"MOSQUITO FLEET."

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 76, 1 April 1915, Page 8

"MOSQUITO FLEET."

| PROTECTIVE SWARM OF TRAWLERS. The nickname of “mosquito fleet,*’ applied to Hie navy’s torpedo flotilla, should (according; to a recent American press message) properly lie given to the steam fishing* trawlers, .of which the Covermncnt is gathering togethei a swarm for the threefold purpose of mine-sweeping, protecting battleships from submarines, and operating in the shallows of the Belgian coast against the Hermans. More than live hundred of those boats were requisitioned, and thousands are already out. I hey are found so useful that the Government evidently thinks it cannot have too many. Trawlers still continue their original duty of seining for menaces to shipping, as enormous quantities of mines are still strewed at sea. Following the Herman raid on Scarborough and Hartlepool, as many as fifteen hundred mines were picked up in one week. Many boats have been lost in this work—more than have been officially announced. These mines, with their bristling contact points, often explode in the nets. They have enough weight attached to their cables to sink them about four feet under the surface, so they run with the tide to the shallower water, where the weight strikes bottom and anchors. Nothing is so effective against submarines as a cordon of trawlers around a fleet. The submarines must come close to be effective, and they are easily detected by the trawlers on rising to the surface to use the periscope. There is also the chance of getting in a shot at what the navy calls “tin whales.”

A large fleet of trawlers will soon take part in the Belgian poast operations, and some already are there. They carry one gun forward, another aft, and two abeam. The weapons are quick-firer's of comparatively small calibre, but the boats, sailing in close under the lee of the sand dunes, and increasing the general volume of lire, help prevent enemy guns from taking a base along the shore and making a direct target of the big monitors and cruisers.

Very few fishing boats are now left in Yarmouth out of its once great fleet, and those are allowed to fish only off a small strip of coast. Moreover, it is difficult to man these, since practically every able-bodied fisher is in the navy, to which lie belonged as a reservist. ■'

The Government pays a liberal rental for the boats. If it were not for this and the pay of the men now in the navy there would he great want in Yarmouth and all the coast towns at this time.

THE UNIVERSITY MODERN LANGUAGES. “Ex-Student,” writing on the question of the University and Modern languages, condemns the “composition” work which he calls the “stumbling block” in the path of students. “Would it not be much better,” be asks, “if the Mododn Language people followed the example of the classical lecturers who, in the first year of its paper, include an easy piece of composition, hut in the second and third years omit composition altogether in the pass papers. This would give greater time for the study of hooks in the lecture room, stud would encourage the students to read for themselves. This latter they have no time to do sis things are, for they are eternally haunted hy compositions to he done, in which there arc as many “points” to he watched as stars above, The reading, of a literary gem is regarded as an impertinent luxury which these “composition” people consider a base attempt to poach on their reserves. There is no life and little meaning in the work done'in this branch of the University. Instead of being a great educating and broadening institution, Modern Languages constitute a pedantic, narrowing thing.”