Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/246

228 the Admiralty, dismissed the submarine as unworthy of consideration. "The idea of submarine navigation," he said, "is a morbid one. We need pay no attention to the submarine in naval warfare. The submarine is the arm of weaker powers." But Mr. Arnold-Forster, who was himself soon to become a member of the Admiralty, took exception to these remarks. "If the First Lord," he said, " had suggested that we should not build submarines because the problems which control them are not yet solved, I should have hesitated to combat his argument. But the First Lord has not said so: he has said that the Admiralty did not care to undertake any project for submarines because this type of boat could never be anything but the arm of the feeble. However, if this boat is made practical, the nation which possesses it will cease to be feeble and become in reality powerful. More than any other nation do we have reason to fear the submarine. It is, therefore, not wise to wait with indifference while other nations work at the solution of this problem without trying to solve it ourselves." "The question of the best way of meeting submarine attack," said Viscount Goschen at another time, "is receiving much consideration. It is in this direction that practical suggestions would be valuable. It seems certain that the reply to this weapon must be looked for in other directions than in building submarine boats ourselves, for it is clear that one submarine cannot fight another."

This prepossession dominated all professional naval minds in all countries, until the outbreak of the Great War. Yet the war had lasted only a few months when the idea was shown to be absurd. Practical hostilities soon demonstrated, as already said, that not only was the submarine able to fight another boat of the same type, but that it was the most effective anti-submarine agency which we possessed—so effective that the British Admiralty at once began the design of a special type of hunting submarine having a high under-water speed.

The fact is that the popular mind, in its attitude toward this new type of craft, is still too much under the spell of Jules Verne. There is still the disposition to look upon the submarine as an insidious vessel which spends practically all of its time under the water, stealthily slinks along, never once betraying its presence, creeps up at will to i1