Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-03-25

AYO aspect of the war, during it's prog
EN ress, was so shrouded in secrecy as
a that pertaining to U-boats, their mum.
Der, their scope of operation, their fortunes
and their fates The British Admiralty dis
covered much but for good reasons kept
reticent The German Admiralty knew much'
but likewise divulged little, even to us own
public Occasionally there would break
through the veil some such romantic cpl
sode as the voyage of the U-23 which IN the
spring of 1915 sped from Wilhelmshaven to
the DardanelIes, where it sank the battle
ships Majestic and Triumph; or some such
dark crime as the assault on the peaceable
Lusitania; or some such marvel of nautl-
cal proves as that of the cargo-carrylng
submarine which swan the Atlantic depths
and bobbed suddenly up in an American har-
Dor with it's precious dyes and chemicals.
But apart from these striking incidents, the
world was left largely to conjecture how
many U-boats were being built and sunk
what their dimensions were and their de-
signs, whether they were making serious
Roadway or were being subdued
Much light on these questions is shed from
a recent report of the German Admiralty
to the Berlin commission charged with in
vestigating responsibilities. Pleclng
this information to that previously acquired
by the British naval authorities, the Amer1-
can Review of Reviews presents in its cur
.
latest disclosures. These controvert the
idea that at the beginning of the war Ger
many had a swarming fleet of U-boats in
readiness In fact she had but twenty ght,
and in those her sea lords placed no great
faith Admiral Won Tirpitz, it seems, had
repeatedly expressed his skepticism as to
the value of submarines" and most of his
associates "still hesitated to spend large
sums of money on an untried weapon" The
largest of the 1914 U-boats was of six hum
dred and seVenty-five tons, and none of them
mounted guns. ''It was not until the third
year of the that the thousand-ton mark
was reached" The Engineer, a London
publication, from which the last quoted re-
mark is taken, adds that in 1917 was
launched the gigantic U-139, having a tom
mage of 1890, mounting a pair of SO inch
guns and carrying complement of eighty
three. Further, During the final year of
the war the output of submarines COM
pr.sed a variety of types, and month or
two before the armistice a new and huge
program of submarine construction had
been drawn up by Admiral Scheer. No fewer
than four hundred and thirty submarines
were being built or were on order at the
date of the armistice.''
It was thus by degrees that Germany
came to stake large hopes on a sea wea-
pom which she first took up as dubious
experiment. From a total Of thirty-one sub
mersibles completed in 1914, she advanced
to sixty-two in 1915, ninety-five in 1916,
and to one hundred and three in 1917. In
the ten crucial months of the following
year, she turned out eight-one; but, as the
records show, many times that number were
then under construction had been or
dered. Evidently, it was the intention of the
German Admiralty to press ruthlessly or
with its Uboat, campaign, despite the heavy
losses from Allied guns and bombs and nets