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Show J THE FAILING U-EOAT. j After a scare which lasted for three ; weeks and which, to tell the precise j truth, is not yet dissipated, the allies J are beginning to regain courage and i optimism as they take note of the sud-j sud-j den slump in U-boat destructiveness. Three weeks ago the U-bont promised to I be a complete success. Today the U-hoat seems to be slipping back into the fail- ure class. Only eighteen British merchant ves- sels of more than Hi00 tons were sunk ; last week. Five merchant vessels of , less than lcV'O tons were sunk, together ! with three fishing vessels. The record of I'-boats since the dec-; dec-; laration of unrestricted submarine war-j war-j fare has been as follows: First three ; days after February 1, five boats over I 100 tons; week ended February l'l, ; thirty-three : Febriury 17, seventeen; ! Februarv 4. twenty-seven: Mar,-h :i. fourteen; March 11. thirteen; March; IS, sixteen; March 25, eighteen; April 1. eighteen; April ?. seventeen; April. 15, nineteen: April 22, forty: April 29, thirty-eight; May 6, twenty-four; May 13, eighteen. Simultaneously with its announcement I of losses the British admiralty an- j nounces the arrival of American destroyers de-stroyers in British ports to co-operate in '"the prosecution of the war." doubtedly the American destroyers have been in British waters for some days, Admiral Sims, commander of the American Ameri-can destroyer flotilla, arrived in London Lon-don about a month ago. The mysterious decline in L-boat efficiency ef-ficiency is not to be explained wholly by the arrival of our destroyers or by increased activity on the part of the British. The sudden reversal of form must be due to new methods and devices, de-vices, and we have good reason to believe be-lieve that some of these new methods and devices are American. From the high water mark of XT-boat efficiency there has been a decline of 55 per cent. If the allies could hold the Germans down to' the new level the submarine could not accomplish its object. ob-ject. The chances are that the Germans will be able to make another spurt, but gradually the wearing away process pro-cess should bring the submarines down to such a number that they will be unable un-able to sink as much tonnage as they did before the unrestricted warfare began. |