“It’s all very pretty,” he says, “to maintain that the German submarines are a joke. But it would be better to take common-sense precautions. I’m not a submarine officer, but I have seen several such officers, and they say that at night they can’t see anything through their periscopes and are obliged to navigate on the surface. Consequently they are much less dangerous at night. So there’s nothing to do but have the big war-vessels sail at night and hug the coast in the daytime, or better, anchor in port, especially in the Mediterranean, where there is no lack of coast or ports. The trips would take a little longer, but surely it’s worth it to save fifty millions of francs and a thousand men being sent to the bottom. It’s the same for the transporting of troops and material. To start with, I don’t understand why they make them start from Marseilles for Salonica, instead of from Taranto or Brindisi, the Italians being our Allies. That would make three or four days less on the water, that much less risk, and not a few millions saved. But if at any price they must go by sea, it’s a mystery to me why they don’t sail by day quite near the Italian, African, or Greek coasts. In the first place, there is less danger of being torpedoed, for the coasts are easier to patrol; and then, in case of torpedoing, there would frequently be time to beach the ship and she might be saved. The lifeboats would not be lost either. They would make the coast and the crews would be saved. It’s all childishly simple, but it would take the Devil himself to make the responsible people understand that war is not peace. When it is merely a matter of annoying one, the big bugs know well enough how to say that ‘war is war!’ but when it’s a matter of doing something, they prefer to cough up Forms and Forms and still more Forms! This submarine business is going to cost them dear. But, you know, my boys, when the ships begin to go down like ninepins, they’ll let up a yell and say that the Boches are pirates; that everything had been done that could be done, but no one knew they were as wicked as all that! Because the public and the Members of Parliament are in total ignorance, the big bugs will receive universal sympathy and will anoint themselves great men--while the boats keep on going down. After a year we’ll be in an unholy fix, to say nothing of the country having to tighten its belt because there will be no way of feeding it--steel and everything else short. The public will raise Cain, but as no one will really know how it came about and the Censor will keep on choking off all those like you and me who see what ought to be done, the submarines will clean us out completely.”