The names of the commanding officers of the German submarines which had
been disposed of were given out by the government in order to
substantiate to the world the statement made by the Prime Minister in
the House of Commons on August 7th, and denied in the German papers,
that "at least 150 of these ocean pests had been destroyed." The
statement included no officers commanding the Austrian submarines, of
which a number had been destroyed, and did not exhaust the list of
German submarines put out of action.
The fate of the officers was given, and of these the majority (116) were
dead; twenty-seven were prisoners of war, six were interned in neutral
countries where they took refuge, and one succeeded in returning to
Germany.
Further light on the subject of German submarines was given on September
18, 1918, by Senator William H. Thompson of Kansas in a speech in which
he told the Senate:
The submarine is no longer a serious menace to transportation across the
seas. It is, of course, an annoyance and a great hindrance, and as long
as there is a single submarine in the waters of the sea every effort
must be made by the allied powers to destroy it, for it is an outlaw and
must not exist. The truth is that Germany never had more than 320
submarines all told, including all construction before and since the
war.
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