PROFESSIONAL NOTES PREPARED BY LIEUT. COMMANDER WALLACE L. LIND, U. S. Navy FRENCH ARMY AND NAVY LOST 1,366,000 IN WAR.-The French losses in killed and missing on land and sea, as officially established up to the day of the armistice, November 11, were 1,366,000 men. These figures were given to the Chamber of Deputies by Deputy Louis Marin in a report on the disposal of the effects of missing men. The losses of the army were 1,089,700 killed and 265,800 missing, or 16.2 per cent of the total mobilized force of 8,410,000. The losses of the navy totaled 10,735, of which 5521 were killed and 5214 are missing. The losses in the navy were 4.19 per cent of the complement.-N. Y. Times, 7/4. REDUCTION OF FRENCH COMMISSIONED FLEET.-France is greatly reducing her naval expenditures, notably in the matter of placing fighting ships in reserve. The early ships of from 1885 to 1889 will be condemned, and of modern units the 18,000-ton Voltaire and the 24,000-ton Bretagne classes have been put out of commission. The battle force now includes only the eight ships of the Lorraine and Democratie classes. Seventy-five of the destroyers and over 50 per cent of the submarines have been placed also in reserve and some 200 patrol boats have been disarmed.-Scientific American, 7/5. FRANCE MAKES ASSIGNMENTS OF AFTER-WAR NAVAL FORCES.-The make-up of the French naval reserve force to be organized under the command of Vice Admiral Lebon, the Chief of Naval Operations, has been definitely determined upon. This reserve force will comprise two squadrons, composed of six battleships or cruisers each, four small squadrons composed of six torpedo boats, and a group comprising one battleship and one cruiser, making a total of 38 warships. These vessels will form the nucleus of the afterthe-war French naval force, but during the period that will last until peace is signed with Austria and Bulgaria certain forces will be maintained in specific localities.-N. Y. Times, 7/10. ENEMY SHIPS ALLOCATED TO FRANCE.-Under the terms of the armistice, 113 enemy ships of 505,906 gross tons have been allocated to France for operation. This assigned fleet is made up of 100 German ships of 461,185 tons and 13 Austrian ships of 44,721 tons.-The Nautical Gazette, 6/28. GERMANY GERMAN NAVAL LOSSES.-The Peace Treaty having been signed, the German passion for statistics will probably manifest itself in giving the nation's casualties in the war with a fair degree of accuracy. It may be said, indeed, that during the first two years of the struggle the Germans vied with the British in publishing regularly their army losses. France concealed hers for reasons of policy; those of Russia were always in round numbers and obviously inflated; while the Italians and Austrians gave little attention to their casualty lists, not caring to make damaging admissions. Germany's naval losses as now published in the Vossische Zeitung of Berlin are declared to be complete and authoritative and are so accepted in Washington. The list of ships sunk and destroyed differs from previous estimates, which were more or less conjecture, in including a large and not a small number of destroyers. At the close of last year the number of destroyers supposed to have been lost by Germany was less than twenty, but the official report, as printed in the Berlin newspaper, makes the total forty-nine. It is now admitted-perhaps confessed would be the apt word that 178 U-boats were lost in service, 82 of them in the North Sea and the Atlantic, 72 "off the coast of Flanders," 16 in the Mediterranean, 5 in the Black Sea, and 3 in the Baltic. Fourteen submarines were blown up by their own crews and seven interned in neutral harbors. Before the armistice Berlin always denied with a show of sticking closely to facts the occasional British Admiralty reports that the Allies were dispatching a good many U-boats, and when Mr. Lloyd George ventured to be explicit he was ridiculed. The Germans lost few of their big ships. They say now, as they have always declared, that but one battleship, the Pommern of 13,200 tons, was sunk during the war; also one battle cruiser of 26,000 tons, the Lützow, both in the sea fight off Jutland. The British added to this list, but apparently only from observation of crippled ships. There is no reason now to believe that most of them failed to reach harbor shelter. They had a whole night, during which they were not molested, to stagger away to their base. In ships not of the first line of battle the Germans sustained considerable losses-6 older armored cruisers, 8 modern small cruisers of the latest design, and 10 smaller cruisers of the old type, besides 20 large and 41 small torpedo boats, 9 auxiliary cruisers, of which the largest were the Cap Trafalgar of 20,000 tons and the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse of 21,000 tons, 28 mine-sweepers, and 122 trawlers and patrol vessels. The number of warships of all kinds lost was 490. As Germany's naval warfare was for the most part defensive, aggressive only by stealth or when a raid was attempted, the conclusion must be that the British, the most active of the Allies, were very much on the alert to attack the enemy when he showed himself. Germany's losses of men killed in the naval service are now reported to have been 29,685, but 10,625 of these were marines. As marine contingents were used in the field on the western front, it seems to be a question whether the marine casualties given in this report can all be charged to the sea service. When Great Britain announced in an Admiralty report of November 26 last that her naval casualties had been 39,766—officers killed or died of wounds 2466 and men 30,895, officers wounded, missing, or prisoners 1042 and men 5363—it meant that these losses were all incurred by the navy. To this total should be added 14,661 officers and men of British merchant ships and fishing craft who lost their lives, and 3295 who were taken prisoners in the submarine warfare of the enemy. It seems probable that the Germans killed in actual sea warfare were considerably less than one-half of the British total.-N. Y. Times, 7/10. GERMAN NAVY AS INTENDED, AND AS IT IS.-According to the German Navy Law Amendment Act of 1912, the fleet to be fully commissioned in 1919 included 25 dreadnoughts, 9 battle cruisers, 4 pre-dreadnoughts, 21 light cruisers, 99 destroyers, and 54 submarines-an active personnel of 100,000 and a reserve of 80,000. The actual strength in fully commissioned ships in 1919 according to the Peace Treaty consists of 6 pre-dreadnoughts, 6 light cruisers, 12 destroyers, and 12 torpedo boats, with a personnel of 15,000 and no reserves.-Scientific American, 7/5. GERMANS SINK THEIR FLEET.-The German fleet interned at Scapa Flow, north of Scotland, was valued at $350,000,000. The ships were unarmed, but manned by skeleton crews of Germans. At noon on Saturday, June 21, these crews opened the sea-cocks and took to the boats, with the result that all the battleships and battle cruisers except the Baden, and most of the destroyers, went to the bottom. Admiral Reuter, according to a London dispatch, had been allowed to visit Germany a few weeks ago, on the pretext of ill health, but returned in time to supervise the sinking of the fleet. The sinking was accomplished while the main British fleet was absent, and only a few destroyers and small craft were in the harbor. The German ships went to the bottom with their battle flags flying, their crews taking to their small boats and cheering. Of the 74 interned German war vessels at Scapa Flow, 6 were battle cruisers, 10 were battleships, 50 were destroyers and 8 light cruisers, of which 2 were mine layers. The battleships are the Kaiser, Kaiserin, Koenig Albert, Bayern, Markgraf, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Prinz Regent Luitpold, Grosser Kuerfuerst and the Friedrich der Grosse, averaging about 25,000 tons each. The battle cruisers are the Seydlitz, Hindenburg, Moltke, Von der Tann and Derflinger. These vessels were all built between 1906 and 1914. The nine battleships cost $89,000,000, the five battle cruisers $75,000,600, and the eight light cruisers cost $12,200,000. There were no submarines involved in the sinking. The submarines turned over by Germany to the Allies and the United States were all surrendered completely under the terms of the armistice as signed on November II last. None of these submarines was at Scapa Flow. They are interned at Harwich, England. As their surrender to Admiral Beatty of the British grand fleet was complete, they were turned over absolutely, and no German caretakers were left on board. But under Article 23 of the armistice, 74 other war vessels were designated by the Allies and the United States for disarmament and internment in neutral or allied ports. The vessels were sent to Scapa Flow, where, under the terms of the armistice, they will remain under the suprvision of the Allies and of the United States, only caretakers being left on board." The depth of water at Scapa Flow varies from 78 to 114 feet, and some of the larger German ships may have to be blown up or raised to clear the harbor. The British Admiralty forwarded a full report of the sinking at Scapa Flow to the Naval Armistice Commission in Paris, by whom the next steps will be directed. "It is up to Paris-we did not make the terms for internment," a high official of the Admiralty is quoted as saying. “Von Reuter broke his parole and should be tried accordingly by an international court. I do not think that France or the other Allies have cause to grieve, as the ships were left in such a state as to be nearly valueless." Admiral Freemantle, British commander at Scapa Flow, where the interned German fleet was sunk by its crews, according to a cable has informed Admiral von Reuter and the German staff they will be held as prisoners of war for “violation of the armistice by a traitorous act." The representatives of the Allied Powers sitting at Paris sent a note to the representatives of Germany at Berlin on June 26 in reference to the sinking of the German fleet. The note declared that "the sinking of the ships constituted at once a violation of the armistice, and an act of gross bad faith toward the Allied and Associated Powers," and that it "can only be regarded as a deliberate breach in advance of the conditions of peace.' The same was also stated to be true of the burning of the French battle flags in Germany. "It is evident," the note says, that any repetition of acts like these must have a very unfortunate effect upon the future operation of the treaty which the Germans are about to sign." Notice was given that the Allies would demand reparation for the sinking, and trial of those responsible.-Army and Navy Journal, 6/28. GERMANY'S COMMERCE RAIDERS.-It has hitherto been very difficult to obtain particulars of the German merchant vessels which, during the war, caused such great damage to the Entente's Mercantile Marine, according to the Nationaltidende. As the German Censor's office now no longer places obstacles in the way of publicity, the German press reports certain merchant vessels which, under other names, have rendered service as auxiliary cruisers. On the return of the raiding vessel Wolf_in February, 1918, it was announced that this vessel was formerly the Bremen steamer Wachtfels. The famous raider Moewe was the Hamburg steamer Pungo, owned by F. Laeisz. She was built shortly before the war for the conveyance of bananas from West Africa, and was fitted with unusually powerful engines, which gave her a speed of about 16 knots. This speed on various occasions saved the Moewe during critical situations. The British steamer Yarrowdale, captured by the Moewe and taken to Swinemunde in 1916, was converted into a raiding vessel, and rendered service under the name of Leopard. She went to sea at the beginning of March, 1917, and nothing was heard of her until a message was picked up in a bottle reporting that she had been destroyed by English warships. A similar fate overtook the raider Greif, which was formerly named Guben and belonged to the Deutsch-Australische Dampschiffs Gesellschaft. She was 4900 tons gross and was destroyed at the end of February, 1916. There may also be mentioned the raiding vessel Wolf I, which was formerly called the Belgravia, and belonged to the Hamburg-Amerika Ligne. She was 6648 tons gross and had a speed of 12 knots. After taking in a cargo of mines, she left Cuxhaven in February, 1916, but stranded the following day at the mouth of the Elbe and was badly damaged. The vessel was refloated and taken to Hamburg, where she had to undergo extensive repairs. She did not go to sea again. It is well known that the auxiliary cruiser Berlin had to put into Trondhjem in November, 1914, where she was interned. What was not known before is that it was this Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer which laid mines off the West Coast of Ireland and Scotland, to which the English dreadnought Audacious, among others, fell a victim.-Shipping, 6/21. HUNS READY FOR BIG NAVAL STROKE WHEN SEAMEN MUTINIED. "I rejoice over the sinking of the German fleet in Scapa Flow," is the statement made to me by Admiral Scheer, formerly commander-in-chief of the German high seas fleet. "I am very happy for two reasons. The first is that the fleet was prevented from falling permanently into the hands of the British. It would have been painful for our good ships, after sailing the seas for years, to come under enemy flags. This humiliating and painful sight is now spared us by the brave deed in Scapa Flow. The second reason |