THREE COURSES
 But what we have now to prove is that the German theory as to their power to
 
 the belligerency of the United States in effective is wrong, and it can only be proved by defeating the submarines There are three courses open.
 We may block the exit to the German harbors by active sea operation and hold an area for sufficient time to barricade those exits effectively Could such an effective barricade be established the Ger man fleet would be definitely fmmobilized and then the problem of watching the ports at close range and of blocking them with mine field so that submarines could not get out would be soluble.
 ''The second course is to block the North sea and the channel by establish ing an impossible combination of nets and mines. but there are certain prob- lens, difficult of solution albeit not nec- essarily insoluble, in connection with such operations. In the North sea there are tides and storms and sea actions which make it an extremely difficult task to anchor mines and to maintain nets. Moreover, such operations are difficult to carry out on such a large scale
 'Third, we may defend our ships by arming them, by providing them with improved Notation and other means of defense against submarine attack, but these measures which I mention as q third alternative while they are valuable