SOUTHERN Daily Echo readers one hundred years ago this month cast mournful eyes upon the latest reports from the Secretary of the Admiralty who announced that the enemy had claimed to have sunk the British submarine E7 and had taken Lieutenant Commander Archibald D Cochrane, R.N. prisoner along with three other officers and 25 members of the submarine’s crew.

If the reports were to be believed then it would bring to close a brief career of service for the wartime submarine, which was only commissioned in March 1914, two years after she was laid down. E7 took part in the Second Heligoland Bight Patrol early on in the war, along with the submarines E5, D2 and D3 and was also involved in a 24-day patrol in the Sea of Marmara. It was claimed that the E7 succeeded in sinking 13 ships and damaging many more.

As no news had been received from the submarine since September 4, the Admiralty had to regrettably presume that the enemy’s report was correct.

In the House of Commons this week it was officially stated that the total British casualties recorded in the Dardanelles up to Aug 21st had amounted to 87,630 men, of which 17,608 of those were killed.

These harrowing statistics came on the back of figures revealed in earlier in the week when great, though painful, interest was attracted by the Daily Echo’s main mews story which focused on the information given at the re-opening of Parliament that week concerning the British casualties during the first 12 months of the war.

The Daily Echo’s report revealed to readers that the total men killed, died of wounds and missing had reached a total of 381,982, while the killed alone had assumed nearly 76,000 of the total figure.

Since the outbreak of the war three million men had offered themselves as recruits for the army and Navy but considering the very furious character of the fighting, especially during the early stages of the war in France and Belgium, and latterly in the Dardanelles, these figures could not be regarded as unduly heavy. Neither was the proportion of killed to wounded by any means abnormally high, when taken into account the deadly character of the modern weapons of the time.

It was also announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the budget for the war would be presented later that week with the Prime Minister expected to review the military situation in moving a vote of credit the following day.

Speaking in the House of Commons in response to the Chancellor’s announcement, Mr Asquith stated that the present Vote of Credit was the seventh that year. The gross total of daily expenditure, including advances to our Allies, was £4,200,000. These figures threw some light on the contributions that the country was making towards the war and the strain it was placing upon the economy to sustain the war effort.