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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 19, 1919)
HE L v. J . . . v A ' : c. PL--- - - , lit J upwji (Copyright, 1919, by pie- WorU'i Work. The copyright of thesi articles in Great Britain la strictly reserved by Pearson's Magazine, London: without their permis sion no quotation may be made. Published by special arraifement) GERMANY attacked our hospital ships In order to make us es . cort them with destroyers, and niereDy divert tnese destroyers Irom the anti-submarine campaign. And, of course, England had to do this. Had the Anglo-Saxon mind resem bled the Germanic we should prob ably have accepted the logic of the situation, and have refused to be di verted from the great strategic pur pose which meant winning the war that Is, protecting merchant ship ping; we should, therefore, have left the hospital chips to their fate. Jus tifying ourselves by the principle of the larger good. But the British and American mind does not work that way; It was Impossible for us to leave sick and wounded men as prey to submarines. Therefore, after re ceiving the German warning, backed up. as it was, by the actual destruc tion of unprotected hospital ships, we began providing them with de stroyer escorts. This greatly embar rassed us in the anti-submarine cam paign, for at times, especially dur ing the big drives, we had a large cumber of hospital ships to protect. As soon as we adopted this policy, Germany, having attained her end, which was to keep the destroyers out of the submarine area, stopped attacking. sick and wounded soldiers. Not only was the British navy at that time safeguarding the liberties of mankind at sea, but its army in France was doing its share in safe guarding them on land. And the fact that Britain had to support this mighty army did its part in making British shipping at times almost the I free play of the German submarines. For next in importance to maintain ing the British grand fleet Intact it was necessary to keep secure the channel crossing. Over . this- little strip of water went the men and supplies from England and France that kept the German army at bay; to have suspended this line of com munication, even for a brief period, would have meant that the Germans would have captured Paris, overrun the whole of France, and ended the war, at least the war on land. In the course of four years Great Brit ain transported about 20,000,000 troops across the channel without the loss of a single man. She ac complished this only by constantly using fifty or sixty destroyers, and other light surface craft, based on Harwich, as escorts for the trans ports. But this was not the only responsibility of the kind that rested on the already overburdened British shoulders. There was another part of the seas in which, for practical and political reasons, the British destroyer fleet had to do protective duty. This was the Mediterranean. Here lay not ohly the trade routes to the east, but also the lines of supply to Italy, to Egypt, to Palestine and to Mesopotamia. Cutting off Italy's food and ma terials would simply have meant that Italy would have to withdraw from the war. The German and Austrian submarines, escaping from Austria's Adriatic ports, were constantly as sailing this commerce. Moreover, the success of the German submarine campaign in these waters would have meant that the allies would have to abandon the Salonika expe dition, which would have left the central powers absolute masters of the Balkans and the Middle East. This created an additional strain upon the anti-submarine craft of the Brit ish navy. Xot Enough Destroyers. For the British navy it was thus a matter of choice what areas she would attempt to protect with her destroyer forces; the one thing that was painfully apparent .was. that she could not satisfactorily safe Victory At FORMULATING guard all the danger zones. With the inadequate force at her disposal, cer tain areas must be left open to the U-boatsr and to decide which ones was simply a matter of balancing the several conflicting interests. In April, 1917,' the admiralty had de cided to give the preference to the grand fleet, the hospital ships, the channel crossing and the Mediter ranean, poetically in the order men tioned. It is. evident, from the figures given, that all but about 10 or a dozen de stroyers must have been used in these three areas. It was for this reason that the great zone of- trans-Atlantic shipping, west and south of Ireland, vitally important as it was, had to go almost unprotected. Sometimes only four or five destroyers were op erating in this great stretch of wa ters; I do not think the. number ever exceeded 15. Inasmuch as that rep resented 'about the number of Ger man submarines in this same area, the situation may strike the novice as not particularly desperate. But, of course, any such basis of compari son is absurd. The destroyers were operating on the surface in full view of the submarines; the submarines could submerge any time and make themselves invisible; herein we have the reason why the contest was ri diculously unequal. But, above all other considerations, the method of warfare adopted by the allies against the U-boat was fundamentally wrong. The so-called submarine patrol, un der the circumstances which pre vailed at that ttme, could accomplish practically nothing. This pathetic little fleet of destroyers was based on Queenstown; from this port the ships put forth and patrolled in ill- spent fashion around the English channel and the waters about Ireland in the hope that a German submarine would stick its nose above the waves. The central "idea of the destroyer patrol is the one of hunting; the de stroyer could sink the submarine or drive it away from shipping if the submarine would only make its pres ence known, and the business of the destroyer was to scurry around in the forlorn ope that it would do so. Now this idea is sound enough if OSTENTATIOUS PROFITEERS IN ENGLAND MET WITH DISDAIN Rich Munitions Manufacturers Strut About in Expensive Clothes and Are Cause of Caustic Comment by British Public BT EDITH E. LANTON. M" INEHEAD, Sept. 16. With great reluctance I have just packed up Portland's last parcel. It is going out to a sailor in the Baltic The few books and magazines it con tains and the pocket game of chess just finish up the Portland fund. It Is glorious to think that the need for these comforts is over, but I give up my role of fairy god-mother with real regret. It has been a never-ending pleas ure to act as Portland's shopping agent. I have always kept the ex penses as light as possible by shame lessly begging paper and string when ever I could, and putting all my friends and relatives to work when ever I was too busy to attend to par cels myself. I may say that they were very willing victims. The dear boys to whom the parcels went never forgot to write and thank us. Our woollies have nearly cometo an end, too. A few days ago six pairs of white wool socks were sent to Sister M for her "leg cases." This summer resort is still full of belated visitors. The whole place swarms with knitted woolen jumpers, either worn, exhibited in the Bhops, or in course of construction. Fat women certainly look outrageous in them, but wear them nevertheless. My long internment in hospital causes zne to look upon fashions with an un THE SUNDAY OBEGONUN, PORTI-AXD, OCTOBER 10, 1019. you can have enough destroyers.- We figured that, to make the patrol sys tem work with complete success, we should have to have one destroyer for every square mile. The area of the destroyer patrol off Queenstown comprised about 25,000 square miles; in ithe words, the complete protec tion of the trans-Atlantic trade routes would have taken about 25,000 de stroyers! And the British, as I have said, had available anywhere from four to fifteen in this area! This destroyer flotilla being so small, it is not surprising that the German submarines were making ducks and drakes of it. The map of April sinkings brings out an inter esting fact: numerous as these sink ings were,- very few merchantmen were torpedoed, in this month, at the entrance to the Irish sea or in the English channel. There were the narrow waters where shipping was massed and where the little destroyer patrol was intended to operate. The German submarines apparently avoid ed these waters, and made their at tacks out in the open sea, sometimes two and three hundred miles west and south of Ireland. Their purpose in doing this was to draw the destroyer patrol out into the open sea and in that way cause its dispersal. And these tactics suc ceeded. There were six separate steamship "lanes' by which the merchantmen approached the English channel and the Irish sea. One day the submarines would attack' along one of these lanes: then the little de stroyer fleet would rush to this scene of operations. Immediately the Ger mans would depart and attack an other route 200 or 300 miles away; then the destroyer would go pellmell for that location. Juqt as they ar rived, however, the TJ-boats would begin operating elsewhere; and so it went, a game of hide and seek in which the advantages lay all on the side of the submarines, which pos sessed that insuperable quality of in visibility. It really was a case of blindman's buff; the destroyer could never see the enemy: the enemy could always see the destroyer. To show how serious the situation sophisticated eye. It will take me a long time to catch up those lost four years. Everything is a novelty to me. It is funny how odd it seems to see evening dresses once more. The only evening dress our boys in hospital wore was pajamas. I saw plenty of those. At the theater the other night I saw a man in evening dress' and a trench coat. I liked it. ' He looked a real man. Affluent profiteers swarm about in ostentatious new clothes and every body whispers nniffyly: 'Urn munitions, I s'pose!" Maybe. Or provisions. My theater dress has been dyed twice and is standing the strain well. It began champagne colored, then be came Saxe blue for a period, and now It is a sapphire. It has reached such a position of honorable age that my friends welcome it by saying: "I al ways did like that dress." I am re pairing the holes In my motor veils, now that I have time, by embroider ing butterflies or daisies over them. One day lately I saw a woman in a hat just like a crumpled Yorkshire oat cake. It made me feel quite hun gry. I have always wanted to see a meet of the stag-hounds. Last week cne was to take place at Dunster, -so we walked over to see it. Alas, it was a meet that never met. and we had our long dusty walk for nothing, but I daresay the . stag .was. glad.-. Mis majesty's works at Gretna are AMERICA'S was, let me quote from my reports to Washington during this period. I find statements like these scattered everywhere in my dispatches of the spring of 1917: "The military situation presented by the enemy submarine campaign is not only serious but critical." "The outstanding fact which can not be escaped Is that we are not succeeding, or in other words, that the enemy's campaign Is proving suc cessful." ."The consequences , of failure or partial failure of the . allied cause which we have joined are of such far-reaching character that I am deeply concerned In insuring that the part played by our country shall stand every ' test of analysis before the bar of history. The situation at present is exceedingly grave. If suf ficient United States naval forces can be thrown into the balance at the present critical time -and place there is little doubt that early suc cess will be assured." "Briefly stated, I consider that at the present moment we are losing the war." Deciding; the American Naval Policy. And now came another Important question: what should the American naval policy be In this crisis? There were almost as many conflicting opin ions as there . were minds. Certain authorities believed that our whole North Atlantic fleet should be moved immediately into European waters. Such a maneuver was not only im possible, but it would have been stra tegically very unwise: indeed such a disposition would have been play ing, directly Into Germany's hands. What naval experts call the "logistics" of the situation immediately ruled this idea out of consideration. The simple fact Is that we could not have supplied our dreadnoughts in Euro pean waters at that time. The German U-boats were making a particularly successful drive at tankers, with the result that England had the utmost difficulty in supplying her fleet with fuel oil. It is impossible to exag gerate the seriousness of the oil sit uation at that time. "Orders have just been given to use three-fifths speed, except in case of emergency," I re ported to Washington on June 29, re ferring to the scarcity of oil. "This simply means that the enemy is now winning the war." It was lucky for us that the Germans knew nothing about the scarcity of this indispensable fuel. Had they been aware of it, they would have taken pains to see that the grand fleet . was- constantly steaming for sale piecemeal. Every type of hut and hostel, the women's police bar racks, the canteen, etc., etc., have been advertised and are probably sold by this time. We always heard that those bungalows, all alike, with in terchangeable sides and ends, were intended for Belgium, and pitied Bel gium. 'They were of the dog-kennel style of architecture. If price were no object I might have bought my pet dressing station at Eastrlggs for a souvenir. I could sit Inside It and feel quite sentimental thinking over the past. I remember what a shock It was to me one day when a girl came In to be treated for feline-looking scratches on her throat. "Whatever did this?" said I, In alarm. "Me pal." said she, "did It with her finger nails!" They had quarreled and no doubt "me pal's", finger nails were poisoned with nitric acid, so I sent her to the doctor. Quite a common request was for "something to shift the wind, nurse." I generally handed out aqua menth pip, hot, for that. On fish days there was always a rush of girls to have bones, generally Imaginary, taken out of their throats. Once I remember being greatly taken aback to dis cover that one of these girls "with a fishbone in her throat" really had diphtheria very badly. I promptly Isolated her and telephoned for what we called "the infectious ambulance." So many burned legs walked in for treatment that the girls might have been centipedes, poor dears. I certainly should never buy a can teen for a keepsake. It would re mind me too forcibly of those meals we had. Everlasting stews and milk puddings.. I positively, used to dream of the luscious meals of far-away Ore S EZ A NAVAL at sea and in this way they might so have exhausted its oil supplies as possibly to threaten the actual com mand oft he surface. Fortunately for the cause, of civilizaAon. there were certain Important facts that the Ger man secret service did not learn. But this oil shortness made it im possible that the American North At lantic fleet should move into Euro pean waters, at least at that time. Since most oil supplies were brought from America,' we could not have fueled our super-dreadnoughts in Eu rope in the spring and summer of 1917. " Moreover, had we sent all our big ships to England we should have been obliged to keep our destroyers con stantly stationed with them ready for a great sea action: this would have completely fallen in with Ger man plans, for then these destroyers could not have been used against her submarines. The British did Indeed request that we send five coal-burning ships to reinforce her fleet and give her that preponderance which made its ascendancy absolutely se cure and these ships were subse quently sent; but England could not have made provision for our greatest dreadnoughts, the oil burners. Indeed our big ships served the allied cause better stationed on this side than they would have served it had they been located at a European base. They pro vided a reserve for the British fleet, precisely as our armies in France pro vided a reserve for the allied armies; and meanwhile their destroyer escorts could be sent to the submarine sone. to participate in the anti-submarine campaign. In American waters these big ships could be kept in prime con dition; here they had an open, free sea for training, and here they could also be used to break in the thousands of new men needed for the new ships constructed during the war. Oar Klert Has Reinforcement. I early took the stand that our forces should be considered chiefly in the light of reinforcements" to the allied navies, and that, ignoring all question of national pride and even what at first might superficially seem to be national Interest, we should exert such offensive power as we pos sessed in the way that would best as sist the allies in defeating the sub marine. England's naval resources were much greater than ours; in the nature of the case, we could not ex pect to maintain overseas anywhere near the number of ships which Eng land had assembled; it should be our I policy, therefore, to use such avail gon grilled the like. porterhouse steak and I shall never forget Gretna. The nurses' quarters were in quite a decent-looking red brick building and we each had a nice little bedroom with latticed windows, all concrete finish inside and the whole place like a whispering gallery. A secret whis pered never so silently in someone's ear resounded so that it was probably shrieked into matron's ear In another room. Every piece of household property was marked "G. R." (George. Rex), with a crown over." But I could not admire G. R.'s' taste in bed ding. The sheets were all fuzzy and came off In wads in one's hair. The pillows were flock ones and very boney. I finally fell heir to a feather one bequeathed to me by the nurse-who-got-married. The mattresses were apparently stuffed with golf balls one side and cricket balls the other interned for the duration of the war. We turned these mattresses once a week, on Sundays, and I was always glad myself when it was golf ball side up. They made smaller dim ples in my back. After the rainy season set in in good earnest we never turned our mattresses at all because they got so damp on the unused side that we couldn't. - I wonder what has become of our jolly old motorbus? It was a - kind friend to the nurses. It was very bumpy sometimes, as our driver be lieved in going along at a good speed. I remember one appalling bump which shot my attache case off my knee and burst it open. To the joy of one of the Australian chemists, who was sitting opposite, my powder puff Jumped out and landed on his knee. There was also a "lapsus lingerie," happily unobserved In the dim light of early, dawn. The .chemist, an nounced, aa one making a discovery: By Admiral William SnowdenSims POLICY able units as we possessed to strengthen the weak spots in the al lied line. There were those who be lieved that national dignity required that we should' build up an indepen dent navy in European waters, and operate it as a distinct American unit. But that. I maintained, was not the way to win the war. Had we adopted this course, we should still have been con structing naval bases and perfecting an organization when the armistice was signed; indeed, the idea of op erating independently of the allied fleet was not for a moment to be con sidered. There were others in Amer ica who thought that it was unwise to put any part of our fleet in Euro pean waters, in view of the dangers that might assail us on our own coast There was every expectation that Germany would send submarines to the western Atlantic, wh'ere they could prey upon our shipping and pos sibly bombard our ports; she had plenty " of submarines which could make this voyage, and the strategy of the situation,' In April and May. 1917, demanded that- a move of this kind be made. The predominant ele ment in the submarine defense, as I have pointed out, was the destroyer. The only way in which the United States could immediately and effec tively help the British navy was by sending our whole destroyer flotilla and all our light surface craft at once. It was Germany's part, there fore, to resort to every maneuver that would keep our destroyer force on this side of the Atlantic. Such a performance might be expected to startle our peaceful American popu lation and start a public cry for pro tection that might force our govern ment to keep all anti-submarine craft in our own waters. I expected Ger many to do this immediately and cau tioned our naval authorities at Wash ington not to be deceived. I pointed out that Germany could accomplish practically nothing by sporadic at tacks on American shipping in Amer ican waters; that, indeed, if we could Induce the German admiralty to con centrate all its submarine efforts on the American coasts, and leave free the Irish sea and the English chan nel, the war would be practically won for the allies. Tet these facts were not apparent to the popular mind in 1917. and I shall always think that Germany made a great mistake in not sending submarines to the American coast immediately on our declaration of war. Instead of wait ing until 1918. Such attacks, at that time, would have started a public de mand for protection which the Wash- "Now, I've often wondered what the nurses carried around with them in those little cases." . "We had an extra "weather al lowance" of two shillings (50 cents) a week, presumably to buy rubber boots and a rubber coat with. I saved mine and bought some warm nighties to keep the Scotch chill"out whilst I slept among my golf balls. ' BIRMINGHAM, Sept. IS. Since writing the above I have traveled from Minehead to Birmingham, a dis tance of about 150 miles. It took me seven hours, including waits at junc tions. "Junction," -I believe, means "a 'joining," but trains nowadays never Join, there Is too big a gap between.- They seem to be scheduled but for one purpose, to annoy passen gers by missing connections. A passenger is only allowed 100 pounds of baggage, and no one trunk weighing over 100 pounds. Should he have one heavier he cannot pay over weight, but may be commanded to unpack the excess weight and send by freight. Traveling since the war is wearisome, indeed. Many -of the porters are demobilized soldiers, wounded in the war. I must say I should love to see some Ameri can express men juggling with trunks weighing 200 or 300 pounds. Remembrance of the past! A soldier I met a short time ago told me a good many little anecdotes about the war, and then said a Ger man prisoner whom he captured once Insisted on giving his opinion of Ber lin. Paris and London. Here it is: "Berlin is the prace to study, Paris for a gay time, but London Is home." Pretty cool, wasn't it? My friend was .not impressed. This man had been a waiter In London before the war. 5 ington authorities might have had great difficulty In resisting, and which might have actually kept our destroyer fleet in American Haters, to the great detriment of "the allied cause. Germany evidently refra ned from doing so for reasons which I have already indicated a desire to play gently with the United States, and In that way to delay our mili tary preparations and win the war without coming into bloody conflict with the American people. - There were others who thought It unwise to expose any part of our fleet to the dangers of the European contest: their fear was that, if the allies should be defeated, we would then need all our naval forces to pro tect the American coast. This point of view, of course, was short sighted and absurd. Clearly our national pol icy demanded that we should exert all the force we could assemble to make certain a German defeat. The best way to fight Germany was not to wait until she had vanquished the allies, but to Join hands with them in a combined effort to beat her down. The thing to do was vigor ously to take the offensive: to make certain that Germany could not at tack us at home by destroying her naval power in European waters. The Vital Waters West and South of '. Ireland. The fact Is that no nation was ever placed In so tragical a position as Great Britain in the spring and early summer of 1917. And I think that history records few spectacles more heroic than that of the great British navy, fighting this hideous and cowardly form f warfare in half a dozen places with pitifully inade quate forces, but with an undaunted spirit that remained firm even against the fearful odds which I have described. What an opportunity for America! And it was perfectly ap parent what we should do. We should immediately place all available anti submarine craft in those waters west and south of Ireland, the headquar ters of the shipping which meant life or death to the allied cause the area which England, because of the almost endless demands on her navy in other fields, was unable to protect. I spent my first four days in Lon don collecting all possible data; I had no desire to alarm Washington unwarrantably, yet I also believed that I should be derelict did I not present the facts precisely as they were. I, therefore, consulted prac tically everyone who could give me essential details and wrote a cable dispatch, filling four foolscap pages, which furnished Washington its first detailed account of the serious state of the cause on which we had em barked. In this work I had the full co-operation of our ambassador in London, Mr. Walter Hines Page. Mr. Page's whole heart and mind were bound up in the allied cause; he was zealous' that his country would play worthily its part in this great crisis in history; and he worked unspar ingly with me to get the facts before the Washington administration. A days after sending my disp tch it oc curred to me that a message from our ambassador might give emphasis to my own. I therefore wrote such a message and took it down to Brigh ton, where the American ambassador was taking a little rest. Ambassador Page Pleads. "It isn't strong enough!" he said. "I think I can do better than this myself." He immediately sat down and wrote a cablegram to Washington which is one of the great documents of the war. But Mr. Page and I thought that we had not completely done our duty even then. We were determined that, whatever might happen, we could never be charged with not having presented the allied situation in its absolutely true light. It seemed likely that an authoritative state ment from the British government would give added assurance that our statements were not the result of panic, and with this idea in mind, Mr. Page and I called upon Mr. Bal four, foreign secretary, who, in re sponse to our request, sent a dis patch to Washington describing the seriousness of the situation. All these messages made the same point: that the United States should immediately assemble all its destroy ers and other light craft, and send them to the vital spot in the sub marine campaign Queenstown. (Another article by Admiral Sims , will be published next Sunday.)