The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, March 20, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1376, 20 March 1915, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, March 20, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

So much has been heard of German submarines during the present war that it is interesting to learn that an expert considers the British submarine service has made more use of its limited op* portunities than the Germans of theirs. Mr Fred. T. Jane, the wellknown naval writer, refers.to this subject in the Edinburgh Review, and states that it can be safely assumed that as far as relative efficiency is concerned, British, French, German, and Austrian submarines are “ much ot muchness.” Then he says;—•‘‘The difference between the very best and the very worst of them all is a trivial and a tiny flea-bite compared to the human element concerned in the control of the delicate mechanism which has been created.” He sees in this the whole crux of the submarine matter, and he lay* great stress on the fact that in a submarine where officers and men all live ‘‘ huggermugger " together, the old contrasts between the ranks have largely to go by the board. Submarine efficiency, he says, depends mainly upon how far this state of feeling can be assimilated without the men taking advantage of their officers —that is to say, on the officer being able to maintain his authority on purely personal grounds in which neither age, birth, nor rank has any status whatever. In the British submarine service the requisite conditions obtain almost invariably. The normal temperament of the British gentleman leads him that way. The normal temperament of the German gentleman is somewhat otherwise —and here, in Mr Jane’s opinion, lies the secret ot the general failure of the German submarine attacks on the British Navy. “We have, it is true, lost some ships -by submarine attack. But in each and every one of these cases the loss has been accomplished by surface aid —a trawler or yacht under a neutral flag. Though opportunities have been many, every German submarine attack, in the real sense of the word, has been a failure. We, on the other hand, have been very nearly devoid of opportunity, yet we have managed to score three purely submarine successes.”