Excerpt from Stead's Review, Vol. 49: March 9th, 1918 Now it is quite obvious that in order to produce the tons, which we were confidently assured would be launched from British dockyards in 1918, the monthly out put would hayc to be at least tons. Instead of that. Tons only are built in January. And no more in Feb ruary. This means that during March, and each of the remaining months of the year, no less than tons will have to be turned out if the tons' mark is to be reached. Under the circumstances this seems quite impossible of attainment, and if we average tons a month for the rest of the year, we will be doing well, and will produce about as much in igi8 as we did in 1017. At present we are badly behind. Nor. Unfortunately, dare we hope that America will much m0re than double her last year's output during We are, therefore. Forced to the reluctant con elusion that building is still far behind sink ings, and has so much leeway to make good that it cannot possibly catch up for a long time. We have, that is to say, thus far failed to meet the submarine menace by in creased shipbuilding, and it becomes daily more imperative to overcome it by destroy ing U boats or corking them Up in the Baltic. Despite the optimistic speeches of Sir Eric Guides and Lloyd George, the weekly sinkings do not show a favourable curve; they are. In fact, a straight line with, if anything, a slight upward tendency. Vt'e may be sinking U boats, but there are enough left to destroy an average of over a dozen large vessels cvcrv week. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.