During the first three months of 1917 submarine warfare was a success in that it so decreased the ship tonnage and the importations of the Allies that they needed American co-operation and assistance. _So the United States really enters the war at the critical and decisive stage_. Germany believes she can continue to sink ships faster than they can be built, but Germany did not calculate upon a fleet of wooden bottom vessels being built in the United States to make up for the losses. Germany did not expect the United States to enter the war with all the vigour and energy of the American people. Germany calculated upon internal troubles, upon opposition to the war and upon the pacifists to have America make as many mistakes as England did during the first two years of the war. But the United States has learned and profited by careful observation in Europe. Just as England's declaration of war on Germany in support of Belgium and France was a surprise to Germany; just as the shipment of war supplies by American firms to the Allies astonished Germany, so will the construction of 3,000 wooden vessels upset the calculations of the German General Staff. While American financial assistance will be a great help to the Allies that will not affect the German calculations because when the Kaiser and his Generals decided on the 27th of January to damn all neutrals, German financiers were not consulted. Neither did the German General Staff count upon the Russian Revolution going against them. Germany had expected a revolution there, but Germany bet upon the Czar and the Czar's German wife. As Lieutenant Colonel von Haeften, Chief Military Censor in Berlin, told the correspondents, Germany calculated upon the internal troubles in Russia aiding her. But the Allies and the people won the Russian Revolution. Germany's hopes that the Czar might again return to power or that the people might overthrow their present democratic leaders will come to naught now that America has declared war and thrown her tremendous and unlimited moral influence behind the Allies and with the Russian people. Rear Admiral Hollweg's calculations that 24,253,615 tons of shipping remained for the world freight transmission at the beginning of 1917, did not take into consideration confiscation by the United States of nearly 2,500,000 tons of German and Austrian shipping in American ports. He did not expect the United States to build 3,000 new ships in 1917. He did not expect the United States to purchase the ships under construction in American wharves for neutral European countries.