Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/91

 this time that we were seeking a solution for the submarine problem we really had that solution in our hands. The seas presented two impressive spectacles in those terrible months of April, May, and June, 1917. One was the comparative ease with which the German sub- marines were sinking merchant vessels; the other was their failure materially to weaken the Allied fleets. If we wish a counter-picture to that presented by the Irish Sea and the English Channel, where merchant shipping was constantly going down, we should look to the North Sea, where the British Grand Fleet, absolutely intact, was defiantly riding the waves. The uninformed public explained this apparent security in a way of its own; it believed that the British dreadnoughts were anchored behind booms, nets, and mine-fields, through which the submarines could not penetrate. Yet the fact of the matter was that the Grand Fleet was frequently cruising in the open sea, in the waters which were known to be the most infested with submarines. The German submarines had been attempting to destroy this fleet for two and a half years. It had been their plan to weaken this great battle force by "attrition"; to sink the great battleships one by one, and in this way to reduce the fighting power of the fleet to such a point that the German dreadnoughts could have some chances of success. Such had been the German programme, widely heralded at the beginning of the war; nearly three years had now passed, but how had this pretentious scheme succeeded ? The fact was that the submarines had not destroyed a single dreadnought. It was certainly a profitable study in contrasts—that of merchant ships constantly being torpedoed and that of battleships constantly repelling such attacks.