The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-05-18
NN 7 AsHINGToN, May 17.-(spe- WNW ciaL )-Without minimizing in
 V any degree the frightful seri-
X X 7

any degree the frightful serl-
 ousness of Germany's submarine war fare, there is ray of hope and
 secrecy on the part of Great Britain
 concerning just what is being accom-
 plished in stalking these snakes of the
 sea. In communication to the National
 Geographic society, Sydney Brooks the English journalist, gives some of the strategic reasons for silence relative to the success with which the British ad- miralty is meeting in bagging this ne- farious game. A part of the communi- cation is issued as the following bulletin by the society:
 Just as Great Britain never advertises the feats of her armies, so she allows the world to think that the Prussians are having it pretty much their own way with their submarines. As a matter of fact, the German submarines have scored very few legitimate successes-by which I mean successes that conform to the usages of cilivized warfare. It must be
 nearly two years since they sank a Brit lSA Ilidli-OL-Wdl OL dhy AlPCt te-hSS' "As pirates preying upon fishing
 smacks, trawlers, Atlantic liners, and the merchantmen of all nations, they I have added a new and infamous chapter to naval history. Otherwise 1t is, I be- lieve, the opinion of most naval men that in German hands the submarine has
 proved disappointingly ineffective. People, remember, were thrown into a state of quite unbalanced admiration when the Deutschland appeared in Amer ican waters. It was spoken of as one of the most remarka ble achievements of the war. Few stopped to remember-even in- deed if they ever knew-that the war was 1 only a few months old when ten British submarines crossed the Atlantic from Halifax to the British Isles-the first submarines in naval history to make | the journey under their own power. l While we publish the number of ves- | sels sunk by Prussian submarines We | say not word about the U-boats whose | careers are brought to a sudden stop. I l do not know how many of them we have | caught, sunk, or destroyed. It may be l 1S0; it may be 200; it may be 220. They | come out and they do not return, and | there is no one in Germany and perhaps | not half a dozen people in England, who l know what becomes of them.
 "The reasons for our secrecy must be | tolerably obvious to anyone who thinks l the matter over All that the Germans are able to infer from the failure of any | given U-boat to return to port is that somehow or other it has been lost. But 1 how or where they cannot tell.
 Tt may have been through some er- | TOT of structure or design-a thought to ! send chill down the spine of every ad- i miralty official. It may have been | through a mistake in navigation. It
 may have been through one or other of | the endless and constantly changing de- l vices that British inguenuity has evolved and brought into play against the new piracy. It may, too, have happened near | the German coast or after the U-boat | had reached its appointed station. They cannot tell.
 l "They are faced with a blank wall of 1 possibilities that they have no means of verifying. Weeks must often elapse be-
 fore they can be sure that submarine