Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/26

8 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,