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cations. No single one of those incidents was of the slightest military importance, though, unfortunately, loss of life resulted.

The fourth year of naval war opens with the British fleet commanding the seas with a success which was never anticipated in the years before the war. It is on the offensive every day and all the day, as well as by night, as the Germans have learned to their cost. Our vast naval engine somewhat resembles a fan. In August of 1914, we hardly realized its size and its strength as it lay hidden, far more completely than today, behind the fog of war. With the progress of hostilities it has been spread out, until today it covers the oceans of the world. There is no sea in which a British squadron is not on service; vast auxiliary forces numbering not far short of 3,000 keels, have come into existence, each vessel deftly fitting into the general scheme.

out. The base, on which the effective strength of the outspreading stems depends, consists of the grand fleet, with its battleships, its battle cruisers, its light cruisers, its destroyers, its submarines, and its great assembly of auxiliary craft. The outer squadrons on duty in the English Channel and Atlantic, in the White Sea and the Bay of Biscay, off Gibraltar and in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea and in the Persian Gulf, off the Cape of Good Hope and the east Coast of Africa, in the East Indies, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, constitute the stems of the naval fan, the intervals between which are filled in with destroyers, patrol vessels, monitors, mine sweepers, and other complementary craft. There has never been an organization comparable to that which today supports our every war effort. Its virtue lies, not in the ships of steel or wood, but in the men. A third year of war has tested the seamen of our age as the seamen of

The fan has gradually been opened the last great war were never tested.

Submarine Sinkings in Eight Months

FOLLO

Total Ship Tonnage of 4,561,000 Sunk Since the
Beginning of Germany's Intensified U-Boat Campaign
By Charles H. Grasty

War Correspondent of The New York Times
[Copyrighted]

London, Sept. 9, 1917.

OLLOWING, in terms of tonnage, are the monthly sinkings by German submarines from January to August, inclusive, the figures being for the Allies and neutrals in the aggregate, but not including raider losses and ships damaged or beached but not sunk. The weekly averages are given for purposes of comparison:

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Against the loss of about four and a half million tons in eight months new construction is estimated at less than a million tons, leaving the net loss to allied and neutral shipping at about three and a half million tons. The loss to American shipping is said to have been less than one-half of 1 per cent.

While the decline in the shipping loss in July and August was substantial, it cannot be regarded as satisfactory, and the situation continues to call for the kind of activity demanded by a great emergency. America's opportunity for service lies more immediately and urgently in the direction of putting down the submarine menace than even in sending soldiers to France, all-important as that is. In fact, these two matters are inseparably connected.

As submarine attack and defense are reduced to a business, a good deal of mystery surrounding the war under water is clearing up and commonplace facts are becoming known. The popular mind pictures the waters off the British coast as swarming with submarines. It is a matter of general knowledge in naval circles now that the number of German submarines in the Atlantic Ocean never exceeds twenty and that the number operating in the North Atlantic off the British coast does not exceed ten. These figures do not include submarines engaged exclusively in mine laying.

It is estimated in the best British naval circles that Germany has not built as many as 300 submarines altogether, and that about 150 of all conditions are in existence today.

The U-boat is of very delicate mechanism and needs frequent repairing, which, in the main, explains the small number operating in the Atlantic and elsewhere. Most of the boats are being repaired or replenished constantly and out of commission.

Still another reason is the difficulty in getting crews and keeping them going. The work is so hard and the dangers are so constant that officers and crews peter out. After a few months the men lose their appetite and cannot sleep.

The internal arrangements of a submarine are such as to make life on one of them extremely trying. Plumbing fixtures, kitchens, and eating facilities are jumbled together, and ventilation is necessarily bad. It is very difficult to maintain whole crews in service.

Another difficulty, and one constantly increasing, is the shortage of material for torpedoes. Wild shots are much more frequent than formerly.

The multiplication of destroyers has greatly increased the nerve-racking character of submarine duty. U-boat navigators are deathly afraid of the destroyers, with their speed, guns, and depth bombs. The presence of destroyers and other patrol boats in force in the English Channel explains the immunity of transports which have carried millions of soldiers back and forth

between France and England without serious loss.

Cannot Raid in Fleets

Another submarine weakness which impedes operation and shakes the nerves of U-boat men is the blindness of their craft. When submerged they cannot see, and there have been many collisions. For this reason they cannot operate in companies, which furnishes still another explanation of the small number utilized.

As is well known, the submarine, when submerged, must keep in motion, as it cannot otherwise maintain its equilibrium. When it stops it is liable to “upend."

It is clear, therefore, that the submarine campaign, as it now stands, is one depending upon hysterical courage. Germany lashed herself into a spasmlike fury in the early months of last Winter, and the peak of her effort was reached in April, when the sinkings aggregated about 200,000 tons a week. In order to accomplish this extraordinary result extraordinary means were used which it was impossible to sustain in subsequent months. The comparatively low figures of July and August represent, to some extent, the reaction from the high pitch of energy in April.

There is much gratified comment here on the action of Washington in placing increased orders for the construction of destroyers, and the period subsequent to Jan. 1, 1918, is looked forward to confidently. The next four months are necessarily to be a time of anxiety, and America is relied upon fully to employ her superb energy and resourcefulness in protecting allied interests during that dangerous period.

The principle of the convoy system has been soundly established by the experience of the last few months. Naval authorities hold that it is clear that shipping can be protected by escorting vessels. It is only a matter of having enough cruisers and destroyers. With an adequate number of these vessels the destruction of shipping can be reduced to the point of new construction, and whenever that is done Germany will bite the dust.

An Eloquent Statement of War Aims and

Mutual Relations of Britain and America

Walter Hines Page, the United States Ambassador to Great Britain, delivered a speech at Plymouth, England, on Aug. 4, 1917, which moved the great gathering in the Guildhall to enthusiasm and was later printed in full in the London papers. The most striking portions are here presented as worthy of permanent record.

I

AM glad to stand in this town and

at the beginning of this new era in the life of our race to pledge the unwavering fellowship of free men across the sea-the sea that once separated us, but that now unites us. I pay homage here to the immortal memory of those sturdy men who sailed from this harbor nearly three hundred years ago and carried to the making of our New World that love of freedom which now impels us to come to the defense of the imperiled freedom of the world. The idealism of the Republic rests on their unconquerable spirit, which we keep yet, thank God, when a high duty calls us. In memory of them, and in the comradeship of this righteous war, whose awful shadow will darken the world till we win it, I greet you as kinsmen.

We are met on the most tragic anniversary in history. It is not a day to celebrate for its own sake. What we shall be glad to celebrate will be the day of victory and its anniversary ever afterward. But, before we achieve victory, it is fit that we meet on this dire anniversary to fortify our purpose, if it need fortifying, and to pledge ourselves that the brave men who have died shall not have died in vain and to reassert our purpose to finish the task, even if it exhaust the vast resources and take all the valiant lives of the Allies in Europe and of the Republic across the sea. For what would the future of the human race be worth if the deliberate and calculated barbarism of our enemies overrun the earth? The supreme gift of free government, which this brave island gave to the world, and to which all free lands chiefly owe their freedom, would be swept away. Let the darkness of death overtake us now rather than that the

darkness of tyranny should sweep over the whole world of free men.

No American can come to Plymouth without thinking of the going of the English from these shores to the new land, where they set up a new freedom and laid the foundations of the most prosperous and hopeful community on the earth. In the course of time those New World communities fell apart from political allegiance to the old land. But they fell apart from the old land only in political allegiance. If we had need to discuss this political divergence, I should maintain that political separation was as well for you as it was necessary for us, and that by reason of it human freedom has been further advanced and a new chapter in free men's growth opened throughout the English-speaking world.

Race Which Endured

The American Revolution was a civil war fought on each side by men of the same race. And this civil war was fought in the Colonial Assemblies and in Parliament as well as on the battlefields in America, and it was won in the Colonial Assemblies and in Parliament as well as on the battlefields in America, for from that day on you have regarded colonies as free and equal communities with the mother country. This civil war naturally left a trail of distrust, the greater because of the long distance between us by sail. But, when the first steamship came over the ocean, and still more when the cable bound us together, a new union began to come about. But in the meantime the American community had developed in its own way, and we had become so fixed and different in our conventions and ways of life that we could not easily come back to your

conventions and ways of life if we would. In fact, there is no other test that the British people have had—no test that any people has ever had-which proved its great qualities so well as the British settlement and management of America. Here were men in a new land, cut off from close contact with their kinsmen at home, who took their political affairs in their own management, and thereafter were without guidance or support from their more numerous kinsmen left behind.

How did the race stand such a test? No other migrating race has stood such a test so well; and those first English colonists have now grown, by natural increase and by numerous adoptions, into a people which today include more English-speaking white men than the whole British Empire. They have not only outgrown in numbers all the British elsewhere, but they have kept what may be called the faith of the race. They have kept the racial and national characteristics. They have kept British law, British freedom, British Parliaments, British

character.

I am not boasting of my own land; I am only reciting how your race has endured and survived separation from you and your land. Our foundations were British; our political structure is British, with variations; our social structure is British-also with important variations; more important still, our standards of character and of honor and of duty are your standards; and life and freedom have the same meaning to us that they have to you. These are the essential things, and in these we have always been

one.

And now the day of our supreme test and of the heroic mood is come. There is now a race reason why we should have a complete understanding; and such a complete understanding has come. You will, I hope, pardon me for even alluding to our old differences; for they are now long-forgotten, far-off things. I allude to them only to clear the way. It is not the going of the Pilgrims nor the falling away of the colonies that we now celebrate, but rather the coming of American warships, which symbolize the new union of the two peoples that this fierce

assault on our civilization has revealed afresh. Politically two peoples, in all high aims and in the love of freedom we are one, and must now remain at one forever.

Differences Swept Away

This war has swept away incidental differences between us as a harrow smoothes a field. Not only are our warships come. Our troopships, too, have landed an army on the soil of our brave ally, where the enemy yet keeps the wavering line of an invader, and more warships will come and more troopships, million-laden, if need be, till that line is forever broken and till the submarines are withdrawn or are forever submerged. There is coming the greatest victory for free government that was ever won, and the day of this victory which we are both fighting for may turn out to be the most important date in our history, or perhaps in all history. And the necessity to win it has cleared the air as no other event in modern times has cleared it; and but for the millions of brave lives it has cost, this clearing of the air would richly repay all that the war will cost. It has revealed the future of the world to us not as conquerors, but as preservers of its peace. The free, peace-loving nations will have no more of this colossal, armed, and ordered pillage; and no combination of the peace-loving nations can be made effective without both branches of the English-speaking peoples. This empire and the great Republic must then be the main guardians of civilization hereafter, the conscious and leagued guardians of the world.

It is this that the war has revealed to us. It is not a task of our seeking. But it is a task that we will, with the other free peoples of the world, gladly undertake. To undertake it, our comradeship must become perpetual, and our task is to see to it that it be not broken nor even strained our task and our children's task after us. It is, of course, the function of Governments to keep friendly nations in proper relations to one another; and both our nations fortunately can and do trust both our Governments to do that. Through all the difficulties and differences that arose between our two

Governments during the early stages of the war, there was no rupture of friendly dealing. When the full story of these years of delicate relations comes to be told it will be seen that mutual toleration and forbearance played a far larger part than a rigid insistence on disputed points. Such differences as we had were differences between friends. I am sure that

I may say with propriety that the two, distinguished British statesmen who were his Majesty's Chief Foreign Secretaries during this period showed a spirit in their dealings with the United States Government that put the whole Englishspeaking world in their debt; and I am sure that they would say the same for the Government of the United States.

Mutual Knowledge

But while, fortunately, our two Governments may be fully trusted to bind us together, Governments come and Governments go. Far more important than any particular Government is the temper and action of public opinion in free countries such as ours. The complete and permanent union in all large aims of our two nations, generation after generation, must, therefore, rest on the broad base of a friendly and informed public opinion in both countries. If this argument be sound it leads us-every one of us-to a high duty. The lasting friendship of two democratic nations must rest on the sympathetic knowledge that the people of each nation have of the other-even upon the personal friendships of large numbers of people one with another. Personal friendships make a friendly public opinion. It is, therefore, the highest political duty that Britons and Americans can have to build up personal

knowledge of one another and personal friendships.

[Here Mr. Page urged the use of new textbooks in the schools of both England and America-simple and interesting books that should teach the youth of each nation to appreciate the qualities of the other. He concluded:]

Most valuable of all the activities that

lead to a permanent sympathy is our present fellowship in war. American fighting units are come and very many more will come. They all work side by side with your men and with the French. And most of these, of course, are young men, and, like your young men, the flower of our race. Now these are forming companionships that nothing can sever. Men who go forth to die together, if fate so will it, understand one another as long as they survive. Beside the comradeship of arms, formed where death comes swift and frequently, other companionships seem weak. For men's naked souls are then bared to one another. In this extremest trial that man ever underwent anywhere at any time the high emotions and the guns are at work; everything else of life is still or pushed out of consciousness. And men who come together then are forever inseparable. Already there's many a corner of a foreign land that is forever England; and presently there'll be many a corner of a foreign land that is an American grave also.

Those that die and those that live will hereafter alike so bind our two peoples in mutual understanding that any disturber of that understanding will but play the poor part of a sacrilegious fool.

A New Covenant Between the Great English-Speaking Nations

This noteworthy editorial article appeared in The London Telegraph on Aug. 16, 1917, under the title, "A New Covenant":

FOR

NOR the first time in history, a body of American troops marched through the streets of London yesterday. They made their way to Buck

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