§ 25. Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in view of the fact that the loss of a submarine must be known to the German naval authorities after she has been absent from her base or unheard of for a certain period, he can communicate to the House the number of enemy vessels of this type captured or destroyed down to the date when, in the opinion of the Board, the most recent must have been given up by the enemy as lost?
Mr. BALFOURI understand and sympathise with the desire expressed by my hon. Friend, and I entirely agree that the mere statement that a German submarine has been destroyed need not convey valuable information to the enemy. The difficulty I feel in satisfying my hon. Friend's curiosity has a different origin. It arises from the inevitable margin of doubt which attaches to any attempt to estimate the numbers of enemy submarines destroyed, and the consequent impossibility of giving accurate statistics. A submarine, it must be remembered, is not like an ordinary vessel. If the latter sinks it sinks for ever. 990 There can be no error as to its fate. With a submarine this is not necessarily true; and we have every gradation, from absolute certainty through practical assurance down to faint possibility.
Facts like these are not fitted for statistical statement. Were the Admiralty to confine itself to enumerating cases of absolute certainty, we should undoubtedly be understating the truth. If we were to include all the cases of reasonable possibility, we might be exaggerating the truth; and no defensible line can be drawn between these two extremes.