This was early in the war, when things had not settled down and the minefields in the Bight were few. More than one boat then had dived right up to the entrance of Schillig Roads and had looked longingly at the guardship lying just out of range across the shoals. E boats treated destroyers with contempt, and used to remain on the surface in their presence to the last possible moment. There are many rumours of strange incidents of 1914 and 1915 which did not reach despatches, such as wireless signals to Heligoland suggesting that the enemy ships should come out and give our boats a chance, or of boats firing a succession of different coloured lights off the mouth of the Ems in the hope of enticing something out to see what it was all about. If the wireless story is not true it is at any rate a sound idea. We did not produce any propaganda department till much later, or they might have developed it, for such signals would have been very suggestive when intercepted by neutral wireless stations. The state of defence of the Bight changed from 1914, when our boats played about in it as they pleased, and even cruisers could come in and actually sight Heligoland, to the 1915 stage, when boats had to work inside, diving all day in the midst of enemy patrol vessels and getting their batteries charged in the intervals between alarms at night. Then the minefields began to thicken, and the submarine patrol line was brought gradually back to the longitude of Borkum. Then our minefields began to cluster around those the enemy had laid, and the patrols eventually took up a curved line from Terschelling across the mouth of the Bight to Hiorn's Reef and the Vyl Light, and remained there, except for occasional examination trips up to the enemy harbours and for the frequent visits of our mine-laying submarines (which used to drop their cargoes wherever they were most likely to have full effect). This moving back of the patrol line was not due to the increase of the Bight minefields alone: the realisation of the use of the submarine as a scout and the recognition of the fact that for our fleet the wireless in the submarines was of more strategic use than were the torpedoes, altered the policy by which the boats were stationed. A tactical victory may be useful, but it is a strategical victory that wins a war, and this fact was at the base of our policy at sea. The enemy seems never to have understood what sea-strategy meant, although his tactics were sound enough. It is a curious thing to note how the _rôle_ of the submarine changed during the war. The boats of both sides started by being ordinary anti-warship craft, taking a chance when they could. Gradually our boats became outer-line scouts (with exceptions), and the U-boats (with exceptions) became exclusively commerce-destroyers. At present anti-submarine work has advanced so far that it would be a rash nation which would endeavour to obtain a victory over another by a submarine force alone.