The big cruiser-submarine is a danger, but it can be met and defeated by a better (though not necessarily bigger) submarine, while the anti-submarine work by surface ships will always be the prerogative of the nation with the big fleet in support. The submarine, as we know it now, can never win a war without a battle fleet behind it: the two types of weapon work together, and the one cannot supplant the other. A curious remark has been made by a German officer to an English one. "If we had beaten your Fleet, you could have still kept up the blockade with your submarines, because England geographically blockades Germany, and so we would have been no better off." Geographically he was right--strategically he was, in the author's opinion, very much wrong. The "crash dives," so frequently performed by boats when in danger, were sometimes exciting. If the trim was too heavy at the time, the boat might take an angle and go right on down to the bottom: this has been done sufficiently violently at times to crack some of the battery cells, and also to start the torpedoes running in the tubes with resultant damage to the torpedoes and a discharge of exhaust gas into the boat. It is always advisable for the officer on deck to get down as soon as possible after he has rung the diving alarm-horn--otherwise he may get left behind, as the crew below don't wait for him. The lower door of the conning-tower is dropped by an officer below if water comes down, isolating the officer in the conning-tower, who is probably struggling to get the upper lid closed. One boat had a little difficulty once through a corner of the bridge-screen catching under the hinges of the upper lid; the boat was going under--the captain was furiously trying to jam the lid down--and the water was pouring into the boat. The captain called down to close the lower door and that he would "swim for it," but before this was done the obstruction cleared, the hatch closed, and he fell down into the boat. The depth being then thirty feet, it can be imagined that a good deal of water had come in and things had been exciting, to say the least of it; it was noticed, however, that the seamen's cook had never throughout the incident looked up once from his careful watch on the cooking of the sailors' sausages. Another incident occurred near Heligoland, when one officer of an E boat came on deck to relieve another during the nightly three hours' charge. As he came up he saw a faint light astern and called attention to it. The officer already on deck (hereinafter known as Number One) had just passed the word down to let some more water into the tanks "till I tell you to stop," in order to lower the boat a little and leave only her conning-tower visible. His attention being distracted to the light astern (which was on the south end of Heligoland), he began to study it with his glasses, and had dropped the memory of flooding tanks from his mind--until a shout from officer Number Two made him turn.