UNDERWATER PIRATES.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 October 1915, Page 3

UNDERWATER PIRATES.

J AMAZING PRECAUTIONS. BRITISH ADMIRALTY AND ITS STAGGERING ENTERPRISE. London, July 30. A subject on which there is much discussion is whether or not the German submarines are being used up. There have been rumors of any number of these craft being destroyed or captured, and rumors to the contrary. But it is significant that the German Government has been making anxious enquiries about some of its boats, and a leading German paper published an article of a very gloomy character, asking the German people to reflect on tiie tremendous task von Tirpitz has taken on. This German paper describes in detail the amazing precautions adopted "by the energy and organising skill of the British Navy." These details are not permitted to be published in any British paper, but they represent a staggering enterprise. Whole seas have been netted, and the waters are thick with patrol ships. From first-hand information that cannot 'be questioned, one is convinced that the loss that the German navy has sustained in submarines is tremendous. It is far beyond the utmost capacity of German sliipyards to make good. A naval officer of unimpeachable standing laughed heartily this week when the writer suggested that all our successes against German submarines have been recorded in the newspapers on the published reports of the Admiralty. He stated positively that in his own personal experience he knew o| three submarines destroyed by one warship alone, and two others by one converted merchantman. Certainly the peril of our merchant shipping seems to be dwindling almost to nothing, though the Germans have just succeeded in sinking another American ship. What action America will take remains to be seen. There is a feeling in unofficial circles in this country that nothing will goad America into action, and it is interesting to note that Mr. Henry James, the most distinguished American man of letters, has just announced his decision to become a British subject. Mr. Henry James has intense sympathies with the Allies in this war and has never disguised them. '