Our Admiral (Sims) and I are trying our best, and we are spending enough on cables to build a destroyer.

All this, you must, of course, regard as a dark secret; but it's a devilish black secret.
I don't mean that there's any danger of losing the war.

Even if the British armies have to have their food cut down and people here go hungry, they'll win; but the winning may be a long time off.
Nothing but their continued success can keep the Germans going.
Their people are war-weary and hungry.

Austria is knocked out and is starving.

Turkey is done up but can go on living on nothing, but not fighting much more.