The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-04-17
NEED 0F SMALL VESSELS GREAT,
 SAYS JELLIC0E
Admiral Looks to Us to Furnish Ships to Fight
 Menace of U-Boats.

London April -17-Admiral Sir 1 John R. Jellicoe, former commander First Sea Lord. told the correspondent i of the Associated Press yesterday that anything and everything in the way l of small craft. from destroyers to l tugs, would be the most useful con- l tribution which the United States l could make to the war against Ger l man submarines. He asserted that ! the best hunting ground for raiders is 1 on this side of the water, as the pos 1 sibility of German submarines operat-
 ing on the American coast is almost | negligible unless they have a base on that side.
 T have no desire to minimize to
 the American people," said the Ad- l mfral,. the serious situation prevailing 1 as 8 result of the illegal use of sub marines by the Germans. Neither is 1t l easy for us to take them into our confidence and tell them what we are doing to cope with the evil, without providing the Germans with useful | information. No methods existed in | the past for gfhting the submerged 1 submarine, and the new inventions 1 and processes for that purpose take l time to develop.
 We are giving your navy all the information in our possession, and, Knowing it's record, we have Igreat
 confidence that American inventive
 genius will supplement it with valua- ble contributions.
 "As far as the feeding of the Allied
 populations is concerned, our efforts
 must be concentrated on saving ton- mage, while bringing in the necessary 1 supplies, In order to minimize the ef- l feet of the submarine warfare. We
 have bought large quantities of wheat
 in Australia, but as the round voyage {. takes four times as long as that to l America, the bringing of this wheat takes four times as much tonnage as the carrying of American wheat to
 the Allied powers. We therefore re-
 quire all the wheat we can obtain from America and Canada.
 "Our food situation is by no means
 so desperate as the Germans want to
 believe it is, but, on the other and. 1t is more serious than many of our
 own people realize. Our own ship. ping suffered very little more in
 March than during the firss months of unrestricted Submarine warfare. tand other tonnage sunk during that period was in much the same posi- tion. There is no very marked meth cd of combating .he evil. What has been accomplished is the result of in- ventions and processes which take time to develop, and the government is we'll aware of the fact tha. imne- diate' results could not be expected.
 The increasing armament of our
 mercantile marine has made submar- ines far more cautious, and more sub
 merged attacks are taking place. Of
 course, this has one advantage, inas-
 uch as the raiders must depend upon their torpedoes for such attacks, and,
 being unable to carry only a limited than when they made their attacks from the surface. Your Navy De- partment knows just how the many submarines we have. sunk, but the
 exact number of U boats which have actually never returned to port is
 known only to the German Admiral
 ty.
 Against submerged attack a host
 of small craft forms. the best protec-
 ton. We can use efeverything from
 destroyers to tugs of any size. The
 danger of showing a periscope when
 the submarine may have a bomb
 dropped on it or be rammed, is one
 which our enemy does not like to face.
 But these craft must be used in the
 zone where submarines operate, and
 such a zone is hardly likely to be ex- k5,~ ocf submarines cannot operate over there effectively without a base, and I am sure that your magnificent navy will have no trouble in patrolling the Mex ican Gulf Coast, on which g. base might exist, while the entrance of Cub into the war on the side of the Allies deprives the Germans of the best place they might have secured for such bases.
 'T have already warned your Navy Department that submarine mine lay CTS may visit your coast, dump their cargo and return. But the damage they do will not prove extensive, as each boat carries only about thirty mines. These mine layers have dropped their mines everywhere about our coast, and if I had the ex- act figures at hand of the number we have swept up and destroyed you would be astonished.
 "It cannot be denied that naval strategy has undergone a vast change as the result of the illegal use by Germany of submarines. Of course it is also undeniable that their use legitimely has changed naval war fare. But the legitimate change is not so great nor so difficult to cope with as the illegal use of submarines. Their advent as a fighting weapon has made coast blockade of an ene- my's coast impossible and has added to the difficulties we face on account of the natural features of the German coast line either attack or defense.
 Against navy Germany the Brit ish Isles are tipped the wrong way. One of the disadvantages under which we suffered during the early part of the war was that we had no harbor in the North Sea big enough to hold the growing grand fleet where it could be within easy striking dis tance of the enemy. One of the most striking results of the legitimate use of submarines has been to compel heavy ships, in order to obtain pro- lection from their attacks, to be ac- companied by destroyers when they put to sea, and this fact reduces the radius of action of fleet on account of the limited fuel capacity of the l