The Admiralty is now able to say with certainty that
over two hundred German submarines were sunk in the desperate effort to starve us into surrender. A hundred and twenty-two U '-boats had been surrendered up to Sunday last, and it is thought that forty more, some of which are dam aged, will complete the total. Every one can now see that the Admiralty was wise in erring on the side of modesty. For years it kept silence about its successes against the submarines, and when it published a few months ago a list of U ' -boat commanders who had been killed or captured, it only claimed to have sunk a hundred and fifty of the pests, ignoring all the doubtful cases in which a suspicious patch of oil on the surface might or might not indicate the destruct ion of an enemy. We now know that the Navy had underestimated its achievement by a full third, and we are all delighted. The German naval authorities adopted the opposite policy of persis tent overstatement, to put it mildly, with the result that, when they could hold out no longer, they shattered at a blow the confidence of the nation which they had deceived so grossly.
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