Admiral Sims informed me--as soon as he became aware of the heavy losses to merchant shipping that were taking place--that neither he nor anyone else in the United States had realized that the situation was so serious.

This was, of course, largely due to the necessity which we were under of not publishing facts which would encourage the enemy or unduly depress our own people.

Further, he informed me that an idea was prevalent in the United States that the _morale_ of the German submarine crews had been completely broken by their losses in submarines.

This impression was the successful result of certain action on our part taken with intent to discourage the enemy.
Whatever may have been the case later in the year, we had, however, no evidence in the spring of 1917 of deterioration of _morale_ amongst German submarine crews, nor was there any reason for such a result.

It was therefore necessary to be quite frank with Admiral Sims; we knew quite well that we could not expect new measures to be effective for some few months, and we knew also that we could not afford a continuance of the heavy rate of loss experienced in April, without a serious effect being produced upon our war effort.