sinkings, British and neutral, had reached 536,000 tons in February and 603,000 in March; it further disclosed that sinkings were taking place in April which indicated the destruction of nearly 900,000 tons. These figures indicated that the losses were three and four times as large as those which were then being published in the press.[1]

It is expressing it mildly to say that I was surprised by this disclosure. I was fairly astounded; for I had never imagined anything so terrible. I expressed my consternation to Admiral Jellicoe.

"Yes," he said, as quietly as though he were discussing the weather and not the future of the British Empire. "It is impossible for us to go on with the war if losses like this continue."

"What are you doing about it?" I asked.

"Everything that we can. We are increasing our anti-submarine forces in every possible way. We are using every possible craft we can find with which to fight submarines. We are building destroyers, trawlers, and other like craft as fast as we can. But the situation is very serious and we shall need all the assistance we can get."

"It looks as though the Germans were winning the war," I remarked.

"They will win, unless we can stop these losses—and stop them soon," the Admiral replied.

"Is there no solution for the problem?" I asked.

"Absolutely none that we can see now," Jellicoe announced. He described the work of destroyers and other anti-submarine craft, but he showed no confidence that they would be able to control the depredations of the U-boats.

The newspapers for several months had been publishing stories that submarines in large numbers were being sunk; and these stories I now found to be untrue. The Admiralty records showed that only fifty-four German submarines were positively known to have been sunk since the beginning of the war; the German shipyards, I was now informed, were turning out new submarines at the rate of three a week. The newspapers had also published accounts of the voluntary surrender of German U-boats; but not one such surrender, Admiral Jellicoe said, had ever taken place; the stories had been circulated merely for the purpose of depreciating enemy moral. I even found that members of the Government, all of whom should have been better informed, and also British naval officers, believed that many captured German submarines had been carefully stowed away at the Portsmouth and Plymouth navy yards. Yet the disconcerting facts which faced the Allies were that the supplies and communications of the forces on all fronts were threatened; that German submarines were constantly extending their operations farther and farther out into the Atlantic; that German raiders were escaping into the open sea; that three years' constant operations had seriously threatened the strength of the British navy, and that Great Britain's control of the sea was actually at stake. Nor did Admiral Jellicoe indulge in any false expectations concerning the future. Bad as the situation then was, he had every expectation that it would grow worse. The season which was now approaching would make easier the German operations, for the submarines would soon have the long daylight of the British summer and the more favourable weather. The next few months, indeed, both in the estimation of the Germans and the British, would witness the great crisis of the war; the basis of the ruthless campaign upon which the submarines had entered was that they could reach the decision before winter closed in. So far as I could learn there was a general belief in British naval circles that this plan would succeed. The losses were now approaching a million tons a month; it was thus a matter of very simple arithmetic to determine the length of time the Allies could stand such a strain. According to the authorities the limit of endurance would be reached about November 1, 1917; in other words, unless some method of successfully fighting submarines could be discovered almost immediately, Great Britain would have to lay down her arms before a victorious Germany.

"What we are facing is the defeat of Great Britain," said Ambassador Walter H. Page, after the situation had been explained to him.

In the next few weeks I had many interviews with Admiral Jellicoe and other members of the Admiralty. Sitting in conference with them every morning, I became, for all practical purposes, a member of their organization. There were no secrets of the British navy which were not disclosed to their new American ally. This policy was in accordance with the broad-minded attitude of the British Government; there was a general desire that the United States should understand the situation completely, and from the beginning matters were discussed with the utmost frankness. Everywhere was manifested a willingness to receive suggestions and to try any expedient that promised to be even remotely successful; yet the feeling prevailed that there was no quick and easy way to defeat the submarine, that anything even faintly resembling the much-sought "answer" had not yet appeared on the horizon. The prevailing impression that any new invention could control the submarine in time to be effective was deprecated. The American press was at that time constantly calling upon Edison and other great American inventors to solve this problem, and, in fact, inventors in every part of two hemispheres were turning out devices by the thousands. A regular department of the Admiralty which was headed by Admiral Fisher had charge of investigating their proposals; in a few months it had received and examined not far from 40,000 inventions, none of which answered the purpose, though many of them were exceedingly ingenious. British naval officers were not hostile to such projects; they declared, however, that it would be absurd to depend upon new devices for defeating the German campaign. The overshadowing fact—a fact which I find that many naval men have not yet sufficiently grasped—is that time was the all-important element. It was necessary not only that a way be found of curbing the submarine, but of accomplishing this result at once. The salvation of the great cause in which we had engaged was a matter of only a few months. A mechanical device, or a new type of ship which might destroy this menace six months hence, would not have helped us, for by that time Germany would have won the war.

I discussed the situation also with members of the Cabinet, such as Mr. Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, and Sir Edward Carson. Their attitude to me was very different from the attitude which they were taking publicly; these men naturally would say nothing in the newspapers that would improve the enemy moral; but in explaining the situation to me they repeated practically everything that Jellicoe had said. It was the seriousness of this situation that soon afterward sent Mr. Balfour and the British Commission to the United States. The world does not yet understand what a dark moment that was in the history of the Allied cause. Not only were the German submarines sweeping British commerce from the seas, but the German armies were also defeating the British and French on the battlefields in France. It is only when we recall that the Germans were attaining the high peak of success with the U-boats at the very moment that General Nivelle's offensive had failed on the Western Front that we can get some idea of the real tragedy of the Allied situation in the spring of 1917.

"Things were dark when I took that trip to America," Mr. Balfour said to me afterward. "The submarines were constantly on my mind. I could think of nothing but the number of ships which they were sinking. At that time it certainly looked as though we were going