The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-04-19

navy of imperial Germany has no prece- dent in military history-unless it be found in the collapse of Russia. But Russia's vast horde, when the crash came, was an undisciplined mob com pared with the organized. highly trained, superbly- naval forces of Wilhelm Hohenzollern. Ger man naval personnel was of high type. This was especially true of the men selected for U-boat service. Only some extraordinary pressure, some psycho logically shattering phenomenon, could be sufficient to produce panic in the souls of such sailors.
 What had happened?
 U-BOATS NEVER RETURN
 For weeks U-boats had been putting out to sea from their nesting places on the German coast, and vanishing as ut terly as the bubble which bursts while the child watches it. No trace was left of them. no record of what fate befell them. The German admiralty knew only that no wireless reports came from them, that they never returned to their base. Their comrades in the dangerous game of undersea assassination missed them, and there spread through the ranks of the men who went down into the deeps to wait for their prey the fear of 2 secret terror, mysterious Nemesis, which tortured mind and nerve and shook the morale of the strongest. Now and again there limped back to port U-boat which had suffered dam age from contact with this concealed peril, but which had escaped complete destruction. These survivors told a story which only intensified the dread. They spoke of colliding with mines. hidden below the surface of the sea, implements of destruction, whose pres- ence could not be guessed The U-boat ran into them as 8 man might run into a low-stretched wire stretched across his path on dark night. By putting together the evidence of those who came back, and the unuttered testimony of those who had become forever silent, the German admiralty understood More to the point is the fact that sailors on the U-boats understood, and when they understood they refused to go to sea and the spirit of their refusal spread 10 their comrades in other branches of the German naval service. The whole
  gan to disintegrate!
 MINE BARRAGE OF 23O MILES
 Across the North sea, from Norway almost to the Orkneys, there had been stretched mine barrage 230 miles in length. It was the biggest and most successful innovation in naval warfare the world had seen up to that hour. It consisted of more than 10000 mines. It was into this barrage the U-boats were xyv.rr h get around the north of the British isles into the open sea.
 1t was new factor in the war, a sur prise for Won Tirpitx. A Moloeh of the sea, with big jaws, powerful enough to devour the biggest submarine, had be- come the unseen and unknowable ter TOT, and the U-boat menace dwindled and disappeared before it.
 But the fact that makes me proud as an American, proud to have been Secre- tary of the Navy, and proud beyond words of the fleet and the men under my direction, is the fact that the lay ing of this unparalleled barrage, this extraordinary death-trap for the most dangerous foe which has ever assailed civilization. was a plan wholly of Amer jean conception, and, in greatest part, of American execution.
 DESTROYER A HOLY TERROR
 
 with destroyers--so had the British And so had the French. The destroyer was . holy terror to the submarine, but the submarine was quite as hard a problem for the destroyer, And the : submarine had an advantage which makes it the most difficult foe on the seas--its facility for vanishing from sight by submergence. To escape the attack of U-boat destroyer had to rely upon skill in navigation. zigzaE- sing and sped.sand no ships which ever sailed the seas gave qiute so good an account of themselves. not only on the score of capable direction. but also be- cause of the pluck and daring of their crews.
 The men who made the charge of the Light brigade and the men who held the pass at Thermopyiae were brothers in courage to the men on the destroyers and other naval craft which hunted and oatdistaneed the elusive subma- ines.
 But the trouble was that to patrol Effectively the transatlantic trade routes, according to Admiral Sims, would have taken about 25.000 de- sroyers." In spite of speeding up pro- Suction to the limit of human capacity, when the war ended the British and