and raw materials. The French fleet lent its aid. Germanyv replied by submarine warfare. Without dilating upon this contest I must point out that America saw in it a danger to her own shipping and to her trade. As early as August 5, 1915, she tried, unsuccessfully, to mediate between the belligerents; and when, in February 1915, Germany declared British waters a war zone, America immediately protested, her protests being renewed whenever German submarines endangered the lives of American citizens. In February 1916 the Germans intensified their submarine campaign until, on February 1, 1917, they passed to unrestricted submarine warfare. America was incensed, her aversion from Germany having been increased by German and Austrian propaganda in America and by attacks upon American trade and industry in the United States itself. Of this I shall give some account when I tell of the part we took in opposing this phase of German action.
At first the German submarines were very successful. By the spring of 1917, despondent voices were increasingly to be heard in England, foretelling starvation and surrender. Lloyd George himself was seriously alarmed. As I had been living in England since the autumn of 1915, I followed with the utmost attention the course of the naval struggle. One was continually reminded of it in London, even in the daily details of domestic life. There was much talk of a German invasion—a possibility officially admitted as late as the spring of 1918. The question was very important because it affected the estimates of the number of troops that ought to be held in readiness at home and therefore withheld from France. Hence I took comprehensible interest in American protests against Germany. Even before the sinking of the “Lusitania,” on May 7, 1915, their tone was sharp, and it became still sharper in the Notes dealing with the “Lusitania.” In December 1915 an American Note was also addressed to Austria on the sinking of the “Ancona” by an Austrian submarine. In 1916 came the Notes on the sinking of the cross-channel steamer “Sussex” until, finally, war was declared on April 6, 1917. The declaration of war counterbalanced not only the successes of the German submarines but those of the German armies. Such, at least, was my firm belief when I decided, in the spring of 1917, to go for a time to Russia.
About Russia and her fate I had worried continually. Now and again I had gone to see the Russian Ambassador, Count Benckendorff. The Russian journalist, M. de Wesselit-
