re of significance chiefly as indicating
the immense transportation problems of the British and Allied navies
and the use made of sea communications.

These three main Allied naval operations--the blockade of Germany,
the anti-submarine campaign, and the transportation of American
troops to France--were unquestionably decisive factors in the war.
Failure in any one of them would have meant victory for Germany. The
peace of Europe, it is true, could be achieved only by overcoming
Germany's military power on land. A breakdown there, with German
domination of the Continent, would have created a situation which
it is difficult to envisage, and which very probably would have
meant a peace of compromise and humiliation for England and America.
It is obvious, however, that, but for the blockade, Germany could
have prolonged the war; but for American reenforcements, France
would have been overrun; but for the conquest of the submarine,
Great Britain would have been forced to surrender.

In the spring of 1918 Germany massed her troops on the western
front and began her final effort to break the Allied lines and
force a decision. With supreme command for the first time completely
centralized under Marshal Foch, and with the support of American
armies, the Allies were able to hold up the enemy drives, and on
July 18 begin the forward movement which pushed the Germans back
upon their frontiers. Yet when the armistice was signed on November
11, the German armies still maintained cohesion, with an unbroken
line on foreign soil. Surrender was made inevitable by internal
breakdown and revolution, the first open manifestations of which
appeared among the sailors of the idle High Seas Fleet at Kiel.

On November 21, 1918, this fleet, designed as the great instrument
for conquest of world empire, and in its prime perhaps as efficient
a war force as was ever set afloat, steamed silently through two
long lines of British and Allied battleships assembled off the
Firth of Forth, and the German flags at the mainmasts went down
at sunset for the last time.

REFERENCES

BRASSEY'S NAVAL ANNUAL, 1919.
THE VICTORY AT SEA, Vice-Admiral W. S. Sims, U. S. N., 1920.
ANNUAL REPORT of the U. S Secretary of the Navy, 1918
THE DOVER PATROL, 1915-1917, Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, R. N.,
1919.
ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND DISPATCHES, ed. by C. Sanford Terry, 1919.
LAYING THE NORTH SEA MINE BARRAGE, Captain R. R. Belknap,
U. S. N., U. S. Naval Institute