Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/25

1917] "It looks as though the Germans were winning the war," I remarked. "They will win, unless we can stop these losses and stop them soon," the Admiral replied.

"Is there no solution for the problem?" I asked.

"Absolutely none that we can see now," Jellicoe announced. He described the work of destroyers and other anti-submarine craft, but he showed no confidence that they would be able to control the depredations of the U-boats.

The newspapers for several months had been publishing stories that submarines in large numbers were being sunk; and these stories I now found to be untrue. The Admiralty records showed that only fifty-four German submarines were positively known to have been sunk since the beginning of the war ; the German shipyards, I was now informed, were turning out new submarines at the rate of three a week. The newspapers had also published accounts of the voluntary surrender of German U-boats; but not one such surrender, Admiral Jellicoe said, had ever taken place; the stories had been circulated merely for the purpose of depreciating enemy moral, I even found that members of the Government, all of whom should have been better informed, and also British naval officers, believed that many captured German submarines had been carefully stowed away at the Portsmouth and Plymouth navy yards. Yet the disconcerting facts which faced the Allies were that the supplies and communications of the forces on all fronts were threatened; that German submarines were constantly extending their operations farther and farther out into the Atlantic; that German raiders were escaping into the open sea; that three years' constant operations had seriously threatened the strength of the British navy, and that Great Britain's control of the sea was actually at stake. Nor did Admiral Jellicoe indulge in any false expectations concerning the future. Bad as the situation then was, he had every expectation that it would grow worse. The season which was now approaching would make easier the German operations, for the submarines would soon have the long daylight of the British summer and the more favourable weather. The next few months, indeed, both in the estimation of the Germans and the British, would witness