NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16268, 19 July 1918, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A recent cable message stated that M. Leygues, French Minister of Marine, in an interview on France's Day, presented the first record of the French Navy's service. M. Leygues probably presented the first official record of the work of the French Navy, but a special correspondent of "The Times,*' who was privileged to make a tour of inspection of the French naval forces, has given a very complete description of the part being played.

"It is common knowledge," the correspondent states, "that the great bulk of the French Fleet is in the Mediterranean. Tho smaller vessels that remain on the and north-west coasts of France are practically all engaged in one way or another in the fignt with the submarines. That was and is truo of every single one of the soa-going boats in the inner harbour of the first of the great naval ports which I visited tho otiier day on the invitation of tne French Admiralty. Lying alongside tne massive stono quay, wun tiieir bows pointing seawaids, was a long row of slender, giey, gnm-iooking i) tench submarines, among tnem a British boat, just arrived in port, no longer in her fust youth, but still lull of lire and fight. Close by a buncn of American destroyers were being warped into position alongside each other against tho high sea-wall. Further out two of the transports that the American destroyers had escorted across the Atlantic, carrying troops, were being unloaded. The bigger of the two transports, in other days a well-known German liner, presonted, with its surrounding cluster of tugs and lighters, an indistinguishable junglo of hulls and masts and air-shafts, half hidden in the smoke of its forest of funnels. Inside it. and beyond it towards the long breakwater, a number of graceful rican yachts and French and Britisii trawlers, wore riding at anchor, and in and out between them went launches and gunboats of various sizes.

"The flotillas which pass up and down the French Atlantic soaboard liotween England and Spain vary in number from two to thirty, or oven more, the principle being that the vessels in any given convoy must all be of the same average speed. Besides furnishing, with some help from American boats, escorts to these convoys while in Fronch waters, the French Navy also sends larger destroyers several hundred miles out to sea to Eject the transports coming from America and accompany them into port over the last and most dangorous part of the passage across; so far not a single one of these transports has been torpedoed on its way to a French harbour. Coastwise traffic has not been so fortunate, but that, on account of its much greater volume and lower speod, is only natural. When one thinks of the considerable number of U-boats that manage to creep down channel or round the north coast of Scotland, and then lie off the French coast right in the track of the convoys, the really astonishing thing is that they- do not make themselves much more, felt than they do. There are two main reasons for their comparative harmlessncss—their dread, first of all, of the fast gunboats and aircraft by which they are constantly being chased; and, secondly, of the guns of the escorts accompanying the convoys. They are also bothered by tho numerous rocks and fierce currents of this part of tho coast—far more effective than nets —which prevent them from going as close inshore as they would like. Still, they are bound to be troublesome, and the difficulties of the men whose business it is to protect the convoys are greatly increased by the fact that many of tho boats belong to neutral nations, and are often as ignorant of the business-like discipline of the French Navy as they are of the French language and code of naval signals.

"In the course of a fivo or sis hours' trip in an 800-ton gunboat, with the admiral in charge of the whole organisation on board, we overtook and passed one flotaua and met anouier coining in tne ojjjjosue uueouun. it was a o uno

kUiit iiiiU liitO U« itiy, ixcaa uixa Wltn juot wnwu&n as yub out uik» tuo xvucuibiu to iuu&e an ocuuaioiiai naiiuniuu a gtaunm we wert> going tmuugn winig was jjicpiueu xoi action una possioio emeigonc.es, meDoiis jymg nandy' ou Hie iHiia unci in toe ouais, guns reauy loaned, and sinoke-oaiis ana deptncnaiges in tlieir pioper places, 'Inore wore nve or six looK-outs, eacn responsible lor his own sector of the surrounding sea and horizon, and five seaplanes circling round or scouting ahead and *,n eitner side of the boat. After about an hour's run a smudge of smoke on the skyline, which rapidly thickened into a black cloud, showed that wo were overtaking the small convoy which had left earlier in the morning, and soon after we had overnauleci and passed them another larger cloud came into view, from which, little by little, first the hulls and then the masts and funnels of a flotilla of about a dozen tramps emerged, steaming, along in two columns, with an escort of several French and American boats. Energetic steps are being taken to reinforce the present supply of French shipping, and as soon as that is an accomplished fact it seems to me that the menace of the TJ-boat in these waters will become a thing of the past. Meanwhile, the oniet: heroism with which the sailors ,f France dral with it is worthy of the best traditions of the French Navy."