This was, presumably, well known to the members of the German Naval Staff, and possibly explains their view that the entry of the United States of America would be of little help to the Allied cause.

The Germans did not, however, make sufficient allowance for the productive power of the United States, and perhaps also it was thought in Germany that public opinion in the United States would not allow the Navy Department to send over to European waters such destroyers and other vessels of value in anti-submarine warfare as were available at once or would be available as time progressed.

The German Staff may have had in mind the situation during the Spanish-American War when the fact of Admiral Cervera's weak and inefficient squadron being at large was sufficient to affect adversely the naval strategy of the United States to a considerable extent and to paralyze the work of the United States Navy in an offensive direction.
Very fortunately for the Allied cause a most distinguished officer of the United States Navy, Vice-Admiral W.S.Sims, came to this country to report on the situation and to command such forces as were sent to European waters.

Admiral Sims, in his earlier career before reaching the flag list, was a gunnery officer of the very first rank.

He had assimilated the ideas of Sir Percy Scott of our own Navy, who had revolutionized British naval gunnery, and he had succeeded, in his position as Inspector of Target Practice in the United States Navy, in producing a very marked increase in gunnery efficiency.