e Blockade" began (February 1917). Then, two months
later still, most of the Peace Party, seeing that their own ships would
be sunk just as readily as French or British ships, gave their vote for
war.

It was a glorious moment in world-history when British, French, and
Americans at last stood side by side. The American Navy led the way,
joining the hunt for German submarines with a keenness whetted by
having been held back so long. The Army followed, bit by bit, until
two million men had gone to Europe, thanks chiefly to the British ships
that took them there. The Nation backed both Army and Navy with vast
sums of money, which it could so easily afford, and with patriotic work
of every splendid kind.

But the war lasted only nineteen months longer; and in that time the
Americans were not able to do anything like what the Allies had done
before and still were doing. The entire American loss in men (killed,
wounded, and prisoners) was over one-quarter million. But Canada's
loss of over two hundred thousand was ten times as great in proportion;
for there are twelve-and-a-half times as many people in the United
States as there are in Canada. In the same way the losses of France
and Great Britain were each more than twenty times greater than that of
the United States. In ships and money the difference is far more
striking still. The British alone lost one-and-a-half times as many
ships as all the rest of the world put together. But the Americans
have actually gained, owing to the number of interned German vessels
they seized in their ports. As for money: the British, the French, and
all the Allies have spent so much in fighting for the freedom of the
world that neither they nor their children, nor their children's
children, can ever pay the vast debt off; while the United States have
made, on their own showing, the twelve-and-a-half "billions" mentioned
already.

These few facts (there are hundreds more) will show you a little of
what the Great War means to the world, what the British Navy meant to
the war, and what Jutland meant to both the war and the world, by
sweeping the German Navy off the surface of the sea, and so bringing on
the "Submarine Blockade" that itself forced the American Government to
fight in self-defence.

[Illustration: British Submarine.]

The Germans, wishing to kill off their victims one at a time, were
ready for the French and Russian Navies, but not for the British. They
had less