We may lay to ourselves the unction that the reduced effectiveness of the submarine coincided with the entrance of our naval forces into the war. This is taking nothing from the French, British, and Italian navies; as a matter of truth, it would be gross injustice to ignore the fact that the large share of the great task has been handled through the immense resources of the British. But the co-ordinated effort which began with the arrival of our vessels on the other side, the utter freedom with which Secretary Daniels placed our resources at the service of the British was inspiring in its moral influences throughout the Entente nations, while practically there may be no doubt that our craft have played their fair share in the activities that have seen the steady decline of deadliness on the part of the U-boat. We may now consider the methods which our navy in collaboration with Allied sea power have employed in this combat for the freedom of the seas. CHAPTER VII How the Submarine is being Fought--Destroyers the Great Menace--But Nets, Too, Have Played Their Part--Many Other Devices--German Officers Tell of Experience on a Submarine Caught in a Net--Chasers Play Their Part--The Depth-Bomb--Trawler Tricks--A Camouflaged Schooner Which Turned Out To Be a Tartar--Airplanes--German Submarine Men in Playful Mood When the submarines first began their attacks upon British war-ships and merchant vessels the admiralty was faced by a state of affairs which had been dealt with more or less in the abstract, the only practical lessons at hand being those of the Russo-Japanese War, which conflict, as a matter of fact, left rather an unbalanced showing so far as the undersea boat and the surface craft were concerned; in other words, the submersible had by all odds the advantage. But England tackled the problem with bulldog energy, utilizing to that end not only her immense destroyer fleet, but a myriad of high-speed wooden boats, many of which were built in this country. They were called submarine-chasers, and while the destroyer and the seaplane, as one of the most effective weapons against the submarine, came to the fore, the chaser is employed in large numbers by England, France, and the United States. The great usefulness of the destroyer lay not only in patrolling the seas in search of the U-boats, but of serving in convoys, protecting passenger and freight vessels, and in rescuing crews of vessels that had been sunk. There may be other methods of reducing Germany's sum total of submarines which are equally--if not more--effective than the destroyer; but, if so, we have not been made aware of that fact. Certain it is, however, that aside from the destroyer, steel nets, fake fishing and merchant sailing vessels, seaplanes and chasers have played their important part in the fight, while such a minor expedient as blinding the eye of the periscope by oil spread on the waters has not been without avail.