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To the best of my knowledge and experience we should adopt present British methods and base further developments only upon actual experience in coöperation with them.

That the barrage was unfeasible was the opinion of the Admiralty officers, but it was not the view of the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, who like President Wilson and our own ordnance officers, did not regard it as impossible, for Sims in his mail report to us April 19th said:

The Prime Minister only two days ago expressed to me the opinion that it ought to be possible to find physical means of absolutely sealing up all escape for submarines from their own ports. The fact that all such methods (nets, mines, obstructions, etc.) inherently involve the added necessity of continuous protection and maintenance by our naval forces is seldom understood and appreciated. I finally convinced the Prime Minister of the fallacy of such propositions by describing the situations into which we would be led: namely, that in order to maintain our obstructions we would have to match the forces the enemy brought against them until finally the majority if not all of our own forces would be forced into dangerous areas where they would be subject to continual torpedo and other attack, in fact in a position most favorable to the enemy.