Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/332

314 marines? Had the German people not been promised that their U-boats would sink any American troopships that attempted to cross the ocean? As the shipments increased, and as the effect of these vigorous fresh young troops began to be manifest upon the Western Front, the outcries in Germany waxed even more fierce and abusive. Von Capelle and other German naval chiefs made rambling speeches in the Reichstag, once more promising their people that the submarines would certainly win the war—speeches that were followed by ever-increasing arrivals of American soldiers in France. The success of our transports led directly to the fall of Von Capelle as Minister of Marine; his successor, Admiral von Mann, who was evidently driven to desperation by the popular outburst, decided to make one frantic attempt to attack our men. The new minister, of course, knew that he could accomplish no definite results; but the sinking of even one transport with several thousand troops on board would have had a tremendous effect upon German moral. When the great British liner Justicia was torpedoed, the German Admiralty officially announced that it was the Leviathan, filled with American soldiers; and the jubilation which followed in the German press, and the subsequent dejection when it was learned that this was a practically empty transport, sailing westward, showed that an actual achievement of this kind would have raised their drooping spirits. Admiral von Mann, therefore, took several submarines away from the trade routes and sent them into the transport zone. But they did not succeed even in attacking a single eastbound troopship. The only result accomplished was the one which, from what I have already said, would have been expected; the removal of the submarines from the commercial lane caused a great fall in the sinking of merchant ships. In August, 1918, these sinkings amounted to 280,000 tons; in September and October, when this futile drive was made at American transports, the sinkings fell to 190,000 and 110,000 tons.

Too much praise cannot be given to the commanders of our troop convoys and the commanding officers of the troop transports, as well as the commanders of the cruisers and battleships that escorted them from America to the western edge of the submarine zone. The success of their valuable services is evidence of a high degree not only of nautical