uit de pers.

guns, and in case of an encounter with a hostile flotilla of submarines they would remain on the surface in order to sink their rivals by gunlire. The fact is overlooked that submarines cruise on the surface, and that therefore a fleet provided with seaplanes could always avoid them in open waters like the North Sea.

Until a successful submersible battleship has been built it is premature to talk of scrapping our present battleships.

Yours, &c,

"Young Navy."

„The Times" 10 Juli 1914.

The Submarine Menace.

SIR PERCY SCOTT'S REPLY.

Food and oil Supplies Tiireatened.

Under- Water Warfare.

The question has often been raised whether existing naval types will change, and whether the great ships of the Dreadnought era will some day follow the mammoth and the mastodon into a convenient and highly desirable extinction. Those who believc that that time will come—and they are a considerable school—point with a warning finger to the ever-growing power of the submarine, and to the new and expanding possibilities of the air, and they ask whether the day will not come when, guided by information out of the sky, a blow may not be struck beneath the water which will be fatal to the predominance of great capital ships, at any rate in the narrow seas.

That time has not come yet, and the ultimate decision of naval war still rests with those who can place in the line of battle fleets and squadrons which in numbers and quality, in homogeneity, in organization, in weight of metal, and in good shooting are superior to anything they may be called upon to meet.—Mr. Churchill, November 10, 1913.

The opinions with regard to future naval warfare which Admiral Sir Percy Scott expressed in the letter we published on June 5 have created world-wide discussion. The questions he raised were not new, but his uncompromising reply gave to them fresh point and enhanced importance. Sir Percy Scott is admittedly a vigorous thinker, a man of stimulating ideas, and a naval offlcer with a distinguished record of activity. When therefore he announced his belief that the introduction of vessels that swim under the water had entirely done away with the utility of ships that swim on top of the water, it would indeed have been surprising if such a sweeping pronouncement from such a quarter had not raised a storm of controversy and dissent.