The careful organization which conduced to the successful action was forgotten.  Sir Reginald Bacon has told the story of all this work in his book, and I need not repeat it.  But let it be added that victory depends less on such enheartening incidents, welcome as they are, than on the patient and usually monotonous performance of duty at sea by day and by night in all weathers, and on the skill in organization of the staff ashore in foreseeing and forestalling enemy activity on a hundred and one occasions of which the public necessarily knows nothing.

It has been stated that reliable information reached us in the autumn of 1917 that enemy submarines were passing the Straits of Dover in much greater numbers than we had hitherto believed to be the case, and the inefficiency of the net barrage in preventing the passage was apparent.

Early in the year (in February) Sir Reginald Bacon had put forward a proposal for a deep minefield on the line Folkestone—­Cape Grisnez, but confined only to the portion of the line to the southward of the Varne Shoal.

It was known that enemy submarines as a rule made this portion of their passage submerged, and the minefield was designed to catch them.

The proposal was approved after personal discussion with Admiral Bacon, and directions were given that the earliest supplies of the new pattern mines were to be allocated for this service; these mines commenced to become available early in the following November, and were immediately laid.

Admiral Bacon suggested later the extension of the minefield to the westward of the Varne Shoal, so as to make it a complete barrier across the Channel.  This was also approved and measures were taken to provide the necessary mines.

The question of illuminating at night the area covered by the deep minefield was also discussed at length with Sir Reginald Bacon.  Various proposals were considered, such as the use of searchlights on Cape Grisnez and at Folkestone, together with the provision of small light-ships fitted with searchlights and moored at intervals across the Channel, and also the use of flares from patrol craft.  Flares had already been experimented with from kite balloons by the Anti-Submarine Division of the War Staff, and they were found on trial to be efficient when used from drifters, and of great use in illuminating the patrol area so that the patrol craft might have better opportunities for sighting submarines and the latter be forced to dive into the minefields.

A committee had been meanwhile appointed by the First Lord to consider the question of the Dover Barrage in the light of the information we then possessed as to the passage of enemy submarines through the Straits of Dover.  This committee visited Dover on several occasions, and its members, some of whom were naval officers and some civilian engineers, were shown the existing arrangements.