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By Root 1026 0

the German high command calculated that, even if the United States declared war, severing the Atlantic lifeline would strangle Britain and France into surrender in less than six months, long before a substantial number of American troops could be trained and sent to Europe. Despite its size the United States had a standing army that ranked only seventeenth in the world. In any case, how would American soldiers cross the ocean? German naval commanders were confident that U.S. troopships and merchant vessels alike would fall victim to U-boats, because Allied technology for locating submarines underwater was still so primitive as to be almost useless.

In January 1917 the Germans sank 171 Allied and neutral ships; in February, after the new declaration, 234; in March, 281; and in April, 373. Measured in tonnage, the losses were even more catastrophic: the Germans sank more than 880,000 tons of merchant shipping in the month of April alone, a pace of destruction high enough to polish off every single cargo ship on the world's oceans in less than three years. And they were managing to inflict this deadly toll with, on average, only 30 submarines on station in the shipping lanes at any given time. One out of four ships leaving Britain to go overseas, the authorities calculated, would not survive to return. Faced with these odds, the captains of hundreds of neutral vessels in British ports refused to sail.

The Germans had finally found a way to hit Britain in its stomach. In the first six months of unlimited submarine warfare, 47,000 tons of meat ended up at the bottom of the ocean, and much larger quantities of other food. Gloom over these losses dominated meetings of the War Cabinet. The U-boats, it seemed, might starve Britain more quickly than the Royal Navy blockade could starve Germany. "In five months at this rate Britain would be forced to her knees," wrote Churchill, adding, "It seemed that Time, hitherto counted as an incorruptible Ally, was about to change sides."

Nothing breeds spy hysteria like a war that is not going well. If food is short and newspapers are filled with reports of ships lost at sea, if soldiers are dying by the thousands but the front line does not move, it is tempting to believe that all this is not just the fault of the enemy but also of unseen traitors at home. British paranoia was fed by many springs, from John Buchan's fast-paced espionage novels to Christabel Pankhurst's Britannia and its shrill denunciations of treacherous Germanophiles in high positions to the aptly named Horatio Bottomley, a demagogic orator and editor who called for conscientious objectors to be taken to the Tower of London and shot.

When panic fills the air, of course, there are careers to be made, high and low, by discovering hidden enemies. England did not lack for people eager to do so, among them Scotland Yard's debonair self-promoter Basil Thomson. Unfortunately for him, bona fide German agents were depressingly rare. Despite efforts to blame factory fires or accidents on them, not a single known act of enemy sabotage took place in Britain during the entire war. And so for the ambitious spycatcher, promotions and publicity meant ferreting out homegrown subversives: typically, at one trade union meeting in Southampton in the middle of the war, two embarrassed detectives were found hiding under a grand piano.

Various government departments rushed to create intelligence units. One such bureau had been set up in 1916 by officials at the new Ministry of Munitions, on edge about a wave of strikes that rippled through factories turning out guns, shells, and other crucial war equipment in the Midlands and along Scotland's River Clyde. There were also rent strikes by Scottish women munitions workers angry over rising prices and inadequate housing.

Unlike many in ruling circles, Alfred Milner acknowledged that workers had genuine problems, including "the bullying and unscrupulousness of some employers ... and profiteering." But once these were dealt with, he believed that the government should "go for the agitators.