"
Sir Eric afterward himself visited the United States and his visit was
made the occasion of a general expression of the high regard which the
United States felt for the splendid assistance which the great British
Navy had rendered in convoying its armies across the seas.
Secretary Daniels, in his report of December, 1918, said that American
sea forces in European waters comprised 338 vessels, with 75,000 men and
officers--a force larger than the entire Navy was before the war began.
From August, 1914, to September, 1918, German submarines sank 7,151,088
deadweight tons of shipping in excess of the tonnage turned out in that
period by the allied and neutral nations. That total does not represent
the depletion of the fleets at the command of the allied and neutral
nations, however, as 3,795,000 deadweight tons of enemy ships were
seized in the meantime. Actually, the allied and neutral nations on
September 1, 1918, had only 3,362,088 less tons of shipping in operation
than in August, 1914.
These details of the shipping situation were issued by the United States
Shipping Board along with figures to show that, with American and allied
yards under full headway, Europe's danger of being starved by the German
submarine was apparently at an end. The United States took the lead of
all nations in shipbuilding.
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