was allowed to die. During the administration of President Taft the struggle for conservation centred in the so-called Ballinger-, Pinchot controversy, the cause of which was an effort on the part of Richard Achilles Ballinger, then Secretary of the Interior, to transfer to private ownership certain valuable coal lands in Alaska, and to throw open to private acquisition highly valuable water-power sites upon the public lands which had been set aside by President Roosevelt. The controversy resulted in the resignation of Mr. Ballinger, and had much to do with the defeat of President Taft in the election of 1912. The coal lands and waterpower sites which formed the subject matter of the dispute remained in the public hands.

In the effort to secure the use of the natural resources so as to promote the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time, President Roosevelt, in support of legislation by Congress to that end, withdrew from private entry 148,000,000 ac. of forest land, 80,000,000 ac. of coal land, 4,700,000 ac. of phosphate land, and 1,500,000 ac. containing water-power sites on the public lands. Thus during the Roosevelt administration more than 234,000,000 ac. of land were preserved, most of which will probably be permanent property of the nation.

Because of the abolition of the National Conservation Commission, the movement threatened to be seriously hampered by the lack of a central body in which could be conjoined for united and effective action the many persons and agencies devoted to the movement. Accordingly, the National Conservation Association, whose purpose was to inform and give effect to public sentiment, was established in 1909. In its successful efforts to prevent the passage of bad laws and to secure the enactment of good laws, this association became an effective factor in the passage by Congress of measures that carry out the Roosevelt policies of Conservation. The more important of these measures are: the Weeks law, to purchase lands for national forests in the White Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains where there was no public land; the Coal and Oil Leasing bills (for the continental United States, including Alaska) which are securing conservation by wise use, without waste and without monopoly, of valuable resources still in the public hands; and the Federal Water-Power Act, to provide for the development by private enterprise, under Federal ownership and control, of water-power in the public domain and navigable streams. Here again public property worth thousands of millions of dollars has been saved for the benefit of all the people of the United States. The association has been especially influential in defeating legislation that sought to destroy the national forests and to permit the diversion to private ownership of natural resources.

The Conservation movement is probably, among the many constructive policies inaugurated by President Roosevelt, that which will be most influential for good, and for which he will be longest remembered. (G. P.)

CONSTANS, JEAN ANTOINE ERNEST (1883-1913), French statesman (see 6.986), resigned from the embassy at Constantinople in May 1909. His success as a diplomat was less marked than as a minister. Presenting himself for the Senate (for Aveyron) in 1912 he was defeated. He died April 7 1913.

CONSTANTINE, King of the Hellenes (1868- ), eldest son of George I. of Greece, was born Aug. 2 1868, and succeeded to the throne March 18 1913, on the assassination of his father. As the first prince of a Greek reigning dynasty born in modern times on Greek soil, and reared in the Greek Orthodox faith, he became from his birth to the Greek people the embodiment of their national aspirations, and was given the name of the last Emperor of Constantinople, in the superstitious hope that he would fulfil the old prophecy that the Empire of Byzantium would be restored to the Greek nation, when a king named Constantine and a queen named Sophia should reign on the Greek throne. This strange legend strengthened Constantine's popularity amongst the Greeks, and when in 1889 he married Sophia Dorothea of Hohenzollern, daughter of the Emperor Frederick of Germany, the coincidence of the name enhanced immensely the superstitious belief of the Greeks. He received

of 18 he was sent to Berlin for a military education, and served in one of the Imperial Guard regiments, attending also a few desultory courses at the university of Leipzig. It was during his stay in Berlin that he made the acquaintance of his future wife, and (very much against his father's wishes) formed the attachment that was destined to exert such an important influence on his career.

After returning to Greece he was given various military commands. In 1897 he was sent to Larissa to take command of the Greek army in Thessaly, just before the outbreak of the disastrous war with Turkey. At the close of the war the Crown Prince was probably the best-hated man in Greece. The popular voice attributed the disasters to him and to his father. He still retained, however, his nominal post of commander-in-chief. It was only in Aug. 1909, when the garrison of Athens suddenly revolted and demanded sweeping reforms, including the reorganization of the army and navy and the removal of the princes from all military commands, that Constantine and his brothers, George, Nicholas and Andrew, hastened to resign their commissions and to go abroad to escape the open hostility of public opinion. From this practical exile the Crown Prince first, and his brothers Nicholas and Andrew afterwards, were recalled and reinstated in their commands by Venizelos, when the latter became the all-powerful head of the Greek Government. His bill for the reappointment of Crown Prince Constantine as commander-in-chief of the army was bitterly opposed in the Greek Chamber by Theotokis, Gounaris, Rallis and other politicians, who a few years later were to become King Constantine's chief supporters. The army officers, too, with few exceptions, were much opposed to the bill. By a curious irony, it was only Venizelos' determined attitude that saved it from rejection. The Greek successes in the Balkan wars subsequently enhanced the Crown Prince's credit, and it was in an atmosphere of renewed popu'arity (Venizelos himself helping to exploit it) that he succeeded unexpectedly to the throne on his father's assassination.

King Constantine at once showed his monarchical spirit. He took to copying the modes of speech and action of his brotherin-law, the German Emperor. He began to speak, in his official utterances, of "My army" and "My navy "; to attend in person the swearing-in of the annual recruits and to impress upon them the extreme sanctity of their oath of allegiance to him. Officers were made to feel that their only hope of advancement lay in their devotion to the War-lord. And when his youngest daughter was born in 1913, he proclaimed "his" army and navy godfathers to the little princess. Such incidents attracted little serious attention at the time. But the subsequent course of events showed that the King was intent on converting the democratic, ultra-constitutional monarchy, which that of Greece had been, into one of a more absolute type on the Prussian model. Constantine and his defenders have indeed vehemently denied the existence of any secret understanding between himself and the Kaiser, either before or after the outbreak of the World War. Apart, however, from the indirect evidence furnished by the private telegrams exchanged between the royal couple of Greece and the Kaiser in 1916-7, which came to light after Constantine's dethronement, the existence of a definite understanding between William II. and Constantine to secure Greek neutrality in an impending European war has been expressly attested by Gen. Ludendorff himself in his war memoirs. During the first six months of the war Constantine gave no sign, even when Venizelos, before the first battle of the Marne, offered the alliance and aid of Greece to the Entente Powers. But when in Jan. 1915 the Entente promised Greece extensive territory in Asia Minor if she would join in the Dardanelles operations, and Venizelos proposed to coöperate, Constantine refused to give his sanction. Venizelos at once resigned, and at the ensuing parliamentary election a large Venizelist majority was returned (June 1915). The King was seriously ill at the time, and the Queen and the Government flatly refused to allow the appointment of a regent. Thus it

resumed in the Atlantic in 1916 when the "Moewe" was out, and in the course of that year some 15 convoys of two to three transports each sailed from Halifax. But these were special escorts intended to protect their convoys from surface craft. The adoption of a general convoy system was still outside the pale of contemporary naval thought. A considerable proportion of the troop service across Channel was escorted; but this was a local service arranged by the admirals at Dover (for Folkestone to Boulogne) or Portsmouth (for Southampton to Havre). There was a tendency to regard the loss of merchant ships with little concern during that period, and a number of large ships were even fitted out at great expense to act as dummy battleships to be torpedoed by the enemy instead of the vessels they tried to counterfeit. The idea of using destroyers to escort the ordinary trade would have received short shrift at the Admiralty and in the Grand Fleet, nor was it necessary at the time. In March and April 1917, when the British losses in merchant shipping assumed alarming proportions, the idea of a convoy system came again to the front. Previous ocean convoys had been directed against the surface raider; it was the submarine that now formed the principal menace. The system was in use in the case of what was called the French coal trade, a crossChannel traffic from Portsmouth and Falmouth performed by small ships, where it had worked very successfully, and it was now suggested to extend it to the ocean routes. The system of protection in vogue at the time may be called the patrolled route system. There were three main approach routes to the British Isles, one N. of Ireland for ships making the Clyde or Liverpool by the North Channel (Route C); one S. of Ireland for ships making the Bristol Channel and Liverpool by St. George's Channel (Route B); one towards the Scillies for ships making the English Channel (Route A). These were called the Tory I., Fastnet (S. W. point of Ireland) and Scillies approaches, from the lights sighted by the ships as they made the coast. These approaches may be regarded as three great triangles gradually narrowing to three apexes at or near the points mentioned. They were patrolled with trawlers and a sprinkling of destroyers, and when any area was threatened by submarine activity the routes in it were changed.

In March 1917, the system was slightly modified. Half a dozen different routes were specified in each approach triangle, and it was proposed to switch the traffic from one route to the other every five days. As the routes in each triangle could lie some 150 m. apart in long. 15° W., there was considerable scope for dispersion, and the system was in effect a system of protection by means of dispersion and routeing. The patrols were a mere pretence, for the routes were on an average some 240 m. long, and to patrol them in strength with two destroyers and 16 trawlers was impracticable. The scheme was in its essence an endeavour to circumvent the submarine by routeing and it failed. Its advocates could not possibly maintain that it was as efficient as an escort system, for all important ships were actually escorted, and it must be regarded merely as an attempt to burke the significance of the fact that was beginning to assert itself, that every ship had to be escorted.

The idea of general convoy met with strong opposition from every side at the Admiralty, in the Grand Fleet and amongst the masters and owners of ships. The Admiralty saw that it would involve the creation of a new organization; the Grand Fleet saw its destroyers being taken away; very few recognized the fact that the battlefleets were now becoming merely complementary factors in a guerre de course. The policy of the fleet being ready at any moment to rush out and join battle still held sway. It was a policy resting chiefly on the basis of intelligence supplied by wireless directionals, which made it possible to know when the German fleet was at sea. It meant that the fleet had to be ready at any moment to put to sea in battle array, and in these circumstances the commander-in-chief clung tenaciously to every one of his destroyers. These may be called the strategical objections to convoy, but other strong arguments could be urged against it. Ships would incur delay in assembling, instead

to reduce their speed to that of the convoy. Convoy meant congestion of ports on departure and arrival, and congestion of labour due to the simultaneous arrival of a number of ships. These objections were as old as the days of Duguay Trouin and Jean Bart, but there were other objections of a more modern type. The masters would never be able to keep station, and were at first much in favour of independent sailings.

On the other hand strong arguments could be marshalled in favour of convoy. Why string out 15 armed trawlers 10 m. apart to supply feeble protection on a line 150 m. long, when four destroyers attached to a convoy could give it continual and efficient protection over double the distance? It might appear at first that a convoy gave the submarine a massed target, but the danger of approaching it was greater, and submarine commanders preferred to attack unescorted ships. The real obstacle in the way of a convoy system was the difficulty of finding the destroyers required for the escort. More than half the modern destroyers were absorbed by the Grand Fleet and the Harwich flotillas. In Feb. 1917 10 were detached from the Grand Fleet to Devonport to assist in escorting important ships, and the use of armed trawlers was extended, but the latter were too slow and too ill-armed to be of much value.

The weekly returns issued by the trade division at this time conveyed a misleading idea of the situation. They gave the number of arrivals and departure of all nationalities, with the number of British ships of over 1,600 tons lost. The first set of figures had little to do with the real issue, for a small Dutch coaster making three voyages a week to France would figure six times in the arrivals and departures, which ran into several thousands, whereas the number of big ships arriving and leaving daily was very much less. The situation was much worse than it appeared, and the idea of general convoy gained ground.

In April 1917 the British had 3,534 ships over 1,600 tons, of which 1,125 were required for naval and military purposes, leaving only 2,409 available for civil purposes. There were not more than 15 patrols in each area of approach, and in March and April 1917 the number of ships passing through them was about 300, of which 24 were sunk, at which rate, giving each ship a round voyage of two months, practically one-half would have been sunk by the end of the year. Again those who argued in favour of the patrolled route system were arguing in direct opposition to their own policy, for escorts were always provided for all valuable munition ships and ships of national importance carrying Government cargo (some three or four a day in 1917), The patrolled route system was thereby acknowledged to be an inferior sort of makeshift for ships that were not of national importance. But in April 1917 it began to be seen that every ship was of national importance, and that a loss of 373 ships a month meant that the navy would lose the war before the army could win it. The great advantage of the patrolled route system was that it gave much less trouble and required very few ships, but the same virtues were inherent in no system at all.

One other argument was marshalled against the system, namely, that it would be better to use destroyers directly against submarines. The reply was that no likelier spot could be chosen for seeking them than in the vicinity of a convoy, and from the date convoys commenced to run in May 1917 to the end of the war some 15% of submarines sunk were actually sunk in the vicinity of or when attacking convoys. The losses of April brought the question to an acute stage. The centralization of the control of shipping in the Ministry of Shipping facilitated the inauguration of a general system of convoy. On April 26 the director of the anti-submarine division urged its introduction, and on May 17 1917 a convoy committee was appointed to arrange the details of a specific scheme. The volume of trade in the Atlantic daily at that time amounted to about 400 vessels, of which 300 were British and 87 neutral. As the area of convoy only extended to about long. 20° W., only some 30 vessels had to be convoyed daily, and it was decided to start with a convoy from the United States and Canada every three days, from Gibraltar every four and from Dakar every five days. The in

Henderson, R.N., and its organization and business management to Paymaster-Capt. H. W. Manisty. The first homeward-bound Atlantic convoy started on May 24, and by June 1917 convoys were being regularly run.

The system may be considered under two heads: (1) the organization at the ports of assembly and at the Admiralty, (2) the system of command at sea and the tactical measures of the convoy and escort. At the ports of assembly, escorts had to be provided to conduct ships from the ports of loading and to the ports of discharge. The convoy had to be assembled, the masters mustered and given their instructions, and the convoy handed over to the commodore. This work was done by port convoy officers, who were appointed at home to Lamlash, Devonport, Falmouth and Milford Haven and abroad to Sydney (N.S.), New York, Halifax, Gibraltar and Dakar. At all ports of any size, there were shipping intelligence officers who were now merged in the system and issued route instructions to the masters. At the British Admiralty the two principal tasks were assembly and routeing. The general management of the system lay with the organizing manager of convoys (Paymaster-Capt. H. W. Manisty), who worked in close coördination with the shipping controller. In the task of routeing he was assisted by naval officers and by a large convoy chart which showed continuously the latest movements of submarines and convoys. This chart was of the greatest value, for it made it possible to alter at once the course of a convoy if a submarine was reported in its vicinity, a system much more elastic and more exact than altering the routes blindly every five days. The three principal ports of assembly were Lamlash or Buncrana (Lough Swilly) in the N., Queenstown, Milford Haven and Falmouth in the S. Escorts were provided by the admirals commanding these areas, and orders for convoy were passed to them. An escort generally consisted of six to eight destroyers for a convoy of about 25 ships. A large portion of the work at Queenstown was gradually taken over by the U.S. navy, who worked in the closest harmony with Vice-Adml. Sir Lewis Bailey, the local commander-in-chief. The whole question hinged on the provision of destroyers. In Feb. 1917 there were only 14 destroyers at Devonport and 12 sloops at Queenstown available for convoy, and it was estimated that 81 destroyers or sloops would be required to provide escort for homeward-bound convoys, and 44 additional destroyers or sloops for outward-bound convoys. It was here that the aftermath of Jutland was severely felt. For the Grand Fleet still had to be prepared to meet the German fleet again, and insisted on a minimum margin of destroyers to enable it to do so. The destroyer position in 1917 is shown in the table (A= modern new destroyers and flotilla leaders; B = old destroyers).

small staff of signalmen. He took general charge of the convoy until it met the escort, when the commodore then took his instructions from the senior officer of the escorts. A considerable equipment had to be provided for each convoy, including fog buoys, masthead angle tables, station-keeping instruments, and signalling lanterns. A convoy usually consisted of 25 to 32 ships. They were organized in five or six columns with ships 500 yd. and columns 800 yd. apart. The proportion at a later date was eight destroyers to a convoy of 22 ships and six to a convoy of less than 16.

The convoy came across by itself and was met by the escort on approaching the submarine zone, some 300 m. out at sea, and brought in by it. In daylight or in suspected areas or on a submarine report the whole convoy zigzagged, an operation which consisted in an alteration of one or two points (11° to 22°) on each side of the navigator's course (course of advance) for some 10 minutes. These alterations of course were intended to make it more difficult for the enemy to estimate the exact course of the ship, a necessary factor in adjusting the sights for firing a torpedo. Another protective element was the system of camou flaging ships, which rendered it more difficult to distinguish the fore and aft line of a vessel, a necessary preliminary in estimating its course (see CAMOUFLAGE: Naval).

The first convoys in May 1917 were all homeward-bound to Great Britain, but by Aug. outward-bound convoys were running too. The main designation of convoys was into H. and 0. (homeward and outward), with subsidiary letters indicating the port of departure and a series number for each convoy. The principal convoys were as follows:

the early months of the year the crosses indicating ships sunk had been scattered all over the seas W. and S.W. of Ireland. They were now confined to coastal areas, which greatly facilitated the work of rescue and salvage. From Sept. to Dec. 1917, only six ships were lost over 50 m. from land, which meant a great reduction in casualties, with corresponding increase of confidence in convoyed ships. The homeward-bound convoys were also given what were called ocean escorts of armoured cruisers or armed merchantmen, who accompanied them the whole way. By Sept. 1917, Atlantic convoys were in regular operation with about 150 vessels coming in and the same number going out weekly. The destroyers which took the outward-bound convoy out, met the homeward-bound convoy and brought it in, though this procedure often led to delays and difficulties in bad weather, darkness and fog. The bulk of the Atlantic work in European waters was done by British craft, Great Britain providing 70% of the destroyers for convoy and the United States 27 per cent.

On the E. coast of Great Britain, matters followed a rather different course. A conference had been held at Longhope (Scapa Flow, Orkneys) on April 4 1917, under the vice-adml. of the Orkneys and Shetland (Sir Frederick Brock), and it had been decided to convoy Scandinavian ships, on whom Great Britain was dependent for much of its imported wood pulp. They came up from Hull to Lerwick, where an escort of two destroyers and four to six trawlers took them across. This route was much more exposed to attack by surface craft than the Atlantic route, for it was only some 350 m. from Horns Reef, a distance which could easily be covered by a fast cruiser in 15 hours of darkness. Such attacks were the natural counterstroke to a convoy system, and it was one of the principal functions of the fleet to screen convoys from them. The first attack of this sort took place on Oct. 17 1917, when the "Brummer" and "Bremse," two fast German cruisers, originally designed as minelayers for the Russian navy, attacked a Scandinavian convoy of 12 ships, and sank the two destroyer escorts, the 'Mary Rose" and Strongbow," and all but three of the A considerable force of light cruisers (comprising some 16 vessels) was in the vicinity, but as it was not close to the convoy, and the wireless installation of the escorts was destroyed by the first salvo, the enemy got away.

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convoy.

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This was a severe blow to the E. coast convoy system and as a remedy it was proposed to provide a stronger covering force from the Grand Fleet. This entailed the reduction of convoys to three a week, the use of the Tyne instead of Humber as an assembly port, and the provision of nine modern destroyers. The commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet demurred at the provision of destroyers, and at a conference on Dec. 10 1917 it was decided to use Methil, a small port on the Fifeshire coast of the Firth of Forth, as an assembly port. The decision had hardly been reached when two days later, on Dec. 12, the convoys were again attacked. The German attack was made on this occasion by two half torpedo flotillas (five boats each). The third half flotilla went N., and meeting heavy weather made Udsire on the Norwegian coast at 7 A.M. on the 13th. Steaming

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down the coast, the flotilla sighted at 12:30 P.M. a convoy of six steamers from Lerwick to Norway, escorted by the destroyers "Pellew" and "Partridge" and four armed trawlers. The "Partridge " received a shot in her main steam pipe, and after hitting a German destroyer, V100, with a torpedo which did not explode, was sunk. The "Pellew" escaped. The convoy was sunk, and the half flotilla returned home round the Skaw. Two armoured cruisers, the "Shannon " and "Minotaur," were acting as a covering force, but were again too far off, and though they hurried to the spot on receipt of a wireless message arrived too late. Here can be seen a distinct divergence of opinion and method between the conduct of the Atlantic and Scandinavian convoys. An escort against surface craft should be at least within sight of a convoy, and a covering force against an attack in force is of little use if it is not within reënforcing distance. At the root of the insufficient protection accorded to the Scandinavian convoys was the policy prevailing both at Whitehall and at sea that the Grand Fleet must be ready at any moment to sail for the Bight and bring the enemy to action. This naturally led to convoy work being regarded as an entirely subsidiary task. In April 1918, the German admiral Scheer made a bold sortie in force against the convoy. The whole fleet put to sea on April 23 for the Norwegian coast. In front was Adml. von Hipper with the battle cruisers of the first scouting division, and Scheer followed with the battlefleet. The time was ill-chosen. One convoy of 34 ships was just entering the Forth and another of 47 ships leaving it, while the British 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron and 7th Light Cruiser Squadron were at sea covering them. This was not the only misfortune for the Germans. The "Moltke" at 8 A.M., about 40 m. S.W. of Stavanger, met with a serious accident and had to be towed home, being torpedoed by E42 on her way back. This was the last sortie of the German fleet, and it is interesting to note that it was directed against the convoy system. It led on the British side to the convoy route being shifted to the northward, so as to remove it farther from the source of attack and increase the chance of striking a counter-blow.

The possibility of an attack by surface raiders in the Atlantic had not been lost sight of. The commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet was kept informed of the approximate position of convoys so as to be in a position to appreciate the situation at once if a raider got out. In Dec. 1917 the two armoured cruisers H.M.S. "Leviathan and "King Alfred" were attached to convoys, and in 1918 a U.S. pre-dreadnought battleship was added. The possibility of an attack by battle cruisers was met by a U.S. dreadnought force being stationed at Bere Haven in Sept. 1918 to be available to meet convoys coming in, and in Oct. 1918 it actually put to sea for this purpose. Convoy was gradually extended to other routes, and by the end of the war the grand total of ships convoyed reached 88,000, with a loss of 436 ships or approximately 0-5 per cent.

The Mediterranean had always been a difficult area, and the institution of convoys in that sea followed a somewhat different course. Operations in that sea were greatly influenced by the fact that the Mediterranean outside the Adriatic was under French naval control, and the French commander-in-chief, Vice-Adml. Gauchet, would have assumed command in the event of the Austrian fleet breaking out. However, with the consent of the French and Italian naval authorities, a British commander-in-chief, Vice-Adml. Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe, was appointed in Aug. 1917 with the special charge of arrangements for the protection of trade and anti-submarine operations. The divided control, and the different patrol areas under different nationalities, did not make for efficiency, but the general arrangements were settled by a conference of Allied officers at Malta (Commission de Malte), with delegates from France, Italy and Japan. In the Mediterranean, as at home, the question hinged on destroyers. The Italians preferred to retain their destroyer forces in the Adriatic and on their own coastal routes, just as the British commander-in-chief wanted to retain them with the Grand Fleet. Of the British destroyers available (about 36), some eight were required to watch the Dardanelles