The world is beginning to understand how successful was the British Navy in circumventing the enemy's submarine campaign, and so preserving this country from famine, while at the same time so closely blockading (so soon as our politicians permitted this) the enemy's coasts that Germany was isolated and her position became desperate. Our Navy combines brains with bravery, and cunning indeed were some of the devices planned to outwit and trap the Hun. Of these devices but little is known outside the Navy, and much probably never will be known, for there must be secrets well worth the keeping until the League of Nations or the millennium makes future wars impossible. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in a recently published, prophetic short story, written before the war, pictures vividly to us an England beaten, compelled to submit to an ignominious peace, by a very small Power that makes unrestricted use of submarine warfare. He foresaw the danger, but thankfully acknowledges in his preface that he did not foresee the extraordinary ingenuity with which our Navy overcame this danger. Among its other functions, the Harwich Force, in a variety of ways, took an important part in this task of keeping the seas open to ourselves and closed to our enemies. Firstly, to deal with that essential duty--the convoying of merchant vessels. This was part of the routine work of the destroyers of the Harwich Force. For some time the destroyers of the Force did all the escorting between Dover and Flamborough Head. They used also to convoy vessels along our East Coast, across the North Sea, and occasionally through the Straits down Channel to the westward. For example, throughout the war they kept open the traffic between England and Holland. This particular duty was known in the Navy as the "Beef Trip," owing to the fact that in the first stages of the war the convoyed vessels were largely employed in the carrying of meat from Holland to England. It was a dangerous duty; enemy minefields had to be traversed, and the convoys were liable to be attacked by submarines, light craft, and seaplanes, for the Germans were ever on the lookout to intercept them.