It is probable that a good deal of the information contained in this book will be new to the public; for it has been collected under favour of exceptional circumstances. But the reader will gain little if he cannot contribute something on his side—if he cannot share with the writer certain fundamental beliefs. The first of these is that every nation has a spirit of its own—a spirit which is the mainspring of national action. It is more than a mechanical spring; for it not only supplies a motive

Many are the fables which the Germans have done their best to pass off for truth among the spectators of the present War; but not one is more wilfully and demonstrably false, than their account of the origin of the submarine. According to the story which they have endeavoured to spread among the unthinking public in neutral countries, the under-sea boat—the arm with which they claim to have revolutionised naval warfare—is the product of German ingenuity and skill. The French, they say, had merel

The feelings of the average landsman, when he sets foot for the first time in a submarine, are a strong mixture of curiosity and apprehension. The curiosity is uppermost—the experience before you is much more novel than, for example, that of a first trip in an aeroplane. From a mountain or tower, a great wheel or a balloon, you have seen the bird’s-eye view of the earth and felt the sensation of hanging over the aerial abyss. But even the fascinating pages of Jules Verne have not told you all th

Our submarine now returns to the surface. She is proceeding on patrol, and her commander, as he bids us good-bye, recommends us to put into the port from which he has just come, and see what a submarine base is like. We take his advice, and return to our trawler. Her head is turned westward and signals are made and answered. The skipper informs us that we are about to pass through a mine-field where the mines are as thick as herring-roe. It is some consolation to hear that ‘The Sweep’ has alread

‘Strategy,’ says the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ ‘has been curtly described as the art of concentrating an effective fighting force at a given place at a given time, and tactics as the art of using it when there.’ In less scientific language, you fight a battle by means of tactics, and a campaign by means of strategy. But when nations live, as we have all been living for many years past, in constant preparation for war, there must be forethought as to the means and methods to be employed. Each na

The use of the submarine for attacking war-ships is, of course, perfectly legitimate, and the powers and possibilities of this weapon were much discussed before the War. Some writers of note believed that the day of the big battleship was practically over—that such vessels could be ‘pulled down’ with certainty by any enterprising submarine commander, without any corresponding risk to his own boat. Others, with cooler or more scientific heads, maintained that there is an answer to every weapon, a

The story of the contest between our war-ships and their new enemy, the submarine, is the story of a most remarkable and successful adaptation. Of the six principal methods of defence used by our Navy at the end of the fourth year of war, three are old and three new; and it is a striking proof of the scientific ability of the Service, that the three old methods have been carefully reconsidered, and that, instead of abandoning them because, in their original use, they were apparently obsolete, ou

The story of our submarine campaign in the Baltic is the first of two romances of the sea—one Northern and one Southern—the like of which is not to be found in the annals of the last 300 years. War must often make us familiar with obscure or long-forgotten places, the scenes of old voyages, and battles long ago; but to adventure with our submarines into the Baltic, or the Sea of Marmora, is to slip through unimagined dangers into a legendary world beyond all history—sailing the seas of the past,

Our submarine campaign in the Sea of Marmora must also have a separate chapter to itself, not only because it is now a closed episode in the history of the War, but because it was conducted under quite unique conditions. The scene of operations was not merely distant from the submarine base, it was divided from it by an approach of unusual danger and difficulty. The channel of the Dardanelles is narrow and winding, with a strong tide perpetually racing down it, and setting strongly into the seve

Nothing in the history of the past four years has more clearly brought out the difference between the civilised and the savage view of war, than the record of the German U-boat campaign. All civilised men are agreed, and have for centuries been agreed, about war. In their view war may be unavoidable, in so far as all order and security are ultimately dependent on force; but it is a lamentable necessity, and when unnecessary—that is, when undertaken for any object whatever except defence against

Our Destroyer Service is perhaps as efficient, and as dashing, as anything ever seen in the way of organised human activity. It is long established, and its very perfection seems almost to stand in the way of our wonder at its achievement. The performance of our trawlers and drifters, on the other hand, is the more astonishing because it was an afterthought, the work of a service called into being—suddenly created, as it were, out of nothing—to meet the need of a grave moment which no imaginatio

The war record of our destroyers is unsurpassed. We know that to the Grand Fleet we owe, as to a vast and solid foundation, the unshaken fabric of our sea power, and that in the day of battle it has always proved itself incomparable. But we hardly, perhaps, realised that in our destroyer force we have a second Grand Fleet, equal to the other in spirit and seamanship, greater in numbers, and counting its days of battle not by twos or by twenties, but by the thousand. The work of the destroyers ha

The trawler is a fishing-boat by birth, and a mine-sweeper by necessity; the destroyer is first of all a fighting ship, and a protector of the weak. They will both kill a submarine when it comes their way; but we have ships—classes of ships—whose whole profession and occupation it is to hunt the pirate. Their methods differ as the methods of two kinds of hound. The Q-boat hunts slowly and craftily, the P-boat and the Yacht Patrol by speed, the ram, and the dreaded depth-charge. It is unnecessary

Everyone who has ever thought about war must know that secrecy is one of the first conditions of military success, whether on land or sea. Yet the secrecy practised by our Government and our Higher Command has often been the subject of complaint. The complaint is not the cry of mere sensationalism or curiosity, deprived of its ration of news. Often it is the most patriotic and intelligent who are the most distressed at being kept in the dark. They understand the dangers of a great war, and they

Since submarines must be hunted, there is something specially attractive in the idea of setting other submarines to hunt them; it seems peculiarly just that while the pirate is lying in wait under water for his victim, he should himself be ambushed by an avenger hiding under the same waters and possessed of the same deadly weapons of offence. But this method, satisfactory as it is to the imagination, is involved in several practical difficulties. If we put ourselves in the position of a submarin

The hunter knows little, and cares little, about the feelings of the hunted; and if he is hunting for food, or to exterminate vermin, his indifference is not unreasonable. The submarine may be classed with savage beasts, and is even less deserving of pity; but it is not actually an animal, and the difference is important. It is controlled by beings with human intelligence, speech, nerves and faculties; and since they are our enemies, seeking our destruction while we seek theirs, it must be of in

We have long been regretting that the work and the fame of our Submarine Service are for the most part hushed to a kind of undertone. We cannot speak of them as we wish, lest the enemy should overhear and profit by information which he is unable to get for himself. But there are victories that cannot be concealed—blows which must and will reverberate, now and for ages to come. The work of the Navy at Ostend and Zeebrugge may openly be spoken of as it deserves. And this is fortunate; for nations,