This production revealed that the United States could meet any war emergency out of its own resources in respect of supplies. Its army might be smaller than Switzerland's and its navy inadequate, but it would have no cause to go begging for the guns and shells needful to wage war. How huge factories were built, equipped, and operated in three months, how machinery for the manufacture of tinware, typewriters, and countless other everyday articles was adapted to shell making; and how methods for producing steel and reducing ores were revolutionized--these developments form a romantic chapter in American industrial history without a parallel in that of any other country. The United States, in helping the European belligerents who had free intercourse with it, was really helping itself. It was building better than it knew. The call for preparedness, primarily arising out of the critical relations with Germany, turned the country's attention to a contemplation of an agreeable new condition--that the European War, from which it strove to be free, had given it an enormous impetus for the creation of a colossal industry, which in itself was a long step in national preparedness, and that much of this preparedness had been provided without cost. The capital sunk in the huge plants which supplied the belligerents represented, at $150,000,000, an outlay amortized or included in the price at which the munitions were sold. Thus, when the last foreign contract was fulfilled, the United States would have at its own service one of the world's greatest munition industries--and Europe will have paid for it. CHAPTER IX NAVAL ENGAGEMENTS IN MANY WATERS The months which brought the second year of war to a close were marked by increased activity on the part of all the navies engaged. Several single-ship actions took place, and the Germans pursued their submarine tactics with steady, if not brilliant, results. It was during this period that they sent the first submersible merchant ship across the Atlantic and gave further proof of having developed undersea craft to an amazing state of efficiency. On their part the British found new and improved methods of stalking submarines until it was a hazardous business for such craft to approach the British coast. A considerable number were captured; just how many was not revealed. After a slackening in the submarine campaign against merchant ships, due partly to a division of opinion at home and largely to the growing protests of neutrals, Germany declared that after March 1, 1916, every ship belonging to an enemy that carried a gun would be considered an auxiliary, and torpedoed without warning. (For an account of the negotiations with the United States in relation to this edict, see United States and the Belligerents, Vol. V, Part X.)