The Victory At Sea

CHAPTER VII

THE LONDON FLAGSHIP

I

While our naval forces were thus playing their parts in several areas, the work of creating the central staff of a great naval organization was going forward in London. The headquarters for controlling extensive naval operations in many widely dispersed areas, like the headquarters of an army extending over a wide front, must necessarily be located far behind the scene of battle. Thus, a number of remodelled dwelling-houses in Grosvenor Gardens contained the mainspring for an elaborate mechanism which reached from London to Washington and from Queenstown to Corfu. On the day of the armistice the American naval forces in European waters comprised about 370 vessels of all classes, more than 5,000 officers, regulars and reserves, and more than 75,000 men; we had established about forty-five bases and were represented in practically every field of naval operations. The widespread activities of our London headquarters on that eventful day presented a striking contrast to the humble beginnings of eighteen months before.

From April to August, 1917, the American navy had a very small staff organization in Europe. During these extremely critical four months the only American naval representatives in London, besides the regular Naval Attaché and his aides, were my personal aide, Commander J. V. Babcock, and myself; and our only office in those early days was a small room in the American Embassy. For a considerable part of this time we had no stenographers and no clerical assistance of our own, though of course the Naval Attaché, Captain W. D. MacDougall, and his personnel gave us all the assistance in their power. Commander Babcock had a small typewriter, which he was able to work with two fingers, and on this he laboriously pounded out the reports which first informed the Navy Department of the seriousness of the submarine situation. The fact that Commander Babcock was my associate during this critical period was a fortunate thing for me, and a still more fortunate thing for the United States. Commander Babcock and I had been closely associated for several years; in that early period, when we, in our two persons, represented the American naval forces at the seat of Allied naval activity, we not only worked together in that little room but we lived together. Our office was alternately this room in the American Embassy and our quarters in an hotel. I had already noted Commander Babcock's abilities when he was on my staff in the Atlantic Torpedo Flotilla and when he was a student at the Naval War College; but our constant companionship throughout the war, especially during these first few strenuous months in London, gave me a still greater respect for his qualities. Many men have made vital contributions to our success in the war of whom the public scarcely ever hears even the name. A large part of the initiative and thinking which find expression in successful military action originates with officers of this type. They labour day after day and night after night, usually in subordinate positions, unselfishly doing work which is necessarily credited to other names than their own, daily lightening the burden of their chiefs, and constantly making suggestions which may control military operations or affect national policy. Commander Babcock is a striking representative of this type. My personal obligations to him are incalculable; and I am indebted to him not only for his definite services, but for the sympathy, the encouragement, and the kindly and calculated pessimism which served so well to counterbalance my temperamental optimism.

Our relations were so close, working and living together as we did, that I find it difficult to speak of "Babby's" services with restraint. But there are particular accomplishments to his credit which should go down upon this popular record. I have described the first consultations with the British naval chiefs. These were the meetings which formed the basis of the reports recommending the conditions upon which the American navy should co-operate with the Allies. Commander Babcock was constantly at my elbow during all these consultations, and was all the time independently conducting investigations in the several departments of the Admiralty. The original drafts of all my written and cabled communications to the department—reports which form a connected story of our participation in the naval war during this period—were prepared by him.

Able as Commander Babcock was, human endurance still had its limitations. A public-spirited American business man in London, Mr. R. E. Gillmor, who had formerly been an officer in the navy, begged to be accepted as a volunteer; he brought two of his best stenographers, English girls, and personally paid their salaries for several weeks while they were devoting all their time to the American navy. Subsequently he was enlisted in the naval reserves and performed very valuable services on the staff throughout nearly the entire period of the war—until ordered to America, where his technical knowledge was required in connection with certain important appliances with which he was familiar. His experience as a business man in London was of great value to our forces, and his time and energy were devoted to our service with a zeal and loyalty that endeared him to us all.

Soon afterward a number of Rhodes scholars and other young Americans then in Europe, G. B. Stockton, E. H. McCormick, T. B. Kittredge, P. F. Good, R. M. D. Richardson, H. Millard, L. S. Stevens, and J. C. Baillargeon, joined our forces as unpaid volunteers and gave us the benefit of their trained minds and European experience. Two of these, Kittredge and Stockton, both valuable workers, had been serving under Hoover in Belgium. They were all later enrolled as reserves and continued their work throughout the war. Lieutenant Stockton performed the arduous and important duties of chief business manager, or executive officer, of headquarters in a most efficient manner, and throughout the war Kittredge's previous historical training, European experience, and fine intellectual gifts made his services very valuable in the Intelligence Department.

Mr. Page, the American Ambassador, aided and encouraged us in all possible ways. Immediately after my arrival in London he invited me to call upon him and his staff for any assistance they could render. In his enthusiastic and warm-hearted way, he said: "Everything we have is yours. I will turn the Embassy into the street if necessary"; and throughout the war he was a tower of strength to the cause. He gave us his time and the benefit of his great experience and personal prestige in establishing cordial relations with the various branches of the British Government—and all this with such an absence of diplomatic formality, such courteous and forceful efficiency, and such cordial sympathy and genuine kindness that he immediately excited not only our sincere admiration but also our personal affection.

During all this period events of the utmost importance were taking place; it was within these four months that the convoy system was adopted, that armed guards were placed on merchant ships, that the first American troops were escorted to France, and that our destroyers and other worships began arriving in European waters. In July it became apparent that the strain of doing the work of a dozen men, which had been continuous during the past four months, could no longer be supported by my aide, Commander Babcock. When the destroyers and other ships arrived, we went through their lists; here and there we hit upon a man whom we regarded as qualified for responsible staff duty, and transferred him to the London headquarters. This proceeding was necessary if our essential administrative work was to be done. Among the reserves who were subsequently assigned to our forces many excellent staff officers also were developed for handling the work of communications, cipher codes, and the like. When the Colonel House Commission came over in October, 1917, I explained our necessities to the "skippers" of the two cruisers that brought the party, who promptly gave us all the desks and office equipment they could spare and sent them to Grosvenor Gardens.

In August, however, additional ships and forces began to arrive from America, and it became necessary to have larger quarters than those available in the Embassy for handling the increasing administrative work. At one time the British Government contemplated building us a temporary structure near the Admiralty, but this was abandoned because there was a shortage of material. We therefore moved into an unoccupied dwelling near the American Embassy that seemed adapted to our needs. We rented this house furnished, just as it stood; a first glimpse of it, however, suggested refined domesticity rather than naval operations. We quickly cleared the building of rugs, tapestries, lace curtains, pictures, and expensive furniture, reduced the twenty-five rooms to their original bareness, and filled every corner with office equipment. In a few days the staff was installed in this five-story residence and the place was humming with the noise of typewriters. At first we regarded the leasing of this building as something of an extravagance; it seemed hardly likely that we should ever use it all! But in a few weeks we had taken the house adjoining, cut holes through the walls and put in doors; and this, too, was filled up in an incredibly short time, so rapidly did the administrative work grow. Ultimately we had to take over six of these private residences and make alterations which transformed them into one. From August our staff increased at a rapid rate until, on the day the armistice was signed, we had not far from 1,200 officers, enlisted men, and clerical force, working in our London establishment, the commissioned staff consisting of about 200 officers, of which sixty were regulars and the remainder reserves.

I find that many people are surprised that I had my headquarters in London. The historic conception of the commander-in-chief of a naval force located on the quarterdeck of his flagship still holds the popular imagination. But controlling the operations of extensive and widely dispersed forces in a campaign of this kind is quite a different proceeding from that of directing the naval campaigns of Nelson's time, just as making war on land has changed somewhat from the method in vogue with Napoleon. The opinion generally prevails that my principal task was to command in person certain naval forces afloat. The fact is that this was really no part of my job during the war. The game in which several great nations were engaged for four years was a game involving organized direction and co-operation. It is improbable that any one nation could have won the naval war; that was a task which demanded not only that we should all exert our fullest energies, but that, so far as it was humanly possible, we should exert them as a unit. It was the duty of the United States above all nations to manifest this spirit. We had entered the war late; we had entered it in a condition of unpreparedness; our naval forces, when compared to those which had been assembled by the Allies, were small; we had not been engaged for three years combating an enemy using new weapons and methods of naval warfare. It was not unlikely that we could make some original contributions to the Allied effort; indeed, we early did so; yet it was natural to suppose that the navies which had been combating the submarines so long understood that game better than did we, and it was our duty to assist them in this work, rather than to operate independently. Moreover, this question as to whether any particular one of our methods might be better or might be worse than Great Britain's was not the most important one. The point was that the British navy had developed its own methods of working and that it was a great "going concern." The crisis was so pressing that we simply did not have the time to create a separate force of our own; the most cursory examination of conditions convinced me that we could hope to accomplish something worth while only by playing the game as it was then being played, and that any attempt to lay down new rules would inevitably decrease the effectiveness of our co-operation, and perhaps result in losing the war. We can even admit, for the sake of the argument, that the Americans might have created a better organization than the British; but the question of improving on their methods, or of not improving on them, was a point that was not worth considering; long before we could have developed an efficient independent machine the war would have come to an end. It was thus our duty to take things as they were, to plunge immediately into the conflict, and to make every ship and every man tell in the most effective way and in the shortest possible time. Therefore I decided that our forces should become, for the purpose of this war, virtually a part of the Allied navies; to place at the disposal of the Allies our ships to reinforce the weak part of their lines; to ignore such secondary considerations as national pride, naval prestige, and personal ambitions; and to subordinate every other consideration to that of defeating the Hun. I have already described how in distributing our subchasers I practically placed them at the disposal of the Allied Council; and this represents the policy that was followed in all similar matters.

The naval high commands were located at Washington, London, Paris, and Rome. Necessarily London was the headquarters of the naval war. Events which had long preceded the European conflict had made this choice inevitable. The maritime development of four centuries had prepared London for the rôle which she was now called upon to play. From all over the world naval and maritime information flowed to this great capital as though in obedience to the law of gravity. Even in peace times London knew where every ship in the world was at any particular time. All other machinery for handling this great mass of detail was necessarily accumulated in this great city, and Lloyd's, the world headquarters for merchant shipping, had now become practically a part of the British Admiralty. In this war the matter of information and communications was supremely important. Every decision that was made and every order that was issued, even those that were the least consequential, rested upon complete information which was obtainable, in time to be useful, only in London. I could not have made my headquarters in Washington, or Paris, or Rome because these cities could not have furnished the military intelligence which was needed as a preliminary to every act. For the same reason I could not have efficiently controlled the operations of all our forces from Queenstown, or Brest, or Gibraltar; the staff controlling the whole had necessarily to be located in London, and the tactical commands at these other bases must be exercised by subordinates. The British placed all their sources of information and their communications at our disposal. They literally opened their doors and made us part of their organization. I sat daily in consultation with British naval chiefs, and our officers had access to all essential British information just as freely as did the British naval officers themselves. On the day of my arrival Admiral Jellicoe issued orders that the Americans should be shown anything which they wished to see. With all this information, the most complete and detailed in the world, constantly placed at our disposal, and a spirit of confidence and friendship always prevailing which has no parallel in history, it would have defeated the whole purpose of our participation in the war had the American high command taken up its headquarters anywhere except in London.

Incidentally, there was an atmosphere in the London Admiralty which made a strong appeal to anyone who is interested in naval history. Everything about the place is reminiscent of great naval achievements. The room in which our councils met was the same old Admiralty Board room that had been used for centuries. In accordance with the spirit of British conservatism, this room is almost exactly the same now, even in its furnishings, as it was in Nelson's time. The same old wood carvings hang over the same old fireplace; the table at which we sat is the identical one at which Nelson must have sat many times, and the very silver inkstand which Nelson used was used by his successors in this war. The portrait of this great naval chieftain looked down upon us during our deliberations. Above the fireplace is painted a huge compass, and about the centre of this swings an arrow. This was a part of the Admiralty equipment of a hundred years ago, though it has no usefulness now except a sentimental one. In old days this arrow was geared to a weather vane on the roof of the Admiralty, and it constantly showed to the chiefs assembled in the council room the direction of the wind—a matter of great importance in the days of sailing ships.

All general orders and plans concerning the naval operations of British and American forces came from the Admiralty, and here officers of my staff were constantly at work. The commanders-in-chief at the various bases commanded the combined British and American ships based on those ports only in the sense that they carried out the general instructions and policies which were formulated in London. These orders, so far as they affected American forces, could be issued to the commanders-in-chief only after American headquarters in London had viséd them. Thus the American staff held the ultimate command over all the American forces which were based in British waters. The same was true of those at Brest, Gibraltar, and other stations. The commanders-in-chief executed them, and were responsible for the manner in which the forces were used in combating the enemy. The operations of which I was the commander extended over an immense area. The Plymouth and Queenstown forces represented only a part of the ultimate American naval strength in European waters and not the most important part; before the war ended, Brest, as I shall show, developed into a greater naval base than any of those which we maintained in the British Isles. Convoys were not only coming across the Atlantic but they were constantly arriving from the Mediterranean and from the South Sea, and it was the duty of headquarters in London, and not the duty of local commanders, to route these precious argosies, except in special cases, just before they reached their port of destination. Not infrequently, as previously described, it was necessary to change destinations, or to slow down convoys, or to make any number of decisions based on new information; naturally only the centre of information, the Admiralty convoy room, could serve as a clearing house for such operations. The point is that it was necessary for me to exercise the chief command of American forces through subordinates. My position in this respect was precisely the same as that of Generals Haig and Pershing; I had to maintain a great headquarters in the rear, and to depend upon subordinates for the actual execution of orders.

The American headquarters in London comprised many separate departments, each one of which was directly responsible to me as the Force Commander, through the Chief of Staff; they included such indispensable branches as the office of the Chief of Staff, Captain N. C. Twining, Chief of Staff; Assistant Chief of Staff, Captain W. R. Sexton; Intelligence Department, Commander J. V. Babcock, who also acted as Aide; Convoy Operations Section, Captain Byron A. Long; Anti-submarine Section, Captain R. H. Leigh; Aviation Section, Captain H. I. Cone, and afterward, Lieutenant-Commander W. A. Edwards; Personnel Section, Commander H. R. Stark; Communication Section, Lieutenant-Commander E. G. Blakeslee; Material Section, Captain E. C. Tobey (S.C.); Repair Section, Captain S. F. Smith (C.C.), and afterward, L. B. McBride (C.C.); Ordnance Section, Commander G. L. Schuyler, and afterward, Commander T. A. Thomson; Medical Section, Captain F. L. Pleadwell (M.C.), and afterward, Commander Edgar Thompson (M.C.); Legal Section, Commander W. H. McGrann; and the Scientific Section, Professor H. A. Bumstead, Ph.D.

I was fortunate in all of my departmental chiefs. The Chief of Staff, Captain N. C. Twining, would certainly have been a marked man in any navy; he had a genius for detail, a tireless energy, and a mastery of all the problems that constantly arose. I used to wonder when Captain Twining ever found an opportunity to sleep; he seemed to be working every hour of the day and night; yet, so far as was observable, he never wearied of his task, and never slackened in his devotion to the Allied cause. As soon as a matter came up that called for definite decision, Captain Twining would assemble from the several departments all data and information which were available concerning the question at issue, spend a few hours studying this information, and then give his judgment—an opinion which was invariably sound and which was adopted in the vast majority of cases; in fact, in all cases except those in which questions of policy or extraneous considerations dictated a different or modified decision. Captain Twining is a man of really fine intellect combined with a remarkable capacity for getting things done; without his constant presence at my elbow, my work would have been much heavier and much less successful than it was. He is an officer of such exceptional ability, such matured experience, and such forceful character as to assure him a brilliant career in whatever duty he may be called upon to perform. I can never be sufficiently grateful to him for his loyalty and devotion and for his indispensable contribution to the efficiency of the forces I had the honour to command.

In accordance with my habitual practice, I applied the system of placing responsibility upon my carefully selected heads of departments, giving them commensurate authority, and holding them to account for results. Because the task was such a great one, this was the only possible way in which the operations of the force could have been successfully conducted. I say, successfully conducted, because in a "business" of this kind, "good enough" and "to-morrow" may mean disaster; that is, it is a case of keeping both information and operations up to the minute. If the personnel and equipment of the staff are not completely capable of this, it is more than a partial failure, and the result is an ever-present danger. There were men in this great war who "went to pieces" simply because they tried to do everything themselves. This administrative vice of attempting to control every detail, even insignificant ones, to which military men seem particularly addicted, it had always been my policy to avoid. Business at Grosvenor Gardens developed to such an extent that about a thousand messages were every day received in our office or sent from it; and of these 60 per cent. were in code. Obviously it was impossible for the Force Commander to keep constantly at his finger ends all these details. All department heads, therefore, were selected because they were officers who could be depended upon to handle these matters and make decisions independently; they were all strong men, and it is to their combined efforts that the success of our operations was due. You would have to search a long time among the navies of the world before you could find an abler convoy officer than Captain Byron A. Long; an abler naval constructor than Captain L. B. McBride; an abler man to have charge of the finances of our naval forces, the purchase of supplies and all kinds of material than Captain (S.C.) Eugene C. Tobey; abler aviation officers than Captain H. I. Cone and Lieutenant-Commander W. A. Edwards; an abler chief of operations than Captain R. H. Leigh, or an abler intelligence officer than Commander J. V. Babcock. These men, and others of the fourteen department heads, acted as a kind of cabinet. Many of them handled matters which, though wholly essential to the success of the forces, were quite outside of my personal knowledge or experience, and consequently they had to be men in whose ability to guide me in such matters I could place complete confidence. As an example of this I may cite one of the duties of Captain Tobey. Nearly all of the very considerable financial transactions he was entrusted with were "Greek" to me, but he had only to show me the right place on the numerous documents, and I signed my name in absolute confidence that the interests of the Government were secure.

All cables, reports, and other communications were referred each day to the department which they concerned. The head of each department studied them, attended to the great majority on his own responsibility, and selected the few that needed more careful attention. A meeting of the Chief of Staff and all department heads was held each day, at which these few selected matters were discussed in council and decisions made. The final results of these deliberations were the only matters that were referred to me. This system of subdividing responsibility and authority not only promoted efficiency but it left the Force Commander time to attend to vitally important questions of general policy, to keep in personal touch with the high command of the Allied navies, to attend the Allied naval councils, and, in general, to keep his finger constantly on the pulse of the whole war situation. Officers of our own and other navies who were always coming in from the outlying stations, and who could immediately be placed in touch with the one man who could answer all their questions and give immediate decisions, testified to the efficient condition in which the American headquarters was maintained.

One of our departments was so novel, and performed such valuable service, that I must describe it in some detail. We took over into our London organization an idea that is advantageously used in many American industrial establishments, and had a Planning Section, the first, I think, which had ever been adopted by any navy. I detached from all other duties five officers: Captain F. H. Schofield, Captain D. W. Knox, Captain H. E. Yarnell (who exchanged places afterward with Captain L. McNamee of the Plans Section of the Navy Department), and Colonel R. H. Dunlap (of the Marines), who was succeeded by Colonel L. McC. Little, when ordered to command a regiment of Marines in France. These men made it their business to advise the Commander-in-Chief on any questions that might arise. All were graduates of the Naval War College at Newport, and they applied to the consideration of war problems the lessons which they had learned at that institution. The business of the Planning Section was to make studies of particular problems, to prepare plans for future operations, and also to criticize fully the organization and methods which were already in existence. The fact that these men had no administrative duties and that they could therefore devote all their time to surveying our operations, discovering mistakes, and suggesting better ways of doing things, as well as the fact that they were themselves scholarly students of naval warfare, made their labours exceedingly valuable. I gave them the utmost freedom in finding fault with the existing regime; there was no department and no office, from that of the Commander-in-Chief down, upon whose activities they were not at liberty to submit the fullest and the frankest reports. If anything could be done in a better way, we certainly wanted to know it. Whenever any specific problem of importance came up, it was always submitted to these men for a report. The value of such a report depended upon the completeness and accuracy of the information available, and it was the business of the Intelligence Department of the staff to supply this. If the desired information was not in their files, or the files of the Allied admiralties, or was not up to date, it was their duty to obtain it at once. The point is that the Planning Section had no other duties beyond rendering a decision, based upon a careful analysis of the facts bearing upon the case, which they submitted in writing. There was no phase of the naval warfare upon which the officers of the Planning Section did not give us reports. One of their favourite methods was to place themselves in the position of the Germans and to decide how, if they were directing German naval operations, they would frustrate the tactics of the Allies. Their records contain detailed descriptions of how merchant ships could be sunk by submarines, and these methods, our officers believed, represented a great improvement over those used by the Germans. Indeed, I think that many of these reports, had they fallen into the hands of the Germans, would have been found by them exceedingly useful. There was a general impression, in our own navy as well as in the British, that most of the German submarine commanders handled their boats unskilfully and obtained inadequate results. All these documents were given to the responsible men in our forces, as well as to the British, and had a considerable influence upon operations. The British also established a Planning Section, which worked harmoniously with our own.

A subject upon which our Planning Section liked to speculate was the possible sortie of the German fleet. The possibility of a great naval engagement filled the minds of most naval officers; and, after we had sent five of our battleships to reinforce Admiral Beatty's fleet, this topic became even more interesting to American naval men. Would the Germans ever come out? What had they to gain or to lose by such an undertaking? What were their chances of victory? Where would the engagement be fought, and what part would the several elements of modern naval warfare play in it: mines, submarines, battle-cruisers, airplanes, dirigibles, and destroyers? These were among the questions with which the Planning Section busied itself, and this problem, like many others, they approached from the German standpoint. They placed themselves in the position of the German High Command, and peered into the Grand Fleet looking for a weakness, which, had they been Germans, they might turn to account in a general engagement. The only weak spot our Planning Section could find was one which reflected the greatest credit upon the British forces. The British commander, Admiral Sir David Beatty, was a particularly dashing and heroic fighter; could not these splendid qualities really be turned to the advantage of the Germans? That Admiral Beatty would fight at the first opportunity, and that he would run all justifiable risks, if a chance presented of defeating the German fleet, was as well known to the Germans as to ourselves. The British Admiral, it was also known, did not entertain much respect for mines and torpedoes. All navies possessed what was known as a "torpedo flag." This was an emblem which was to be displayed in case torpedoes were sighted, for the purpose of warning the ships to change course or, if necessary, to desist from an attack. It was generally reported that Admiral Beatty had ordered all these torpedo flags to be destroyed; in case he once started in pursuit of the German fleet, he proposed to take his chances, dive straight through a school of approaching torpedoes, or even to rush full speed over a mine-field, making no efforts to avoid these hidden dangers. That he would probably lose some ships the Admiral well knew, but he figured—and probably correctly—that he would certainly have enough vessels left to annihilate the enemy. Still, in the judgment of our Planning Section, Admiral Beatty's assumed attitude toward "torpedo flags" gave the Germans their only possible chance of seriously injuring the Grand Fleet. They drew up a plan of attack on the Scapa Flow forces based upon this assumption. Imagining themselves directors of the German navy, they constructed large numbers of torpedo boats, submarines, and mine-fields and stationed them in a particularly advantageous position; they then proposed to send the German fleet in the direction of Scapa Flow, draw the Grand Fleet to the attack, and then lead it in the direction of the torpedoes and mines. Probably such a scheme would never have succeeded; but it represented, in the opinion of our Planning group, Germany's only chance of crippling the Grand Fleet and winning the war. In other words, had my staff found itself in Germany's position, that is the strategy which it would probably have used. I gave this report unofficially to the British Admiralty simply because I thought it might afford British officers reading that would possibly be entertaining. It is an evidence of the co-operation that existed between the two forces, and of the British disposition to accept suggestions, that this document was immediately sent to Admiral Beatty.

II

The fact that I was able ultimately to create such an organization and leave the administration of its individual departments so largely to their respective heads was especially fortunate because it gave me time for what was perhaps the most important of my duties. This was my attendance at the meetings of the Allied Naval Council, not to mention daily conferences with various officials of the Allies. This naval council was the great headquarters for combined Allied operations against the enemy on the sea. It was not officially constituted by the Allied governments until November 29, 1917, but it had actually been in continuous operation since the beginning of the war, the heads of the Allied admiralties having met frequently in conference. At these meetings every phase of the situation was discussed, and the methods finally adopted represented the mature judgment of the Allied naval chiefs who participated in them. Without this council, and without the co-operation for which it stood, our efforts would have been so dispersed and would have so overlapped that their efficiency would have been greatly decreased. This international naval conference not only had to decide questions of naval strategy, but it also had to concern itself with a multitude of practical matters which have little interest for the public, but which are exceedingly important in war. In this struggle coal, oil, and other materials played a part almost as important as ships and men; these materials, like ships and men, were limited in quantity; and it was necessary to apportion them as deliberately and as economically as the seemingly more important munitions of warfare. The Germans were constantly changing their tactics; sometimes they would make their concentrations in a certain area; while at other times their strength would appear in another field far distant from the first. These changes made it necessary that we should in each case readjust our forces to counteract the enemy's tactics. It was a vital necessity that these readjustments should be made immediately when the enemy's changes of tactics became known. It is evident that the element necessary to success was that the earliest and most complete possible information should be followed by prompt decision and action; and it is manifest that these requirements could have been satisfied only by a council which was fully informed and which was on the spot momentarily ready to act. The Allied Naval Council responded to all these requirements. One of my first duties, after my arrival, was to attend one of these councils in Paris; and immediately afterward the meetings became much more frequent.

Not only were the proceedings interesting because of the vast importance of the issues which were discussed, but because they brought me into intimate contact with some of the ablest minds in the European navies. Over the first London councils Admiral Jellicoe presided. I have already given my first impressions of this admirable sailor; subsequent events only increased my respect for his character and abilities. An English woman once described Admiral Jellicoe as "a great gentleman"; it is a description upon which I can hardly improve. The First Lord, Sir Eric Geddes, though he was by profession an engineer and had been transferred from the business of building roads and assuring the communications behind the armies in France to become the civilian head of the British navy, acquired, in an astonishingly short time, a mastery of the details of naval administration. Sir Eric is a type of man that we like to think of as American; perhaps the fact that he had received his business training in this country, and had served an apprenticeship on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, strengthened this impression. The habitués of the National Sporting Club in London—of whom I was one—used to look reproachfully at the giant figure of the First Lord; in their opinion he had sadly missed his calling. His mighty frame, his hard and supple muscles, his power of vigorous and rapid movement, his keen eye and his quick wit—these qualities, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge, would have made this stupendous Briton one of the greatest heavyweight prize-fighters in the annals of pugilism. With a little training I am sure that Sir Eric would even now make a creditable showing in the professional ring. However, the paths of this business man and statesman lay in other fields. After returning from America he had had a brilliant business career in England; he represented the type which we call "self-made men"; that is, he fought his way to the top without the aid of influential friends. His elevation to the Admiralty, in succession to Sir Edward Carson, was something new in British public life, for Sir Eric had never dabbled in politics, and, until the war started, he was practically unknown in political circles. But this crisis in British affairs made it necessary for the Ministry to "draft" the most capable executives in the nation, irrespective of political considerations; and Sir Eric, therefore, quite naturally found himself at the head of the navy. In a short time he had acquired a knowledge of the naval situation which enabled him to preside over an international naval council with a very complete grasp of all the problems which were presented. I have heard the great naval specialists who attended say that, had they not known the real fact, they would hardly have suspected that Sir Eric was not a naval man. We admired not only his ability to direct the course of discussion, and even to take an important part in it, but also his skill at summing up the results of the whole proceeding in a few terse and masterly phrases. In fine, the First Lord was a man after Roosevelt's heart—big, athletic, energetic, with a genius for reaching the kernel of a question and of getting things done.

When it came to facility of exposition, however, we Anglo-Saxons made a poor showing in comparison with most French naval officers and in particular with Admirals Lacaze and de Bon. Both these gentlemen represented the Gallic type in its finest aspects. After spending a few moments with Rear-Admiral Lacaze, it was easy to understand the real affection which all French naval officers felt for him. He is a small, slight man, with a grey, pointed beard, and he possesses that earnestness of spirit, that courtesy of manner, and that sympathy and charm which we regard as the finest attributes of the cultured Frenchman. Admiral Lacaze has also a genuine French facility of speech and that precision of statement which is so characteristic of the French intellect. A slight acquaintance would make one believe that Admiral Lacaze would be a model husband and father, perhaps grandfather; it was with surprise, however, that I learned that he was a bachelor, but I am sure that he is that kind of bachelor who is an uncle to all of the children of his acquaintance. As Minister of Marine he was the presiding officer of the council when it met in Paris.

In Vice-Admiral de Bon, chief of the French naval staff, Admiral Lacaze had a worthy colleague; he was really a man of heroic mould, and he certainly looked the part. His white hair and his white beard, cut square, gave at first glance an impression of age; yet his clear, pink skin, not ruffled by a trace of wrinkle, his erect figure, his bright blue eyes, the vigour of his conversation and the energy of his movements, betokened rather perpetual youth. Compared with the naval forces of Great Britain, the French navy was of inconsiderable size, but in Admiral de Bon it made a contribution to Allied naval strength which was worth many dreadnoughts. The reputation of this man has scarcely reached this side of the Atlantic; yet it was the general opinion of practically all naval men that his was the keenest mind at the Allied Naval Council. It was certainly the most persuasive in argument, and the one that had most influence in determining our conclusions. Not that there was anything about this great French sailor that was arrogant or offensively self-assertive. On the contrary, his manner was all compact of charm and courtesy. He was about the most persuasive person I have ever met. Whenever an important matter arose, there was some influence that made us turn instinctively to Admiral de Bon for enlightenment; and, when he rose to talk, the council hung upon his every word. For the man was a consummate orator. Those who understood French even slightly had little difficulty in following the Admiral, for he spoke his delightful language with a precision, a neatness of phrase, and a clearness of enunciation which made every syllable intelligible. So perfect did these speeches seem that one would have suspected that Admiral de Bon had composed them at his leisure, but this was not the case; the man apparently had only to open his mouth, and his speech spontaneously flowed forth; he never hesitated for a word. And his words were not only eloquent, but, as I have said, they were full of substance. The charm which he manifested on these public occasions he carried likewise into his domestic life. Whenever the council met in Paris the Admiral's delightful wife and daughters entertained us at luncheon—an experience which caused many of us to regret that it did not always meet in that city.

The other two members of this interesting group were Rear-Admiral Funakoshi, representing the Japanese navy, and Vice-Admiral di Revel, representing the Italian. The Japanese was also naval attaché at London, and the popularity which he had acquired in this post he also won in the larger field. In some respects, he was not like the conventional notion of a Japanese; physically he did not fulfil the accepted rôle, for he was tall and heavily built; nor was there anything about him that was "inscrutable"; the fact was that he was exceedingly frank and open, and apparently loved nothing so much as a good joke. The remark of a London newspaper that Admiral di Revel, the Italian, "unlike Admiral Sims, looks every inch the sailor," caused Admiral Funakoshi much amusement; he could not resist the temptation to chaff me about it. We all became so well acquainted that, in our lighter moments, we did not mind having a little fun at one another's expense; and in these passages the Japanese representative did not always make the poorest showing. The Italian, di Revel, was a source of continual delight. Someone remarked that he was in reality an Irishman who had escaped into Italy; and this facetious characterization was really not inapt. His shock of red hair, his reddish beard, and his short, stocky figure almost persuaded one that County Cork was his native soil. He delivered his opinions with an insistence which indicated that he entertained little doubt about their soundness; he was not particularly patient if they were called in question; yet he was so courteous, so energetic, and so entertaining that he was a general favourite. That his Government appreciated his services is shown by the fact that it made di Revel a full admiral, a rank which is rarely bestowed in Italy.

Such, then, were the men who directed the mighty forces that defeated the German submarines. The work at the councils was arduous, yet the opportunity of associating with such men in such a task is one that comes to few naval officers. They all worked with the most indomitable spirit; not one of them ever for a moment showed the slightest discouragement over a situation which was at times disquieting, to say the least; not one faltered in the determination to force the issue to the only logical end. History has given few examples of alliances that worked harmoniously. The Allied Naval Council did its full share in making harmonious the Allied effort against the submarine.

CHAPTER VIII

SUBMARINE AGAINST SUBMARINE

I

It is not improbable that I have given a false impression concerning the relative merits of the several methods which were developed for fighting the submarine. Destroyers, patrol boats, subchasers, and mystery ships all accomplished great things in solving the most baffling problem presented by the war. The belief is general that the most successful hunter of the submarine was the destroyer, and, so far as absolute figures are concerned, this is true. Destroyers, with their depth charges and their gunfire, sank more U-boats than any other agency. One type of craft, however, proved a more destructive enemy of the submarine than even the destroyer. That was a warship of whose achievements in this direction little has so far been heard. The activities of the German submarine have completely occupied public attention; and this is perhaps the reason why few newspaper readers have suspected that there were other than German and Austrian submarines constantly operating at sea. Everyone has heard of the U-boats, yet how many have heard anything of the H-boats, the E-boats, the K-boats, and the L-boats? The H-, E-, and K-boats were British submarines, and the L-boats were American submarines. In the destruction of the German under-water craft these Allied submarines proved more successful than any kind of surface ship. The Allied destroyers, about 500 in number, sank 34 German submarines with gunfire and depth charges; auxiliary patrol craft, such as trawlers, yachts, and the like, about 3,000 in number, sank 31; while the Allied submarines, which were only about 100 in number, sank 20. Since, therefore, the Allies had about five times as many destroyers as submarines at work, it is evident that the record of the latter vessels surpasses that of the most formidable surface anti-submarine craft.

Thus the war developed the fact that the most deadly enemy of the submarine is the submarine itself. Underwater warfare is evidently a disease in which like cures like. In a way this is the most astonishing lesson of the naval operations. It is particularly interesting, because it so completely demolishes all the ideas on this subject with which we entered the war. From that day in history when the submarine made its first appearance, the one quality which seemed to distinguish it from all other kinds of warship was that it could not be used to fight itself. Writers were fond of pointing out that battleship could fight battleship, that cruiser could fight cruiser, that destroyer could fight destroyer, but that submarine could not fight submarine. This supposed quality, which was constantly emphasized, was what seemed to make the introduction of this strange vessel such a dangerous thing for the British Empire. For more than a hundred years the under-water boat was a weapon which was regarded as valuable almost exclusively to the weaker sea powers. In the course of the nineteenth century this engine of sea fighting made many spectacular appearances; and significantly it was always heralded as the one effective way of destroying British domination at sea.

The inventor of the modern submarine was an undergraduate of Yale named David Bushnell; his famous Turtle, according to the great British authority, Sir William White, formerly Chief Naval Constructor of the British navy, contained every fundamental principle of "buoyancy, stability, and control of depth" which are found in the modern submarine; "it cannot be claimed," he said in 1905, "that any new principle of design has been discovered or applied since Bushnell.... He showed the way to all his successors.... Although alternative methods of fulfilling essentials have been introduced and practically tested, in the end Bushnell's plans in substance have been found the best." The chief inspiration of Bushnell's work was a natural hostility to Great Britain, which was at that time engaged in war with his own country; his submarine, invented in 1777, was intended to sink the British warships which were then anchored off the American coast, break the communications of Great Britain with her revolting colonies, and in this way win our liberty. Bushnell did not succeed in this ambitious enterprise for reasons which it is hardly necessary to set forth in this place; the fact which I wish to emphasize is that he regarded his submarine as an agency which would make it possible for the young United States, a weak naval power, to deprive Great Britain, the dominant sea power, of its supremacy. His successor, Robert Fulton, was inspired by a similar ambition. In 1801 Fulton took his Nautilus into the harbour of Brest, and blew a merchant vessel into a thousand pieces; this dramatic experiment was intended to convince Napoleon that there was one way in which he could destroy the British fleet and thus deprive England of her sea control. Dramatic as this demonstration was, it did not convince Napoleon of the value of the submarine; Fulton therefore took his ship to England and exhibited it to William Pitt, who was then Prime Minister. The great statesman was much impressed, but he did not regard the submarine as an innovation that should arouse much enthusiasm in England. "If we adopt this kind of fighting," he said, "it will be the end of all navies."

Despite his own forebodings, Pitt sent Fulton to St. Vincent, who was then the First Lord of the Admiralty.

"Pitt is the biggest fool in the world," remarked the head of the victorious British navy. "Why does he encourage a kind of warfare which is useless to those who are the masters of the sea, and which, if it succeeds, will deprive them of this supremacy?"

The reason for St. Vincent's opposition is apparent. He formed the conception of the submarine which has prevailed almost up to the present time. In his opinion, a submarine was a vessel which could constantly remain under the surface, approach great warships unseen and blow them to pieces at will. This being the case, a nation which possessed two or three successfully working engines of this kind could apparently wipe out the entire British fleet. It therefore needed no argument to show that this was a weapon which was hardly likely to prove useful to the British navy. If the submarine could fulfil its appointed mission, it would give the control of the sea to that nation which used it successfully; but since Great Britain already controlled the sea, the new type of war craft was superfluous to her. In the hands of a weak naval power, however, which had everything to gain and nothing to lose, it might supply the means of overthrowing the British Empire. Could one submarine destroy another, it would present no particular menace, for then, in order to control the sea, it would merely be necessary to build a larger under-water fleet than that of any prospective enemy: but how could vessels which spent all their time under the water, in the dark, ever get a chance to come to blows? From these considerations it seemed apparent to St. Vincent and other British experts of his time that the best interests of the British Empire would be served, not by developing the submarine, but by suppressing it. Fulton's biographer intimates that the British Government offered Fulton a considerable amount of money to take his submarine back to America and forget about it; and there is a letter of Fulton's to Lord Granville, saying that "not for £20,000 a year would I do what you suggest." But there seemed to be no market for his invention, and Fulton therefore returned to America and subsequently gave all his time to exploiting the steamboat. On the defensive powers of the under-water vessel he also expressed the prevailing idea. "Submarine," he said, "cannot fight submarine."

The man who designed the type of submarine which has become the standard in all modern navies, John P. Holland, similarly advocated it as the only means of destroying the British navy. Holland was an American of Irish origin; he was a member of the Fenian brotherhood, and it was his idea that his vessel could be used to destroy the British navy, blockade the British coast, and, as an inevitable consequence, secure freedom for Ireland. This is the reason why his first successful boat was known as the Fenian Ram, despite the fact that it was not a "ram" at all. And the point on which Holland always insisted was that the submarine vessel was a unique vessel in naval warfare, because there was no "answer" to it. "There is nothing that you can send against it," he gleefully exclaimed, "not even itself."

Parliamentary debates in the late nineties indicated that British naval leaders entertained this same idea. In 1900, Viscount Goschen, who was then the First Lord of 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 its enemy and discharges its torpedo. Yet the description which these pages have already given of its operations shows the falsity of this idea. It is important that we should keep constantly in mind the fact that the submarine is only occasionally a submarine; and that for the greater part of its career it is a surface boat. In the long journeys which the German U-boats made from the Heligoland Bight around Scotland and Ireland to those great hunting grounds which lay in the Atlantic trade routes, they travelled practically all the time on the surface of the water. The weary weeks during which they cruised around, looking for their victims, they also spent almost entirely on the surface. There were virtually only two circumstances which compelled them to disappear beneath the waves. The first of these was the occasion on which the submarine detected a merchant ship; in this case it submerged, for the success of its attempt to torpedo depended entirely upon its operating unseen. The second occasion which made it necessary to submerge was when it spied a destroyer or other dangerous patrolling craft; the submarine, as has been said, could not fight a vessel of this type with much chance of success. Thus the ability to submerge was merely a quality that was utilized only in those crises when the submarine either had to escape a vessel which was stronger than itself or planned to attack one which was weaker.

The time taken up by these disappearances amounted to only a fraction of the total period consumed in a cruise. Yet the fact that the submarine had to keep itself momentarily ready to make these disappearances is precisely the reason why it was obliged to spend the larger part of its time on the surface. The submarine has two sets of engines, one for surface travel and the other for subsurface travel. An oil-engine propels it on the top of the water, but this consumes a large amount of air, and, for this reason, it cannot be used when travelling under the surface. As soon as the vessel dives, therefore, it changes its motive power to an electric motor, which makes no inroads on the oxygen needed for sustaining the life of its crew. But the physical limitation of size prevents the submarine from carrying large storage batteries, which is only another way of saying that its cruising radius under the water is extremely small, not more than fifty or sixty miles. In order to recharge these batteries and gain motive power for subsurface travel, the submarine has to come to the surface. Yet the simple fact that the submarine can accomplish its destructive work only when submerged, and that it can avoid its enemy only by diving, makes it plain that it must always hold itself in readiness to submerge on a moment's notice and remain under water the longest possible time. That is, its storage batteries must always be kept at their highest efficiency; they must not be wasted by unnecessary travelling under the water; the submarine, in other words, must spend all its time on the surface, except those brief periods when it is attempting to attack a merchant ship or escape an enemy. Almost the greatest tragedy in the life of a submarine is to meet a surface enemy, such as a destroyer, when its electric batteries are exhausted. It cannot submerge, for it can stay submerged only when it is in motion, unless it is in water shallow enough to permit it to rest on the bottom. Even though it may have a little electricity, and succeed in getting under water, it cannot stay there long, for its electric power will soon be used up, and therefore it is soon faced with the alternative of coming to the surface and surrendering, or of being destroyed. The success of the submarine, indeed its very existence, depends upon the vessel spending the largest possible part of its time upon the surface, keeping its full supply of electric power constantly in reserve, so that it may be able to dive at a moment's notice and to remain under the water for the maximum period.

This purely mechanical limitation explains why the German submarine was not a submarine in the popularly accepted meaning of that term. Yet the fact that this vessel remained for the greater part of its existence on the surface was no particular disadvantage, so long as it was called upon to contend only with surface vessels. Even with the larger part of its decks exposed the U-boat was a comparatively small object on the vast expanse of the sea. I have already made clear the great disadvantage under which destroyers and other patrolling vessels laboured in their attempts to "hunt" this type of enemy. A destroyer, small as it is, was an immensely larger object than the under-water boat, and the consequence was that the lookout on a submarine, proceeding along on the surface, could detect the patrolling vessel long before it could be observed itself. All the submarine had to do, therefore, whenever the destroyer appeared on the horizon, was to seek safety under water, remain there until its pursuer had passed out of sight, and then rise again and resume its operations. Before the adoption of the convoy system, when the Allied navies were depending chiefly upon the patrol—that is, sending destroyers and other surface craft out upon the high seas to hunt for the enemy—the enemy submarines frequently operated in the same areas as the patrol vessels, and were only occasionally inconvenienced by having to keep under the water to conceal their presence. But let us imagine that the destroyer, in addition to its depth charges, its torpedoes, its guns, and its ability to ram, had still another quality. Suppose, for a moment, that, like the submarine, it could steam submerged, put up a periscope which would reveal everything within the radius of a wide horizon, and that, when it had picked up an enemy submarine, it could approach rapidly under the water, and discharge a torpedo. It is evident that such a manœuvre as this would have deprived the German of the only advantage which it possessed over all other war craft—its ability to make itself unseen.

No destroyer can accomplish any such magical feat as this: indeed, there is only one kind of vessel that can do so, and that is another submarine. This illustration immediately makes it clear why the Allied submarine itself was the most destructive enemy of the German submarine. When Robert Fulton, John P. Holland, and other authorities declared that the under-water vessel could not fight its own kind, it is evident that they had not themselves foreseen the ways in which their inventions were to be used. They regarded their craft as ships that would sail the larger part of the time under the waves, coming up only occasionally to get their bearings and to take in a fresh supply of air. It was plain to these pioneers that vessels which spent practically all their time submerged could not fight each other, for the sufficient reason that they could not see each other; a combat under these conditions would resemble a prize-fight between two blindfolded pugilists. Neither would such vessels fight upon the surface, for, even though they were supplied with guns—things which did not figure in the early designs of submarines—one boat could decline the combat simply by submerging. In the minds of Fulton and Holland an engagement between such craft would reduce itself to mutual attempts to ram each other under the water, and many fanciful pictures of the early days portrayed exciting deep-sea battles of this kind, in which submarines, looking like mighty sea monsters, provided with huge glaring headlights, made terrific lunges at each other. None of the inventors foresaw that, in such battles as would actually take place, the torpedo would be used, and that the submarine which was defeated would succumb to one of those same stealthy attacks which it was constantly meditating against surface craft.

Another point of the highest importance is that in a conflict of submarine against submarine the Allied boats had one great advantage over the German. Hans Rose and Valentiner and Moraht and other U-boat commanders, as already explained, had to spend most of their time on the surface in order to keep their batteries fully supplied with electricity, in readiness for the dives that would be necessary when the Allied destroyers approached. But the Allied submarine commander did not have to maintain this constant readiness; the reason, it is hardly necessary to say, is that the Allied submarine had no surface enemies, for there were no German surface craft operating on the high seas; the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow was carefully attending to that very essential detail. Occasionally, indeed, our submarines were attacked by our own destroyers, but accidents of this kind, though uncomfortably frequent, were not numerous enough to interfere with the operation I have in mind. The statement seems almost like a contradiction in terms, yet it is entirely true, that, simply because the Allied submarines did not have to hold themselves constantly ready to submerge, they could in fact spend a considerable part of their time under the water, for they were not compelled to economize electric power so strictly. This gave them a great advantage in hunting the U-boats. British and American submarines could fully charge their batteries, drop under water and cruise around with enough speed to maintain a horizontal position at "periscope depth," that is, a depth just sufficient to enable them to project the periscope above the water whenever desired. This speed was so very slow—about one mile an hour—that it could be kept up an entire day without exhausting the electric batteries.

The net result was this: The German submarine necessarily sailed most of the time on the surface with its conning-tower and deck exposed, whereas the Allied submarine when on its hunting grounds, spent all of the daylight hours under water, with only the periscope visible from time to time for a few seconds. Just as the German U-boat could "spot" an Allied destroyer at a great distance without being itself seen, so could the periscope invariably see the German submarine on the surface long before this tiny object came within the view of a U-boat conning-tower. Our submarine commander could remain submerged, sweep the ocean with his periscope until he had picked up the German enemy; then, still under water, and almost invariably unseen, he could steal up to a position within range, and discharge a torpedo into its fragile side. The German submarine received that same treatment which it was itself administering to harmless merchantmen; it was torpedoed without warning; inasmuch, however, as it was itself a belligerent vessel, the proceeding violated no principle of international law.