THE STORY OF OUR SUBMARINES.-IV.

BY KLAXON.

FACING each other across the southern part of the North Sea were the opposing submarine bases of Harwich and Flanders. The boats from these bases occasionally met and fought, but in the main their duties lay well apart. Harwich boats worked off the Bight, while the Flanders ports were bases for U-boats to start from on their way down Channel to the traffic routes. The losses of the Flanders boats were heavy-so were the losses of the VIIIth Flotilla at Harwich, especially in 1916. In that

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billet next week and you may find out..

Well, it does affect people, and there is undoubtedly a great feeling of relief at getting back to harbour safely. In the Navy, where wines and spirits are free of duty, alcohol is cheap and obtainable, and alcohol is a relief from worry and an opiate for tired nerves. But the war has never seen a case of disoiplinary action being necessary to control our submarine officers. It is a difficult question to approach in print, that year the VIIIth as the temperance argument Flotilla submarine officers seems to call out such passed a self-denying ordin- strongly-expressed opinions ance to reduce their consumption of alcohol. (Now what I am leading up to is a comparison of British and German mentality, because I think the question of personnel to be infinitely more important than that of material.) The fact is, that heavy losses do affect those who are left to carry on the work. A boat comes back to harbour with her officers and crew tired and glad to be home again; they are perhaps met with, "Did you see anything of Seventysix? He's been overdue three days. He was next to youoff Ameland. You didn't hear anything go up? Oh, well, you'll probably have that

from the advocates pro and con; but while I have no idea of holding up submarine officers as paragons of abstinence (for I hardly know any

who are teetotallers), there is no doubt that they fully realised that only moderation could keep them efficient for war.

At

Over in Flanders it was the rule for U-boats to base at Bruges, and to use only Ostend and Zeebrugge as they passed through on their way to and from the sea. Bruges the U-boat officers had a mess at the house of M. Catulle-a large, wellfurnished, and comfortable building near the docks.

cool his head." The whole impression one gets from the local stories is one of fear, morbid excitement,

There the officers had made no doubt they went at it the cellars (three inter-con- pretty fast; one officer was neoted vaults) into an un- drunk and incapable for five derground Rest for Tired days on end, and (as apparWorkers. All around the ently there was considered to walls are painted frescoes be a limit of four days for illustrating the minds of the states of coma) on the fifth patrons. The frescoes are day was ordered to sea by over two feet in depth, and the Captain of the Flotilla are well executed in the type "to of German humour one meets in the Berlin comic papers. There are mines, projectiles, &o., with the conventional and drink. The pictures confaces and hats of John Bull, jured up are unpleasant: the France, and other Allies; early morning scene in the dancing with the mines are cellars when a few hiccoughtorpedoes, some of which ing stalwarts still sat over carry on them the faces of their wine-the guttural atdead U-boat officers. Beneath tempt at song-the pale glow the frescoes are mottoes of eleotrio lamps through such as, "Drink, for to-mor- swirling smoke-the reek of row you may die "-"Life is alcohol-the litter of bottlesshort, and you'll be a long and the frightened face of the time dead." Between the Belgian chambermaid peering pictures are smaller paintings round the angle of the cellar of monkeys drinking cham- stairs. "Karl and Schmidt pagne. have not returned-God punish the English! Open more bottles, fool, and let us forget that our turn is coming!"

After dinner, according to witnesses, the officers would retire to these cellars and drink. There is little ventilation, and the atmosphere must have been fairly thick with smoke and fumes. Drinking sometimes continued till 8 A.M.

a horrible hour at which to be drunk. It is reported by Belgians that the officers got through four thousand bottles of wine in three weeks. Taking the high estimate of an average of twenty officers always present, this means ten bottles per head a day-which is absurd. It is probable, however, that the competitors broke or gave away a good many bottles. But there is

How the flotillas were able to do efficient work at all is a puzzle; but the Flanders Flotillas did the Allies a lot of harm. Had it not been the custom of the officers to throw off restraint in harbour, we might have suffered a good deal more-how much more only a student of psychology oan guess. But there is no doubt of this-and a parison of the Harwich and Flanders Flotillas shows itthe British take to games to soothe their nerves and the Germans to drink.

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It is possibly something to

do with this trait that brought which were got back into the major part of the U-boat harbour, although they include suocesses into the hands of the U-boats which our suba few special officers. The marines destroyed. German greater part of the captains ships are very well subdivided did little; a few "aces" com- in compartments and take a piled huge lists of sunken lot of killing. Certainly on a tonnage to their credit (or modern war-vessel one torpedootherwise). Judged by British hit is very little use; it takes Admiralty standards of effi- about four to make certain ciency, those few are the only of sinking her. The Moltke ones who in our Service would (battle-cruiser) was hit with have been retained at all. one torpedo forward in the Baltio by Commander Laurence, and again off Hiorn's Reef by Lieutenant Allen (right aft this time); on each occasion she got home safely. Our own light oruiser Falmouth had to receive four torpedoes in succession before she sank, The Prinz Adalbert was torpedoed by Commander Horton in the Baltic off Cape Kola and returned safely to Kiel (she could not take a hint, however, and after a long interval for repair she went east again and met Commander Goodheart of "E 8," who sank her). Commander Laurence in "J1" hit the Kronprinz and Grosser Kurfurst (battleships) in the North Sea, but both were got home safely. Our later submarines were fitted with larger torpedoes and tubes, but the boats fitted with eighteen-inch torpedoes made up the larger part of our flotillas, and it was realised by both our own and the enemy submarines that it took several hits with the smallersize weapon to finish off a large ship. Perhaps the clearest oase on record is that of the Marlborough, the ship being hit by a torpedo at the Jut

However, it is time I went on with the doings of our own boats. Human beings are so much more important in war than are machines, that it is a temptation to describe them for preference. I would like to be able to talk about the submarine seamen also, but there is no ground for comparison between our own men and the German machine-made U-boat hand. One thinks of the German men as just things that opened or closed valves when barked at, and who never took any interest in what was going on outside their particular stations, or in what the boat was doing. Our sailors are well, to put it "socially," they seem to belong more to the middle than the lower class. They are certainly not machine-made or dull, and they are not reluctant to act according to their own judgment in the absence of an officer's orders.

During the war our submarines sank 54 enemy warships and 274 other vessels. These figures do not, of course, include the many warships which were damaged but

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