MORE NAVAL VESSELS NEEDED TO MEET U-BOAT ATTACKS,

Torpedoing of another merchantman in the St, Lawrence River brings the number of ships destroyed by enemy action in these waters to ten and bears out the prediction made last spring by the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice-Admiral Nelles, that U-boats would venture right to Canada's doorstep. The navy was awake to the danger but it was beyond its power to seal up all the entrances to the Gulf and Diver St . Lawrence. Between W mouski and the tip of the Gaspe peninsula there is a 250 mile shipping bottleneck. At its eastern end it is more than 100 miles wide, narrowing to a width of 30 miles at Metis Beach where the latest attack took place . Once an undersea boat gets into this bottleneck the odds for attack are in its favor . All it has to do is lie in wait for the shipping moving east or west, then strike . But immediately an attack is made the odds change against the submarine : It then becomes the hunted and the bottleneck limits its range of escape to two directions . In several of the U-boatattacks on merchant shipping iu the river corvettes and RCAF planes have immediately gone into action but the Navy department has adopted the policy o withholding information on the success of these operations, the reason being that it is desirable to keep the U-boat base in the dark as long aa possible on the fate of the boat it sent to the St . Lawrence area. Were it possible far the navy to shut out submarines from the Gulf of St. Lawrence by closing the Atlantic entrances north and south of Newfoundland greater use could be made of Montreal and Quebec as summer shipping points, thereby eliminating the present long rail haul to St. John and Halifax. The distance in which shipping woulc be exposed to the U-boat menace would be reducec if the Strait of Belle Isle route were used. Fron: Halifax to Liverpool is 2,476 miles and from Quebec to Liverpool via Belle Isle Strait 2,638 miles. But from Belle Isle Strait to Liverpool it is only 1,73,1 miles. Thus if the whole St. Lawrence area wa : secure from U-boats, summer shipping using the Belle Isle Strait would have 738 miles less danger zone to pass through to reach Liverpool than vessel, outward bound from Halifax. Given enough ships the Canadian navy might be able to seal Belle Isle Strait and the area, lying between Newfoundland and Cape Breton against U-boats, but sufficient corvettes to do the work are lacking, As Navy Minister Macdonald pointed out yesterday the navy must provide escorts on the trans-Atlantic routes and on the American coastwise routes for the merchant convoys. The demand continues to be for more and more corvettes and mine-sweepers,