The Germans fired every torpedo they could bring to bear; and nothing but Jellicoe's supreme skill, backed by the skill of all his captains, saved his battleships from losing at least a third of their number. Observers aloft watched the enemy manoeuvring to fire and then reported to Jellicoe, who, keeping in line as long as possible for the sake of the guns, turned the fleet end-on, away from Scheer, just in time to prevent the torpedoes catching it broadside on, and then left each captain free to work his own ship till that shoal of torpedoes had passed. The torpedoes arrived at about thirty miles an hour, shoals of them together, and showing no sign but the little line of bubbles from their screws. But most of them were spotted and not one got home. The Revenge worked her perilous way between a couple, one just missing her rudder and the other almost grazing her bows.

During the whole of this fourth round the fight went on by fits and starts. Whenever any part of the enemy's line showed up through the thickening mist the British guns turned on it with shattering salvoes. The Iron Duke, whose gunnery was simply perfect, caught a big German battleship for a few minutes only. But by the time the mist had shut down again the German was like a furnace, seething with a mass of flame. Meanwhile the battle cruisers were crumpling up their opposite numbers in the German line, which thus became shorter and more overlapped than ever. The Lion and Princess Royal each set their opponent on fire, while the New Zealand and Indomitable drove another clean out of line, heeling over, and burning furiously fore and aft. (The Indomitable was King George's Flagship at the Quebec Tercentenary in 1908, and the New Zealand was Jellicoe's flagship on his tour of advice round the oversea Empire in 1919.)

At 8.20, somewhere behind the mist which then veiled the German line, there was a volcanic roar that shook every keel for miles around. Scheer was losing heavily, running for his life, and doing his best to hold Jellicoe back by desperate light craft attacks with hundreds of torpedoes. But Jellicoe countered this with his own light craft, which sank four enemy destroyers before the night closed in.

Fifth and Last round: The Germans in Full Flight: 9.00 P.M. 31st of May, to 4 P.M. 1st of June, 1916.

Jellicoe now had another hard question to answer, a question, indeed, to which there could not be a perfect answer. The Germans were broken and flying. But they still had many light craft with hundreds of torpedoes; they were not far from home and near a swarm of their best submarines; and their whole coast was full of mines for many miles off shore, while the shore itself and the string of off-shore islands were defended by a regular chain of gigantic forts armed with enormous guns. Following them home was therefore out of the question altogether; for you can sink a fleet, while you can't sink a coast. But even trying to run them down at night was out of the question too; for their strongest point was night fighting, which is much fuller of risks and chances than day battles are. Besides, there was the chance of missing them and losing the best position between them and their base. So Jellicoe and Beatty separated again and steamed, parallel to each other, south-south-east to within a hundred miles of the German coast. They could not possibly cover more than a quarter of the whole way into the Danish and German coasts; and so most of the Germans managed to slip in behind them, round by the north.

The night fighting was done by the light craft; and it was here that Jellicoe had so much need of Tyrwhitt's flotillas from Harwich. Harwich was very handy to the battlefield and Tyrwhitt's light craft were as keen and ready as any one could be. But the Government were afraid to let them go, for fear lest some Germans might raid the English coast. There was very little chance of a raid at all. It could not have been a bad one in any case. No mere raid can change the course of a war. The best way to stop raids is to win the war by destroying the enemy's means of destroying you. The best way to do this is to smash his main force wherever it happens to be. And the best way to smash it is to throw all your own forces against it once you get a hold on it. But people who are scared in one place will not think about the war as a whole, though that is the way to save these very people as well as all the rest. So they ask for some defence they can actually see. It was much the same as in the days of the Spanish Armada. Drake and Jellicoe wanted to do the right thing. But Queen Elizabeth's Council and King George's Government wanted to humour the people concerned. The only comfort is that, with all our faults, we of the British Empire make fewer naval mistakes than other people do.

The light craft that did reach that famous battlefield could not have done more to guard the British battle lines and harass the flying Germans. There was many a weird sight as scurrying cruisers and destroyers suddenly showed up, ominously black, against the ghastly whiteness of the searchlit sea. Hunters and hunted raced, turned, and twisted without a moment's pause. "We couldn't tell what was happening," said the commander of a dashing destroyer. "Every now and then out of the silence would come Bang! bang!! boom!!! as hard as it could for ten minutes on end. The flash of the guns lit up the whole sky for miles and miles, and the noise was far more penetrating than by day. Then you would see a great burst of flame from some poor devil, as the searchlights switched on and off, and then perfect silence once more."

Next Day. Dawn comes early on the 1st of June at 55 degrees North. But the mist veiled everything more than three or four miles off. At 3.30 A.M. a huge Zeppelin flew across the British battle line, wirelessing down to any Germans still to the westward the best way to get home. By nine the light craft had all come in after scouring the sea for Germans. At a quarter past one it was plain that not a German ship remained to challenge the Grand Fleet. So Jellicoe made for his base; took in fuel, stores, and ammunition; and at half-past nine next evening was ready for another battle.

The News. Very different was the plight of the flying Germans, who lost more ships than the British (eighteen, and perhaps six more, to fourteen British) and who left the field for good and all. But Germany sorely needed a victory just then. So the Kaiser proclaimed one, and all the German papers echoed his words. The German lie got two days start of the British truth, and was eagerly repeated by every one who hated the British or Allies. On the other hand, the British Government simply said that there had been a battle and that fourteen British ships were down. They shrank from proclaiming the victory, because they thought that most people, knowing nothing of modern naval war and making no allowance for the weather and other German advantages, would not believe in a victory which let any of the German ships escape. And so the lie went round the world much faster than the truth. Yet it was only believed by those who wanted to believe it. Even some Italian mountaineers who had never seen a ship said, "That's a lie," when Italian traitors told them the Grand Fleet had been sunk.

After waiting a month to examine the whole case thoroughly the Board of Admiralty, which has always been most sparing in its praise, wrote Jellicoe an official letter, saying that "the Grand Fleet has known both how to study the new problems and how to turn the knowledge to account. The expectations of the country were high. They have been well fulfilled. My Lords (the Members of the Board) desire to convey to you their full approval of your proceedings in this action."

What Jellicoe himself thought of those who fought so well under his inspiring leadership cannot be said better than in his own words. "The conduct of officers and men throughout the day and night actions was entirely beyond praise. No words of mine could do them justice. On all sides it is reported to me that the glorious traditions of the past were worthily upheld. Officers and men were cool and determined, with a cheeriness that would have carried them through anything. The heroism of the wounded was the admiration of all. I cannot express the pride with which the spirit of the Grand Fleet filled me."

Results. Jutland taught the German Navy what every one should have known before: that whenever tyrants have tried to lord it over all the world they have always had to reckon with the British Navy first, and that this Navy has never failed to lay them low. More things were wrought by Jutland than the British Empire thinks, and more, far more, than other people, for lack of knowledge, can imagine. There was a regular, unbreakable chain of cause and effect, and Jutland was the central link.

To conquer their bully's "place in the sun" of the white man's empire overseas the Germans built their Navy. But the Grand Fleet blockaded it so well that the Germans clamoured for a fight to wipe the British off the sea and to let the German merchant ships get out. Jutland settled that. From Jutland on to the end of the war the German bluejackets could never again be led against the British on the surface of the sea. So the murderous German submarine campaign was tried instead. This forced even the American Peace Party to change their minds and save their country's honour by joining the War Party in armed defence both of American rights and of the freedom of the world.

After another two years the Germans failed under water as they had upon the surface; and when, in wild despair, the Kaiser ordered the whole of his High Sea Fleet to try another fight, the final mutiny began. This broke out at 5 A.M. on the 3rd of November, 1918, eight days before the Armistice. It was not the German Army, nor yet the German people, that began the Revolution, but the German Fleet, which knew that a second Jutland could only mean the death of every German there. In its own turn the Revolution brought on the great surrender, a thing unheard-of in the story of the sea.

Thus, like the immortal Battle of the Marne on land, Jutland was not only itself a mighty feat of arms but one on which the whole war turned.



CHAPTER XXVI

SUBMARINING

(1917-1918)

Jutland proved to all hands in the German Navy that they had no chance whatever against Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. But the great mass of the German people never heard this truth; and even their navy hoped to win under the water a victory it had found impossible on top. So, for the last two years of the war, the Germans worked their hardest at what they called the "Submarine Blockade." As this "Blockade" forced the United States into war, and as its failure showed the Germans that, in the end, they had no more chance under water than on top, we can all see now that Jutland turned the scale.

The British fleets blockading Germany of course seized and kept for the Government, as spoils of war, whatever warlike stores (guns, shells, and so on) they could lay their hands on. But all the other goods the Navy stopped the Government bought, paying fair market prices. So the American and other neutrals trying to trade with the enemy had really nothing to complain of; for a blockade at sea is very like a siege on land, and nobody has ever pretended that a besieging army has not a perfect right to stop any supplies of any kind from reaching the besieged. Moreover, the crews of the ships trying to break the British blockade were always very kindly treated, though their ships were trying to help the enemy and make fortunes for their owners at the expense of freedom.

But when we turn to the German "Submarine Blockade" of the British Isles we find something quite different; for the German submarines sank every ship they could, and they generally were as utterly careless about the lives of the crews as they were about the cargo, no matter what the cargo was. In short, Germany tried everything, no matter how wrong, that could possibly hurt the hated British. She did let some neutral ships go by without attacking them. But that was only because she did not want to turn all the neutrals into enemies; and nothing proves better what a fiendish crime her "Submarine Blockade" really was than the fact that it forced even the Peace Party in the United States to change its mind about the war.

For thirty-two months this Peace Party kept the United States out of a war waged by Germany against the freedom of the world. There were a good many reasons why. Most Americans knew next to nothing about the affairs of Europe; and Germans had long been busy poisoning their minds against the French and British. Then, Washington and other Presidents had often advised them not to meddle with anything outside of America; and President Wilson had even said there was such a thing as being "too proud to fight."

Of course the Pacifists were against all war, even when their refusing to fight on the side of right forced them to help the side of wrong. They had plenty of money, some of it German, and they made almost as much trouble as the Germans and pro-Germans themselves. Then, the Germans, pro-Germans, and Pacifists raised the bogey of trouble for the United States at home, while there did not seem to be much danger of getting hurt from abroad. Finally, business was booming as it had never boomed before. The Americans made twelve-and-a-half thousands of millions of dollars out of the war, clear net profit up to the end of 1918.

The War Party said the whole war was about a question of right and wrong, and that the French and British were right, while the Germans were wrong. They said that Americans were safe because the British Navy barred the way, that all the British oversea Dominions had fought from the first, though not obliged to send a ship, a dollar, or a man except of their own free will. They said that every American patriot should be very proud to fight for the freedom of the world and very much ashamed to let the French and British uphold the cause of right alone. They said that the German submarines had already murdered many Americans, that many other Americans, ashamed to see their country hanging back, were already enlisting in Canada, England, and France, and that although business was certainly booming, beyond the wildest dreams of the keenest money-makers before the war, yet this vast wealth was too much like blood-money, since the French and British were suffering immense losses in lives and money and in everything but honour, while the Americans, losing nothing in lives, were making vast hoards of money out of a cause that really was their own—the cause of right and freedom.

Slowly but surely the War Party gained, as more and more members of the Peace Party began to see the truth. But still, after twenty-seven months, the most popular cry among those who voted President Wilson in for a second term was "he kept us out of war." Three months later the German "Submarine Blockade" began (February 1917). Then, two months later still, most of the Peace Party, seeing that their own ships would be sunk just as readily as French or British ships, gave their vote for war.

It was a glorious moment in world-history when British, French, and Americans at last stood side by side. The American Navy led the way, joining the hunt for German submarines with a keenness whetted by having been held back so long. The Army followed, bit by bit, until two million men had gone to Europe, thanks chiefly to the British ships that took them there. The Nation backed both Army and Navy with vast sums of money, which it could so easily afford, and with patriotic work of every splendid kind.

But the war lasted only nineteen months longer; and in that time the Americans were not able to do anything like what the Allies had done before and still were doing. The entire American loss in men (killed, wounded, and prisoners) was over one-quarter million. But Canada's loss of over two hundred thousand was ten times as great in proportion; for there are twelve-and-a-half times as many people in the United States as there are in Canada. In the same way the losses of France and Great Britain were each more than twenty times greater than that of the United States. In ships and money the difference is far more striking still. The British alone lost one-and-a-half times as many ships as all the rest of the world put together. But the Americans have actually gained, owing to the number of interned German vessels they seized in their ports. As for money: the British, the French, and all the Allies have spent so much in fighting for the freedom of the world that neither they nor their children, nor their children's children, can ever pay the vast debt off; while the United States have made, on their own showing, the twelve-and-a-half "billions" mentioned already.

These few facts (there are hundreds more) will show you a little of what the Great War means to the world, what the British Navy meant to the war, and what Jutland meant to both the war and the world, by sweeping the German Navy off the surface of the sea, and so bringing on the "Submarine Blockade" that itself forced the American Government to fight in self-defence.



The Germans, wishing to kill off their victims one at a time, were ready for the French and Russian Navies, but not for the British. They had less than forty sea-going submarines when the war began. But nearly four hundred took part, or were ready to take part, before the war was over, while many more were building.

We have already noted the weak points of submarines. They are "tender" because they must be thin. An old collier that couldn't steam faster than you could walk sank a submarine by barging into it, end-on—one can hardly call it ramming. Submarines are slower on the surface than dreadnoughts, cruisers, and destroyers; and, after doing a total of ten or twelve hours under water, they have to recharge their batteries; for they run by oil engines on the surface and by electricity submerged, and the crew would be smothered if the oil engines tried to charge batteries without coming up.

Then, firing torpedoes is not at all like firing big guns. At a range of five miles a shell will still be making 2000 feet a second or 1400 miles an hour. At the same range a torpedo like those used at Jutland would be making only 50 feet a second or 35 miles an hour. Thus shells whizz through the air forty times faster than torpedoes sneak through the water. A torpedo, in fact, is itself very like a submarine, more or less cigar-shaped, and with its own engine, screw, and rudder. Hitting with a torpedo really means arranging a collision between it and the ship you are aiming at. When you and the ship and your torpedo and the water are all moving in different ways you can see that hitting is not so easy. The shorter the range the better. But you cannot see at all unless your periscope, with its little mirror, is high and dry out of the water; and periscopes are soon spotted by a sharp look-out at very short range. The best torpedoes are over twenty feet long and as many inches through, and they will go ten miles. But the longer the range the slower the pace and the less the chance of hitting. The engine is driven by air, which is compressed so hard into the middle of the torpedo that it actually bulges out the steel a tiny fraction of an inch. You may set the air-valve fast or slow, and the torpedo will go accordingly. But if you want to make pretty sure you must get within less than a mile, with the ship's broadside toward you, set the torpedo for the right depth, the right pace to keep it going as fast as possible just long enough to hit, and of course the right aim. Then, if all goes well, the cap, or "war head" of the torpedo, on hitting the ship, will set off the fuse that sets off the tremendous charge of high explosive; and this may knock a hole in the side big enough to drive a street car through. But there are many more misses than hits.

Yet the German and Austrian raiders, mines, and submarines sank fifteen million tons of shipping, which is not far short of a third of all the merchant tonnage in the world; and the submarines sank more than the mines and raiders sank together. (Ships are measured by finding out how many cubic feet of space they contain and counting so many feet to the ton. Thus you get a much better idea of how much shipping a country has by counting in tons rather than by the number of ships; for twenty-five ships of one thousand tons each have only half as much sea-power as one ship of fifty thousand tons.) The British loss was nine millions, half as much again as was lost by all the rest of the world put together. Raiders like the cruiser Emden, or the armed and disguised merchant vessel Moewe, did a great deal of harm at the beginning of the war, as we have seen already. Mines did even more harm, and did it all through. But submarines did most.

Our title "Submarining" means any kind of underwater attack, by mines as well as by torpedoes, so we must take a glance at the mines before coming to the submarines.

Most mines are somewhat like big buoys with little horns all over the top. Each horn ends in a cap which, when hit, sets off the charge. Mines coupled together by a steel rope are more dangerous than two separate mines would be, as they are bound to be drawn in against any ship that strikes any part of the rope. The only safeguard a ship could carry was a paravane. A paravane is made up of a strong steel hawser (rope) that serves as a fender, and of two razor-edged blades that serve to cut the mine-moorings free. It is altogether under water and is shaped like a V, with the point jutting out on the end of steel struts ahead of the bows, the two strokes running clear of the sides, and their ends well winged out astern, where the two sharp blades stand straight up, one from each end. The lines by which mines are anchored were thus guided clear of the ship till they reached the blades, where they were cut. The mines then rose to the surface, where they could be set off at a safe distance. Dragging a paravane through the water made the ship go slow. But that was better than being blown up.

Minefields cannot, of course, be crossed at all. You might as well try to walk over armies of porcupines in your bare feet. Some minefields were very big. One British field ran from the Orkneys right across to Norway, to stop the German submarines from getting out round the north of Scotland. The American Navy did magnificent work at this field, the greater part of which was laid by American, not by British, vessels at the latter end of 1917 and earlier part of 1918. Other minefields blocked the Channel. But here the Germans once played a very clever trick which might have cost the British dear. A British minefield had been laid, some fifty feet deep, to catch submarines without being in the way of vessels on the surface. Two days after it had been secretly laid at night the Nubian, a British destroyer, had her bows blown off on the very same spot. The German submarine mine-layers had crept in by night and laid a shallow German minefield, exactly over the deep British minefield, to catch those who were trying to catch them. That, however, is not the end of the story. Just after the Nubian had been towed into Portsmouth with her bows blown off, the Zulu, a destroyer of the same class, was towed in with her stern blown off. So perfectly were both these vessels built that, when they had each been cut in half, the good halves made an absolutely perfect new destroyer, which, under her compound name of Zubian, did excellent work against the Germans during the famous fights at Zeebrugge and Ostend.

A mine laid by a German submarine blew up the cruiser Hampshire that was taking Kitchener to Russia by way of the Orkneys on the 5th of June, 1916. Kitchener was drowned and only twelve men, who floated in on a raft, were saved. Submarines lurking about at night would sometimes put mines right in the track of vessels. And sometimes swift mine-laying ships on the surface would do even more deadly harm, rolling a hundred mines off a little railway on deck. At other times mines would be loosed from the shore or from ships at anchor, so as to float in among vessels with the tide or down the current of a stream. One of these was tried against the British in West Africa by a German missionary. Others were sent against the French and British vessels in the Dardanelles, sometimes blowing them up.

But the enemy never had it all his own way. British submarines did wonderful work in spite of the mines. Commander Holbrook won the V.C. by feeling his perilous way through five lines of Turkish mines, though the currents were very tricky, and more than once the side of his "sub" actually touched the steel ropes holding the mines to their anchors. When he reached Constantinople he torpedoed and sank the Turkish battleship that was supposed to be guarding these very mines! Then he dived back through the five rows of mines and rejoined the fleet without a scratch.

Another British submarine stole into the Sea of Marmora with a couple of land mines to blow up the railway near Constantinople. Lieutenant D'Oyley-Hughes then swam ashore, pushing a little raft to which the mines were lashed. He was quite alone, but armed with a bayonet ground like a razor and an automatic seven-shooter. He also carried a flash-light and whistle. He shouldered first one mine and then the other, each the weight of a big man, took them up the hill, and put them under a little brickwork bridge within a hundred and fifty yards of the Turkish sentries, who were talking round their fire. Though he muffled the fuse pistol it was heard by the Turks, who came running toward him, firing as hard as they could. He let them have his first clip of seven shots slap in the face and then raced a mile along the line, doubled back a bit down the cliff, and swam off toward the submarine. His whistle was not heard at first, as the submarine was in the next bay; and he had to swim a mile before he came across her backing out under fire from the Turks. But he slipped into her conning tower safely, and no one on the British side was hurt.

So great is the danger from mines, unless they are watched and tackled the whole time, that thousands of mine-sweeping vessels were always at work, manned by British fishermen who had been handling gigantic nets and mile-long steel hawsers (ropes) ever since they had gone afloat as boys. These North Sea fishermen, in whom the Viking blood runs strong, had always put in eleven months sea time every year of their lives. So storm and fog and clammy numbing cold had no terrors for them as they worked their "sweepers" to and fro, fishing for the deadly mines. Sometimes, for all their skill and care, a mine would foul their tackle and blow them to pieces. But usually they could "gentle" a mine to the surface and set it off by rifle shots at a safe distance. Sometimes, however, a hitch would happen and the mine would come close alongside. Once a mine actually came aboard, caught fast in the tackle. The skipper (captain) ordered all hands into the boats, and then himself cut it clear after a whole hour's work, during which one false touch or even the slightest jolt would have blown his ship to smithereens. The wonder of it is that more men were not killed in keeping the seaways so carefully swept, night and day, all the year round, for tens of thousands of miles, during the fifty-one months of the war.



Still more dangerous was the fishing for those vilest of devil-fish, the German submarines. The fishermen "shot" enormous steel nets just as you shoot a fishing net, letting them hang a bit slack so as to be the more entangling. Then, just as you feel your rod quiver when a fish takes your fly, so these anglers for Germans would feel the quiver from a nosing submarine caught in the toils. Very few submarines ever escaped; for the slack of the waving net was apt to foul the screw, and there they were held till the last struggle ceased and the last man was smothered inside.

The fishermen would sometimes have rescued their ruthless enemies if they could have disentangled them in time. But this could rarely be done; and the Germans met a just fate. One day a submarine came up alongside a British trawler which was engaged in its regular fishing, was quite unarmed, and had a crew of old men and young boys. The Germans took all the fresh fish they wanted, sank the trawler, smashed up her boats, and put the fishermen on the submarine's deck. Then they slammed-to the hatch of the conning tower and sank very slowly, washing the fishermen off. Then they rose again to laugh at them drowning. An avenging destroyer came racing along and picked up the sole survivor. But the German jokers, seeing it coming, had gone. No wonder the seafaring British sometimes "saw red" to such a degree that they would do anything to get in a blow! And sometimes they did get it in, when the Germans least thought it was coming. When a skipper suddenly found a German U-boat (Unterseeboot or under-sea-boat) rising beside him, just as his engine-room mechanic had come up with a hammer in his hand, he called out, "look sharp and blind her!" Without a moment's hesitation the mechanic jumped on her deck and smashed her periscope to pieces, thus leaving her the blinded prey of gathering destroyers.

The Germans put their wits to work with hellish cunning. They wanted to surround Great Britain with a sea of death so full of mines and submarines that no ship could live. The mines were not placed at random, but where they would either kill their victims best or make them try another way where the lurking submarines could kill them. The sea-roads into great ports like London and Liverpool converge, just as railway tracks converge toward some great central junction. So submarines lying in wait near these crowded waters had a great advantage in the earlier part of the war, when people still believed that the Germans would not sink unarmed merchantmen on purpose, especially when women and children were known to be on board.

On the 7th of May, 1915, the Lusitania, from New York for Liverpool, was rounding the south of Ireland, when the starboard (right-hand) look-out in the crow's nest (away up the mast) called to his mate on the port side, "Good God, Frank, here's a torpedo!" The next minute it struck and exploded, fifteen feet under water, with a noise like the slamming of a big heavy door. Another minute and a second torpedo struck and exploded. Meanwhile the crew had dashed to their danger posts and begun duties for which they had been carefully drilled, though very few people ever thought the Germans would torpedo a passenger steamer known to be full of women and children, carrying many Americans, and completely unarmed. The ship at once took a list to starboard (tilt to the right) so that the deck soon became as steep as a railway embankment. This made it impossible to lower boats on the up side, as they would have swung inboard, slithered across the steeply sloping deck, and upset. The captain, cool and ready as British captains always are, gave his orders from the up end of the bridge, while the other officers were helping the passengers into the boats. The sea soon came lapping over the down side of the deck, and people began slipping into it. The full boats shoved off; but not half of them on the down side were clear before the gigantic ship, with an appalling plunge, sank head first. It all happened so quickly that many had not been able to get on deck before this final plunge. They must have been crushed by the hurtling of all loose gear when the ship stood on her bows going down, then smothered and drowned, if not smashed dead at the first. The captain stood on the bridge to the last, went down with the ship, came up again among the wreckage, and was saved after hours in the water. He will never forget the long, piercing wail of despair from hundreds of victims as the gallant ship went down.

This made it clear to all but those who did not want to understand that Germany was going to defy the laws of the sea, at least as far as she could without changing President Wilson's Government into an enemy. So things went on, getting worse and worse, for another two years. The British, French, and Italians had never prepared for a war like this. They were ready to fight submarines that fought their own men-of-war, as well as those that tried to sink transports carrying soldiers and arms to the many different fronts. But who would have thought that even the Germans would sink every merchantman without the least care for the lives of the crew? The rest of the world thought the days of pirates and cut-throats were over among all civilized nations. But the Germans did not. So the Allies, the British especially, built more and more destroyers to fight the German submarines. The Germans, of course, built more and more submarines; and so the fight went on, growing ever fiercer.

It was up-hill work for the British to guard thousands of ships over millions of miles against the hidden foe, who sometimes struck without being seen at all. A ship is a small thing on millions of square miles. A slinking submarine is very much lower and harder to see on the surface. A periscope is far harder still. The ordinary periscope is simply a tube, a few inches in diameter, with a mirror in the upper end reflecting the outside view on the corresponding mirror at the lower end, where the captain watches his chance for a shot. No wonder the Germans got on well for so long. It was over two years before British merchantmen were armed. There was a shortage of guns; and the neutral American Government would not allow any armed merchantmen into their ports, though many and many a life was lost because a vessel was unarmed. But, bit by bit, the merchantmen were forced to arm or die like sheep before the German wolves; and once they had a gun they soon learnt how to use it.

One gun over the stern was all that most ships had. It was mounted astern because the best chance of escape was to turn away and go full speed, zig-zagging every which way as you went, firing at the chasing submarine; This made vessels harder for submarines to hit, not only on account of the zig-zags, but because the ship, going the same way as the torpedo, made fast and short shots harder to get; also because the backwash of the screw helped to put torpedoes off their course; and finally because the target was itself firing back at the submarine. Even so, however, it was often touch-and-go; and very few people ever enjoyed the fun of being fired at as much as that little Canadian girl of six, who, seeing a torpedo shimmering past the ship's side, called out, "Oh, Mummy, look at the pretty fish!" Once a fast torpedo was hit and exploded by a shell from the vessel its submarine was chasing. But this was a perfect fluke.

More to the point was the readiness of the merchantman Valeria and of Commander Stockwell's destroyer to turn happy accidents to the best account on the spur of the moment. The Valeria bumped over a rising submarine at three o 'clock one summer morning off the coast of Ireland. Instantly all hands ran to "action stations," when the gunner saw, to his delight, that the periscope had been broken off and so the submarine was blind. His first shot hit the hull. His second was a miss. But his third struck the base of the conning tower; on which the submarine sank, nothing but bubbles and oil remaining to mark the spot where she went down. Stockwell's adventure was rather different. He had marked a submarine slinking round in the early dawn, and, knowing the spot the Germans liked best outside of Liverpool, watched his chance over it. Suddenly he felt his destroyer being lifted up, tilted over, and slid aside. The "sub" had risen right under it! Swinging clear in a moment he let go a depth charge; and the sea-quake that followed had plenty of signs to show that the "sub" had gone down.

1917 was the great year of submarine war: the Germans straining every nerve to kill off all the ships that went to or from the Allied ports, the Allies trying their best to kill off all the submarines. The Mediterranean was bad, the North Atlantic was worse, the west coasts of the British Islands worst of all. The American Navy came in and did splendid service off the south coast of Ireland, in the Bay of Biscay, and along the North Atlantic seaways between French and British and American ports. More and more destroyers were put into service, aided by "chasers"—very much smaller vessels with only one gun and a few men, but so cheap and easily built that they could be turned out in swarms to help in worrying the submarines to death. The "scooters" and "Porte's babies," as we saw in Chapter XXIV, were, however, even better than these swarming "chasers."

The enormous steel nets were also used more than ever. You can fancy what they were like by thinking of a gigantic fishing-net many miles long, with armed steamers instead of floats. In the entrances to some harbours there were sea-gates made by swinging open a bit of the net by means of its steamers to let traffic go through, and then swinging it back again. The mine-fields were made bigger than ever; it was then that the vast one, mostly laid by the Americans, was begun from the Orkneys to Norway. Mines were also laid by British submarines and by daring fast surface mine-layers round Heligoland and other places off the German coast. In this way the waters in which submarines could work were made narrower and narrower and were better and better guarded.

But more and more submarines were launched, and they still sneaked out to sea along the Dutch and Norwegian coasts where the Navy could not stop them because they used to slink through "territorial waters," that is, within three miles of the coast, where the sea belonged to the nearest country, just the same as the land. The Navy, however, had lines of patrols always on the watch from the Orkneys to the Shetlands, on to Iceland, over to Norway, and north to the Arctic ice. The narrow waters of the English Channel were watched by the famous Dover Patrol under Sir Roger Keyes. From Folkestone to Cap Griz Nez in France there was an unbroken line of the strongest searchlights on vessels anchored to ride out the biggest gales. Seven miles west was another line. Between were hundreds of patrol boats always ready, night or day, to fire at anything on the surface or to drop depth charges on anything that dived. A depth charge is a sort of mine that can be set to go off at a certain depth, say thirty to sixty feet down, when it makes a sea-quake that knocks the submarine out of gear and sinks it, even if it does not actually hit it. Besides all these guards on the surface there were nets and mines underneath. That is why the British army in France never had its line of communication with England cut for one single day all through the war.

Now and then the Germans tried a destroyer raid from their ports on the Belgian coast, or even from their own coast; for they would sneak through Dutch waters within the three-mile limit as well as through the Danish or Norwegian. They played a game of tip-and-run, their gunners firing at any surface craft they saw (for they knew no Germans could be anywhere but underneath) and their captains streaking back home at the first sign of the British Navy. On the night of the 20th of April, 1917, they were racing back, after sinking some small craft, when an avenging flotilla of British destroyers began to overhaul them. Seeing that one of the Germans might escape in the dark, the Broke (named after Captain Broke of the Shannon in the War of 1812) turned and rammed her amidships. The Germans fought well, swarming aboard the Broke and fighting hand to hand, as in the days of boarding. But Midshipman Giles stood up to the first of them, who was soon killed by a bluejacket's cutlass; and then, after a tremendous tussle with swords and pistols and anything else that was handy, every German was either driven overboard or killed on the spot, except two that surrendered.

A year later (on St. George's Day) the Vindictive led the famous raid on Zeebrugge under Captain Carpenter, V.C. The idea was to destroy the principal German base in Belgium from which aircraft and submarines were always starting. For weeks beforehand the crews that had volunteered to go on this desperate adventure were carefully trained in secret. The plan was to block the mouth of the Bruges Canal, by sinking three vessels filled with concrete, while the Vindictive smashed up the batteries on the mole (long solid wharf) guarding the entrance, and an old submarine, loaded like a gigantic torpedo, blew up the supports for the bridge that connected the mole with the land. Twice the little expedition sailed and had to put back because the wind had shifted; for the smoke screen would not hide the block ships, unless the wind had just the proper slant. At last it started for the real thing; a great night of aircraft going ahead to bomb the defences and a squadron of monitors staying some miles astern to pour in shells at the same time. The crash of air bombs and the thudding of the distant monitors were quite familiar sounds to the German garrison, whose "archies" (anti-aircraft guns) barked hoarsely back, while the bigger guns roared at where they thought the monitors might be. (Monitors are slow, strong, heavy, and very "bargy" craft, useful only as platforms for big guns against land defences.)

Suddenly, to the Germans' wild astonishment, Zeebrugge harbour was full of a smoke screen, of concrete-loaded block-ships, and of darting motor boats; while the old cruiser Vindictive made straight for the mole. Instantly the monitors and aircraft were left alone, while every German gun that could be brought to bear was turned on to this new and far more dangerous enemy at hand. But the British won through. The three block-ships were sunk. The submarine used as a torpedo blew up the bridge joining the mole to the land; and the smoke screen worked fairly well. Still, the tornado of German shells was almost more than flesh and blood could stand. Meanwhile the old Vindictive ran alongside the mole and dropped her eighteen special gangways bang against it. In a moment her forlorn hope—her whole crew was one great forlorn hope—swarmed on to the mole, over the splintering gangways, while her guns roared defiance at the huge German batteries. The ground swell made the Vindictive roll and racked her breaking gangways terribly. The storm of German shells and the hail of machine-gun bullets seemed almost to be sweeping everything before them. An officer awaiting his turn on deck asked, "What are all those men lying down for?" and was answered, "All dead, Sir"; killed before they had started. Several gangways were smashed to pieces, the men on them falling between the Vindictive and the mole. The Germans on the mole fired furiously to keep the storming party back. But, with an eager courage no Viking could have beaten, and with a trained skill no Viking could have equalled, every seaman and Marine in that heroic party who was not killed or disabled pressed on till the flaming battery was silenced. Then the survivors swarmed back with all the wounded they could find, climbed over the few broken gangways still holding together, and turned to the work of getting clear. At last the Vindictive, though a mere mangled wreck, got off and limped home victorious with all that was left of the equally daring flotilla of small craft.

Zeebrugge was the bigger base on the Belgian coast. But Ostend remained; and both were connected by canals with Bruges, which stood several miles inland. The whole formed a triple base shaped like the letter V, with Bruges at the bottom, Zeebrugge (sea-Bruges) to the right, and Ostend to the left. To close only Zeebrugge was to leave the back door open. So Ostend was raided, and smashed later on, the old Vindictive, now past her fighting days, being sunk full of concrete. From all that remained of her still above water the hero-king, Albert, was cheered into Ostend after the Armistice by the Belgian Boy Scouts, as he steamed past with Sir Roger Keyes to land, with his heroine-queen, on the soil so long fouled by German pirates.

These raids spoilt German chances from the nearest ports to Britain. But they did not stop the submarine campaign; and there was still plenty of work for camouflage, convoys, and "Q" ships.

Camouflage at sea is a very different thing from camouflage on land. On land camouflage is meant to make one thing look like something else or to hide it altogether. But no kind of camouflage will hide a ship. Nor is there any point in making a boat look like anything else; for everybody knows that ships are the only things at sea. Camouflage afloat was therefore meant to confuse the submarine commander's aim by deceiving his eye as to his target's speed and course. By painting cunning arrangements of stripes and splashes of different colours a ship's course and speed could be so disguised that the torpedoist was puzzled in getting his sights on her and in working out the range and speed. If an old-fashioned sailor could have suddenly been dropped on to the deck of a transport in the midst of a convoy of camouflaged ships he would have thought all their helmsmen were drunk or stark, staring mad; for they would have seemed to be steering every which way at large and not one on any proper course at all.

When this was added to their other troubles the submarines thought twice before risking an attack on a convoy of ships guarded by cruisers, as well as by destroyers ahead and on both sides, zig-zagging about on the hunt for submarines, much as a good sporting dog quarters likely ground for game. A "mothering" cruiser would keep station astern, where she could have her weather eye on every one. In narrow waters like the English Channel there would also be an airship overhead, a little in advance, with seaplanes on the flanks. These aircraft could spot a submarine almost a hundred feet down in fair weather, just as seabirds spot fish. If a submarine did show up, it was kept in sight till the destroyers charged near enough to ram, shell, or torpedo it on the surface, or sea-quake it to death with a depth bomb if submerged. Three hundred and seven ships brought wheat from different parts of America to Britain, France, and Italy under special convoy in the summer of 1918, and only one was lost.

"Q" ships, those ships of mystery and such strange romance as former navies never dreamt of, were meant to lure the German devils to their doom. One Q ship was a dirty old collier so well disguised as a common tramp (steamer belonging to no regular line) that she completely took in a British cruiser, whose boarding officer was intensely surprised to find her skipper was one of his own former shipmates. After five months of thrashing to and fro in the wintry North Atlantic a torpedo sped across her bows and she knew her chance had come. Instantly her alarm signals, quietly given, brought all hands to action stations, some in deck-houses, others in hen-coops, but each with his finger on the trigger or his hand on a ready spare shell. Presently the submarine broke surface and fired a shot across the Q ship's bow. On this the well-trained crew ran about in panic, while the captain screeched at them and waved his arms about like mad. Then the submarine came up within three cables (ten to the nautical mile of 2000 yards); whereupon the captain blew his whistle, just as Drake did long ago, the Navy's White Ensign fluttered up to the masthead, the hen-coops and deck-houses fell flat, and a hurricane of shells and Maxim bullets knocked the "sub" out in three minutes' firing.

But, as the war went on, still better Q dodges had to be invented. One day an old Q tramp, loaded chock-a-block with light-weight lumber, quietly let herself be torpedoed, just giving the wheel a knowing touch to take the torpedo well abaft the engine-room, where it would do least harm. The "panic-party" then left the ship quite crewless so far as anybody outside of her could see. But the "sub" was taking no risks that day. She circled the Q, almost grazing her, but keeping fifteen feet under. The Q captain, only ten yards off, was sorely tempted to fire. But shells striking water play queer tricks. So he held his fire; though the quarterdeck was awash instead of nearly twenty feet clear, and the ship's lucky black cat, blown overboard by the explosion, swam straight on to it out of the sea. Then the sub came up, little more than a cable's length away; and the Q captain at last sent a wireless call for help in case he should sink too soon. When the conning tower rose clear the German commander opened the hatch and smiled at his work. He was still cautious; for his gun crew began to appear. But the Q caught him; knocking his head off with the very first shot, and riddling the whole sub in no time.

The same Q captain, Gordon Campbell, V.C., went out again in another Q ship which was also disguised as a tramp. When a submarine attacked her she zig-zagged away in wild alarm, firing only her one merchantman's gun, and slowing down so as to get overhauled. Knowing the sub would catch his message Campbell wirelessed "Help! Come quick! Submarine chasing and shelling." Presently the Q stopped, done up, and the "panic-party" left her to her fate. This fate really did seem, and might have been, certain; for she was on fire from the shelling and her after magazine blew up with terrible force, killing the stern gun's crew and blowing the gun overboard. Moreover, the jar of this explosion set off the alarm; so down came all disguises and out came the guns. But Campbell, still determined to kill off that sub, wirelessed in the secret code to keep all vessels off the horizon, lest the sub should get scared and run away. Meanwhile she was diving, not liking the explosions; and she presently sent a torpedo straight home. Then the second "panic-party" left; and the Q ship lay wallowing in the trough of the sea, with two holes in her side, a big fire blazing, and ammunition boxes blowing up every few minutes. For nearly an hour the sub hovered round, a good distance off, and ended by rising astern to shell this obstinate Q ship to death. But even then the dauntless Q men still aboard never gave a sign of life. The wounded lay in their agonizing pain without making a sound, and stiff as soldiers at Attention! The rest stood by their guns and torpedoes, ready for anything. In the meantime another dangerous fire was blazing, more ammunition was blowing up, and the engulfing sea was creeping ever near and nearer yet. At last the submarine, quite satisfied, ceased firing. Then she closed, and Campbell fired two torpedoes, but missed with both. After this he wirelessed for help. But when British and American destroyers came tearing up they found him, cool as ever, arranging for a third "panic-party" to jump overboard and leave him alone with three men to try one more shot with the only gun left free by the fire. He failed this time. But two of his men earnt the V.C. as well as any men have ever earnt it; and his gallant Q herself went down with colours flying.

The news soon passed round the underworld of "sub-dom"; and the Germans swore they would never be caught again. So when another sub chased and shelled an old tub of a sailing ship her commander took good care to make sure he had not caught another Q. First and second panic parties, or what he thought were panic parties, did not satisfy him. But at last, when he had seen the ship's papers and had counted the crew, he laughed at his own mistake and came close alongside, ordering the boats away in spite of the skipper's entreaties to be allowed to go back and get his wife, who was crying her eyes out on deck with her baby in her arms. When the boats rowed off the poor woman went mad, rushing about wildly, with piercing shrieks, and finally, just as the German was coming on board, throwing her baby straight into his conning tower. What the Germans thought of this will never be known; for the baby was made of rubber filled with high explosive, and it blew the sub to smithereens.



CHAPTER XXVII

SURRENDER!

(1918)

As Jutland broke the spirit of the Germans who fought on the surface so minefields, netting, convoys, patrolling, and Q boats broke the spirit of those who fought in submarines. Drake's Sea-Dogs would take their chance of coming home alive when the insurance on their ships used to be made by men whom Shakespeare calls the "putters-out of five for one." As we say now, the chances were five to one against the Sea-Dog ship that went to foreign parts in time of war. But, when the odds reached four to one against the German subs, the German crews began to mutiny, refusing to go aboard of what they saw were fast becoming just new steel coffins of the sea. A Belgian maid, compelled to slave for officers of German submarines at Zeebrugge, kept count of those who returned alive. The same number, twenty, always boarded in the house. But, before the British came and drove the Germans out, no less than sixteen of her twenty masters had stepped into dead men's shoes.

Finally, in the early morning of November the 3rd, when, in wild despair, the Kaiser ordered the whole Fleet out for one last fight, the men of aircraft, surface craft, and submarines alike refused point blank to go; and the German Revolution then and there began. It was the German Navy that rose first, brought to its senses by the might of British sea-power. The Army followed. Then the people.

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (the 11th of November, 1918) the Cease fire! sounded on every front by sea and land and air; for that supremely skilful hero, Marshal Foch, had signed the Armistice as Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied Armies on the Western Front. One of the terms of this famous Armistice was that Germany should surrender her Fleet to the Allies in the Firth of Forth, where the British Grand Fleet was waiting with a few French and American men-of-war. Never in the whole world's history had such a surrender taken place. But never in the whole world's history had any navy broken the laws of war so shamefully as the German Navy had. And never in the whole world's history had any navy been more truly great or so gloriously strong as the British Navy had become.

On Friday the 15th of November the German cruiser Koenigsberg steamed into the Firth of Forth and anchored near Inchcape, which, aptly enough, is famous in Scottish song as the death-place of a murderer and pirate. "Beatty's destroyer," H.M.S. Oak, unlike all other craft in her gala coat of gleaming white, then took Admiral von Meurer aboard the British flagship, Queen Elizabeth, where Beatty sat waiting, with the model of a British lion on the table in front of him (as a souvenir of his former flagship, Lion) and a portrait of Nelson hanging on the wall behind.

The hundred and fifty surrendered submarines went slinking into Harwich, the great British North Sea base for submarines. But the seventy-four surface craft came into the Firth of Forth on the 21st of November: sixteen dreadnoughts, eight light cruisers, and fifty destroyers.

"09.40 Battle Fleet meet German Fleet" was the unique order posted up overnight in the Queen Elizabeth. But long before that hour the stately procession began filing out to sea. H.M. SS. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, were there to remind us that "United we stand, divided we fall." Admiral Grasset was there in the Aube to remind us that the French and British had been brothers-in-arms for fifty-one months of furious war. Admirals Rodman and Sims were there in the U.S.S. New York to remind us that during the last nineteen of these fifty-one months the three greatest self-governing peoples of the world had made common cause against the barbarous Hun. Finally, and clinchingly, the main body of the whole Grand Fleet was there, drawn up in two enormous lines-ahead, six miles apart, and sixteen miles from front to rear, with eighteen flagships leading its different squadrons, and scores of destroyers ahead, astern, and on the flanks, not one of which was counted in the thirty-two long miles of lines-ahead.

Before it had gone eight bells at four o'clock that morning, the Revenge, flagship of Sir Charles Madden, Second-in-Command of the Grand Fleet, led the way out to the appointed rendezvous: "X position, latitude 56, 11 North, longitude 1, 20 West." The present Revenge, a magnificent super-dreadnought, is the ninth of her name in the Navy; and, besides her name, has three curious links to recall the gallant days of Drake. In her cabin is a copy of the griffin which, being Grenville's crest, the first Revenge so proudly bore in the immortal fight of "The One and the Fifty-Three." Then, had the German Fleet come out again, Madden and this ninth Revenge would have taken exactly the same place in action as Drake and the First Revenge took just three hundred and thirty years before against the Great Armada. Thirdly (but this, alas, was too good to come true!) Sir Charles told his Canadian guest one day in Scapa Flow that he and Sir David Beatty had agreed to be caught playing a little game of bowls on the Grand Fleet clubhouse green the next time the German Fleet appeared. "And," he added, "we'll finish the game first, and the Germans after"—just what Drake had said about the Spaniards.

Nearing the rendezvous at nine the bugles sounded Action Stations! for though the German ships were to come unarmed and only manned by navigating crews it was rightly thought wiser not to trust them. You never catch the Navy napping. So, when the two fleets met, every British gun was manned, all ready to blow the Germans out of the water at the very first sign of treachery. Led captive by British cruisers, and watched by a hundred and fifty fast destroyers, as well as by a huge airship overhead, the vanquished Germans steamed in between the two victorious lines, which then reversed by squadrons, perfect as a piece of clockwork, and headed for the Firth of Forth. Thus the vast procession moved on, now in three lines-ahead, but filling the same area as before: a hundred square miles of sea. In all, there were over three hundred men-of-war belonging to the four greatest navies the world has ever known.

At eight bells that afternoon all hands were piped aft by the boatswains' whistles, the bugles rang out the Sunset call, and down came every German flag, never again to be flown aboard those vessels of the High Sea Fleet. For Germany Der Tag had gone. For the British The Day had come; and they hailed it with a roar of British-Lion cheers.

Most regrettably, the Allies, headed by President Wilson, decided that the German men-of-war should be interned, not surrendered, when sent to Scapa Flow. If these ships, after being surrendered to the Allies, had been put in charge of the British, or any other navy, as "surrenders," guards would have been put on board of them and all would have been well. But interned ships are left to their own crews, no foreign guards whatever being allowed to live on board. The result of this mistake, deliberately made against the advice of the British, was that, on the 21st of June, the Germans, with their usual treachery, opened the sea-cocks and sank the ships they had surrendered and the Allies had interned.

A week later, on the 28th of June, 1919, in the renowned historic palace of Versailles, the Allies and Germany signed the Treaty of Peace by which they ended the Great War exactly five years after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand had given the Austro-German empires the excuse they wanted to begin it.



RULE, BRITANNIA!

Thomson's famous verses and Arne's famous air (in which Wagner said he could see the whole character of the English people) were sung for the first time during the Royal fete held at Clieveden, a celebrated country residence beside "the silver Thames." This was on the 1st of August, 1740. The 1st of August was the day on which Nelson won his first great victory just fifty-eight years later; and Clieveden is where the Duchess of Connaught's Canadian Hospital was established during the Great War.

When Britain first, at Heaven's command, Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! Britons never will be slaves."

The nations not so bless'd as thee Must in their turn to tyrants fall; While thou shall flourish great and free, The dread and envy of them all. "Rule, Britannia, &c."

Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blast that tears the skies Serves but to root thy native oak. "Rule, Britannia, &c."

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; All their attempts to bend thee down Will but arouse thy generous flame, And work their woe and thy renown. "Rule, Britannia, &c."

To thee belongs the rural reign; Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles thine. "Rule, Britannia, &c."

The Muses, still with freedom found, Shall to thy happy coast repair; Bless'd isle! with matchless beauty crown'd, And manly hearts to guard the fair. "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! Britons never shall be slaves!" —James Thomson.

GOD SAVE THE KING!

The words we now sing with such hearty British loyalty all round the Seven Seas originated in the parole and countersign on board the famous Portsmouth Fleet of 1545, when the parole was God save the King! and the answering countersign was Long to reign over us! The National Anthems of all the other Empires, Kingdoms, and Republics in the world come from their armies and the land. Our own comes from the Royal Navy and the Sea.

God save our gracious King, Long live our noble King, God save the King. Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God save the King.

O Lord our God, arise, Scatter his enemies, And make them fall. Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On Thee our hopes we fix, God save us all.

Thy choicest gifts in store, On him be pleased to pour; Long may he reign. May he defend our laws, And ever give us cause To sing with heart and voice, God save the King.



CHAPTER XXVIII

WELL DONE!

The day the Armistice was signed (the 11th of November, 1918) King George sent this Royal Message to the Navy:

Now that the last and most formidable of our enemies has acknowledged the triumph of the Allied arms on behalf of right and justice, I wish to express my praise and thankfulness to the officers, men, and women of the Royal Navy and Marines, with their comrades of the Fleet Auxiliaries and the Mercantile Marine, who, for more than four years have kept open the seas, protected our shores, and given us safety. Ever since that fateful Fourth of August, 1914, I have remained steadfast in my confidence that, whether fortune frowned or smiled, the Royal Navy would once more prove the sure shield of the British Empire in the hour of trial. Never in its history has the Royal Navy, with God's help, done greater things for us or better sustained its old glories and the chivalry of the sea. With full and grateful hearts the peoples of the British Empire salute the White, the Red, and the Blue Ensigns, and those who have given their lives for the Flag. I am proud to have served in the Navy. I am prouder still to be its Head upon this memorable Day.

GEORGE, R.I.



(The "women" to whom the King referred were the famous "Wrens," so called because the initials of the Women's Royal Naval Service—W.R.N.S.—can easily be turned into "Wrens." Everything that women could do they did; and did it well.)

(The White Ensign is the flag of the Navy: white, divided into four by the red St. George's Cross, and with the Union Jack in the upper inside quarter. The Red Ensign is for the Mercantile Marine. The Blue Ensign is for any Government service except the Navy. The Red and Blue Ensigns have the Union Jack in their upper inside quarters, but no St. George's Cross.)

The Mercantile Marine lost nearly fifteen thousand men killed; we ought to say murdered; for while a blockader can take ships and cargoes that try to run contraband (that is, whatever the blockader can rightfully proclaim to be forbidden) he must not kill the crews. The British merchant seamen fought; and the Germans said that was why they had to kill them. But it was the Germans who forced them to fight in self-defence. And that makes all the difference. When our enemies, Germans or others, can prove one case of such murder against the British Navy we shall punish the murderer ourselves. But they have not found that one case yet, while we have found close on fifteen thousand, not counting soldiers, passengers, women, or children. The Germans aimed at scaring off the sea those merchant seamen whom they could not kill, disable, or make prisoners. But not a man refused to go to sea again, even when his last ship had been torpedoed and his chums been killed. That is the first glory of the Mercantile Marine. But there are many more. And not the least is the pluck with which the British, who did most and lost most, started the race for oversea trade again, though at an enormous disadvantage compared with those who did least and gained most.

All kinds of British sea-power did magnificent work in the war, whether building ships, sailing them with passengers and cargoes, or fighting them. The Navy and Mercantile Marine gained eleven million tons during the war, exactly half each. But as the Mercantile Marine lost nine millions sunk, it ended three-and-a-half to the bad, a terrible handicap in the race with the shipping of countries which, like the United States have made stupendous fortunes by the war, besides gaining enormously in shipping and oversea trade. Norway, Japan, and the States gained most. The States came out of the war three and three-quarter million tons to the good, thus gaining over seven millions as compared with the British.

The case of the Navy was one of life or death for us and all our Allies; so the merchant fleet, fishing fleet, and shipbuilding yards had to let the Navy come first, no matter what the cost might be. But we must never forget that the Navy is only one-half of our British sea-power, that the Mercantile Marine is the other half, and that all kinds of British sea-power must work together or be lost. So we cannot separate one kind from another here; and we would not if we could.

Nor should we forget that British sea-power was itself only one of the many kinds of war-power put forth by Britain in the cause of freedom. Britain raised by far the largest force of volunteers ever raised by any country in any age or for any war—five million and forty-one thousand men for the Army alone. This takes no account of conscripts, or of naval, air force, or civilian Services; nor does it include one man belonging to any part of the British Empire overseas.

Then she forced into the ranks those that could but would not go as long as they got others to do their fighting for them. In the meantime her whole population, except those slackers every country had, had put its strenuous hand to war work of one kind or another. So, whether by sea or land or air, whether as warriors or as civilians, the people of Great Britain gave their united all to the noblest cause on earth. And, when the war ended, Great Britain had the biggest army as well as the biggest navy in the world—biggest not only in absolute numbers but also biggest in proportion to the whole number of men fit to bear arms. Nor was this in any way due to her having lost less than others; for she had the greatest total loss in killed and wounded of all the Allies—greatest on land, greatest by sea, and greatest in the air.

Besides all we have seen before, in following the more purely naval fortunes of the war, the Navy did priceless work in October 1914, when the huge German armies, beaten by the heroic French at the immortal Battle of the Marne, tried to take the North-East coast of France with the ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne. Held by Joffre further south, they found more than their match in the north, when French's little British army fought them to a standstill, while the Navy simply burnt them away from the coast by a perfect hurricane of fire.

Better still was the way the Navy finished off the submarine blockade. Of the 203 enemy submarines destroyed 151 were finished by the British Navy. The French, Americans, and Italians killed off the rest. All the 150 submarines surrendered came slinking into Harwich, the great British base for submarines. All the 170 submarines the Germans were building when the war was stopped were given up to the Allied Naval Commission headed by a British admiral and backed by a British fleet.

But even more wonderful than this was the oversea transport done by all kinds of British sea-power working together as one United Service. The British carried nearly half of all the imports into Italy and France. They repaired more than a thousand ships a month. They ferried nearly two-thirds of all the Americans that crossed the Atlantic. They took to the many different fronts more than half a million vehicles, from one-horse carts to the biggest locomotives; more than two million animals—horses, mules, and camels; and more than twenty-two millions of men. Add to this well over a couple of hundred million tons of oil, coal, and warlike stores; remember that this is by no means the whole story, and that it takes no account of the regular trade; and you may begin to understand what British sea-power meant in this war. In the mere transportation of armies alone it meant the same thing as taking the entire population of Canada, three times over, with all its baggage three times over, and with its very houses three times over, across thousands of miles of dangerous waters in the midst of the worst war ever known. And yet, out of the more than twenty-two millions of men, less than five thousand were killed on the way; and many of these were murdered in hospital ships marked with the sacred Red Cross. The chances of safety from murder and fair risks of war put together were nearly five thousand to one. The chances of safety from fair risks of war by themselves were nearly ten thousand to one.

No war, no navy, no sea-power since the world began, has any record to compare with this.



"Let us be backed with God and with the seas, Which He hath given for fence impregnable, And with their helps, only, defend ourselves: In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies." —Shakespeare. King Henry VI, Part III, Act IV, Scene I.



POSTSCRIPT

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

Landsmen are many while seamen are few. So the world thinks more of armies than of fleets. Our enemies hate all British sea-power, while our friends never know the half of what it means. So friend and foe alike are apt to side against us by making the laws against blockading fleets very much harder than those against besieging armies.

All we can do is to stand firmly on our perfect rights and show the world the five good reasons why:—

1. The sea and land have equal rights. Blockading fleets are like besieging armies. So if besieging armies have the right to stop supplies from reaching the places they besiege, why should blockading fleets be told to let supplies go through?

2. All parts of our great Empire are joined together, not by land, but sea. So if we lose our rights of self-defence at sea we lose the very breath of life.

3. We claim no rights we will not share with others. When the American blockade of the South during the Civil War (1861-5) ruined the British cotton trade we never interfered, though we had by far the stronger navy.

4. We have never used the British Navy to bully weak nations out of their oversea possessions. Who could have stopped our taking the Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese possessions in Africa and Asia?

5. British sea-power has always been on the side of freedom; and every time a tyrant has tried to fight his way to world-dominion the Royal Navy has been the backbone of all the forces that have laid him low.



THE CANADIAN

I never saw the cliffs of snow, The Channel billows tipped with cream, The restless, eddying tides that flow About the Island of my dream. I never saw the English downs Upon an April day, The quiet, old Cathedral towns, The hedgerows white with may.

And still the name of England, Which tyrants laugh to scorn, Can thrill my soul. It is to me A very bugle-horn.

A thousand leagues from Plymouth shore, In broader lands I saw the light. I never heard the cannon roar, Or saw a mark of England's might; Save that my people lived in peace, Bronzed in the harvest sun, And thought that tyranny would cease, That battle-days were done.

And still the flag of England Streamed on a friendly breeze, And twice two hundred ships of war Went surging through the seas.

I heard Polonius declaim About the new, the golden age, When Force would be the mark of shame, And men would curb their murderous rage. "Beat out your swords to pruning-hooks," He shouted to the folk, But I—I read my history books, And marvelled as he spoke.

For it was glorious England, The mother of the Free, Who loosed that foolish tongue, but sent Her Admirals to sea.

And liberty and love were ours, Home, and a brood of lusty sons, The long, North sunlight and the flow'rs, How could we think about the guns, The searchlights on a wintry cloud, The seamen stern and bold, Since we were hurrying with the crowd To rake the hills for gold?

But it was glorious England Who scanned the threatening morn. To me the very name of her Is like a bugle-horn.

—J. E. Middleton.

THE END