every possible precaution was rigidly adopted. To a certain extent temporary success was obtained; but there is now every reason to believe that the mere fact of the secret submarines reacted disadvantageously on their possessors. From observing the secrecy to believing that mechanism so jealously guarded must be very near perfection was no very long step, and after five years of the system the French submarine service awoke to the fact that in contemplating its own perfections it had forgotten the progress of rivals; while it was also suspected that the jealously guarded secrets had leaked out one by one and been so improved upon by rivals that the originals were no longer of much value.
Germany became a convert to secrecy with her 1905-6 naval programme. Previous to 1905, though the destined names of ships were secrets locked in the Kaiser's heart, everything else was made public. In 1905 it was decreed that no details of new ships should be made known until the vessels were launched—a replica of the British Dreadnought case. The net result must stifle that public interest in the Navy which German policy had for so long laboured to create. Public interest in things naval always centres in the latest new ship and rarely survives her launch.
The country par excellence for naval secrets is or was Russia. Russian secretiveness has been known to go the length of keeping guns covered in the presence of foreign ships and the rigging up of dummy
