With
a folly that still seems incredible, they took the risk of adding the
greatest power in the world--in numbers of men and in potential
energy--to their list of enemies at a time when their own man-power
was on the wane. With deliberate arrogance they flouted the United
States and forced her to declare war. Their temptation, of course, was
great. The British naval blockade was causing severe suffering by food
shortage to the German people and denying them access to raw material
which they needed for the machinery of war.
The submarine campaign, ruthlessly carried out, would and did inflict
immense damage upon British and Allied shipping, and was a deadly
menace to England. But German calculations were utterly wrong, as
Ludendorff in his Memoirs now admits, in estimating the amount of time
needed to break her bonds by submarine warfare before America could
send over great armies to Europe. The German war lords were wrong
again in underestimating the defensive and offensive success of the
British navy and mercantile marine against submarine activities.
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