The principal bases from which our destroyers operated were Gibraltar, Brest and Queenstown, of which the last named was the largest; the submarine chaser bases were at Queenstown, Plymouth and Corfu; and those for our submarines were at the Azores and at Berehaven on the Irish coast. The flotilla of destroyers that was dispatched from the United States a few days after our declaration of war reached Queenstown, part of it within four and the rest within five weeks after that date, and the whole flotilla was at work in coöperation with the British forces within eight weeks after our entrance into the war. In the latter part of 1917 a squadron of six American battleships was sent to strengthen and coöperate with the British Grand Fleet that was on watch in the North Sea to give battle to the German ships if they should come out from their hiding place behind the defenses of Heligoland. It was this vigilant watch of the Grand Fleet, assisted by our battleships, that kept the German navy off the high seas, where it would have raided commerce, made far more difficult the transporting of our troops and war material to France, fought our own and the Allied warships and greatly prolonged the war and made it even more bloody and destructive. Our craft constituted twelve per cent of the fleet that kept the German navy thus bottled up and rendered it incapable of harm. The American squadron worked in entire harmony with the Grand Fleet, and was assigned to one of the two places of honor and importance in line of battle, the head or rear of the battleship force. So vigilantly did the Grand Fleet keep its watch and so persistently did it go after the enemy whenever he dared to appear, whether in a single ship, a squadron or his entire fleet, and so vigorously chase him back that he ventured out less and less frequently and toward the end rarely came more than a few miles from his base. All manner of temptations were used to induce him to come out into the open where battle could be joined--a few ships apparently detached venturing into the Heligoland Bight, merchant ships apparently without protection passing near the entrance to the Bight, and other devices. When the German fleet did emerge and a battle seemed imminent, the American division of battleships headed the line and would have led the attack if the enemy had not slipped quickly back.