The causes and meaning of the great war . rom an official British statement made on March21, 1918, namely, that from August, 1914, toJanuary, 1918, 11,800,000 gross tons of allied andneutral shipping had been sunk, and that onlyabout 6,600,000 tons had been built to take theplace of the loss. They knew also that theAllies had a pressing need for every vessel thatcould be brought into service to transport foodand other supplies for their soldiers and civil-ians. 142. Wonderful Success of Our Emergency FleetCorporation.—But again the German high com-mand made a serious mistake in its reckoning.
The causes and meaning of the great war . rom an official British statement made on March21, 1918, namely, that from August, 1914, toJanuary, 1918, 11,800,000 gross tons of allied andneutral shipping had been sunk, and that onlyabout 6,600,000 tons had been built to take theplace of the loss. They knew also that theAllies had a pressing need for every vessel thatcould be brought into service to transport foodand other supplies for their soldiers and civil-ians. 142. Wonderful Success of Our Emergency FleetCorporation.—But again the German high com-mand made a serious mistake in its reckoning. Forour Emergency Fleet Corporation, spurred byGermanys brutal submarine policy, had organizeda colossal building programme, so that by the sum-mer of 1918 there were in the United States 151ship-building plants, with a ship-building army 550,-000 strong. This programme was carried out withsuch wonderful success that by the end of July,1918, 1,719,536 tons of shipping had been built,over 631,000 tons of which were produced in 116 THE CAUSES AND MEANING Ludendorffconfident ofsuccess The routingof a Britishcorps 143. Ludendorffs Plan for a Grand Offensive inthe Spring of 1918.—The speed of the Americanshastened the German military leaders. Theyplanned; under the leadership of Ludendorff, whowas in direct command of the German armies,a grand offensive in the spring of 1918 in orderto bring about a military decision before largearmies could be brought overseas from break-up in Russia, as a result of the revolu-tion there, had released so many German troopsthat Ludendorffs armies now outnumbered thoseof the Allies by more than forty divisions, prob-ably not far from 600,000 men. He was there-fore confident of success. His great offensive,stretching over a period of nearly four months,consisted of five Titanic drives, or assaults, withthe purpose of breaking through the allied line,separating the British and French armies, andcapturing the Channel ports in
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