The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1917. SUBMARINE PIRACY BEATEN.

Taihape Daily Times, 25 October 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1917. SUBMARINE PIRACY BEATEN.

(With which is incorporated The Taihapo Post and Waimarino News).

The submarine question had verily become a nightmare to the peoples of the British Tmpire, and probably to the peoples of Allied countries as well as to those of all neutrals, therefore the British Prime Minister’s remarks thereon, made to a huge public gathering in London this week, comes like a ray of bright light, dispelling the demons of our imaginations. Mr Lloyd George’s speech has lifted a very heavy cloud from the minds of millions of people ? for we were told from week to week of the number of ships over sixteen hundred tons, and of those under that tonnage being sunk, but nothing definite came beyond a few stray opinions of how anti-submarine measures were progressing. Now, we are assured that German under-sea piracy cannot achieve the object for which it was instituted, and, moreover, that its seriousness is declining at such a rate that Germans will not be likely to continue using up thier men and millions of money in persisting with what is proving a forlorn hope. Germany was going to set England on fire, blow up all and murder in cold blood her civil population with flocks of Zeppelins and other aerial craft, in which they had an overwhelming superiority, brought into being for that specific purpose. It proved a fallacy, disaster after disaster causing Germany to substitute under-sea for overhead murder and destruction, and now, it seems, they have fully realised the utter hopelessness of winning the war with either Zeppelins or submarines and have determined upon trying the two in combination. "Twelve monster super-Zeppelins were launched against. England this week. The commander of this expedition that was fraught with so much hope for the desponding German mind, selected a time when fairly dense mists would cover the movements of his vessels, but when they reached England, the prisoners tell us, they were bothered with searchlights and anti-aircraft batteries. In their hurry to get out of danger they aimlessly dropped a few bombs and went away skyward, out of the reach of British guns and the penetrating ray s of searchlights, but they ran right into the arms of an unrelenting and indiscriminating natural enemy At a height of three

miles the crews suffered agonies from che intense men jvere trost-bit-ten, and the propelling engines froze, leaving these colossal cultures of the air little more than stranded hulks, and they drifted to destruction or capture. The great hope and eye of the German navy i s of little more value against measures taken for its destruction than a toy balloon. In using up these eyes of the Navy in the dangerous work of raiding may indicate that the navy will not require them for the purpose for which they were built, as the navies of the Allies are so overwhelmingly strong as to render success for the German Fleet in any large conflict quite out of the question, and it is being pitted against the ships of a revolutionriven Russia. Germany has signally failed in the air, and now ? after sinking hundreds of millions worth of shipping, and seriously threatening Britain with starvation, the underwater piracy is doomed to failure, and its scrapping along with the overhead piracy is now absolutely assured. Mr Lloyd George has lifted a depressing load off the whole world opposed to Germany; we know now that the volume of shipping will be increasing by leaps and bounds, and that the sea-road s of commerce will be cleared, leaving open the sea avenues to the markets of the world for our produce. By Mr Lloyd George makes the submarine situation fairly clear; he says that our monthly shipping losses are now not much over one-third of what they were last April, and he explains the why and wherefore by telling us that the German losses in submarines during 1917 were more than three times the total losses in the whole of 1916. We feared that less sinkings lately merely represented the usual fluctuations, but Mr Lloyd George has removed the cause for any such fear. The submarines are becoming less numerous, and shipbuilding is greater to a marvellous degree; the escapes of ships attacked are increasing, and anti-submarine measures are more perfect, and so effective as to render under-water piracy as great a failure as that of the overhead kind. The British Prime Minister points out that the enemies of Germany produce the world’s food and supply of raw materials, and that by agreeing to withhold supplies they, could reduce Germany to impotence and desolation ? and they will do it if any necessity arises. Submarines are failing and complete victory is certain; it has been delayed by the weakness of that portion of the; iron ring made up by Russia, but that delay is only temWe are, said Mr Lloyd George, holding one of the most important military-political r" inter-Allied conferences ever held, whose decisions will affect the whole course of this war, and may determine the ultimate issue. What these supremely vital issues are we can only conjecture at present; we are however, that the German submarine Sbpe i s already a failure.