INTRODUCTION

American belligerency coincided with the deepest maritime crisis of World War I, when the U-boats were sinking one in every four ocean-going vessels clearing British ports. Only some 10 per cent of the lost tonnage was being replaced; moreover, damaged ships were generally out of service for several months and some for the duration of the war. In the month of America’s intervention, almost 900000 tons of Allied and neutral shipping was lost by enemy action, the vast bulk of it to the submarines. The British were reduced to a few weeks’ supply of grain and only ten days’ stock of sugar but the most serious shortage was that of oil, vital to all arms. Successful interdiction of the supply reduced the Grand Fleet to half speed and any further constriction would cripple the anti-submarine effort. The British public was kept in the dark about this dire situation but ministers and shipping officials were becoming restless at the Admiralty’s self-confessed incapacity to discover a solution. It was in these doom-laden circumstances that a new member of the coalition, distant from it in more than one sense, had to be integrated into the Allied war effort. The disturbing fact that the United States was so woefully unprepared for war rendered her absorption into the coalition all the more difficult. For a time the Americans were likely to prove a military liability and a drain on resources until their own war effort had taken off. Moreover, the Americans, half afraid that they might soon find themselves alone against the power of Germany and her allies, remained wary of committing themselves too deeply to their new associates. They clung to as high a degree of independence as seemed consistent with ensuring the Allies’ survival and an ultimate victory. As Benson’s biographers explain: