The cheerfulness of the Prime Minister, however, was exceptional; all his associates hardly concealed their apprehension. On the other hand, a wave of enthusiasm was at that time sweeping over Germany. Americans still have an idea that the German Government adopted the submarine campaign as the last despairing gambler's chance, and that they only half believed in its success themselves. There is an impression here that the Germans never would have staked their Empire on this desperate final throw had they foreseen that the United States would have mobilized against them all its men and resources. This conviction is entirely wrong. The Germans did not think that they were taking any chances when they announced their unrestricted campaign; the ultimate result seemed to them to be a certainty. They calculated the available shipping which the Allies and the neutral nations had afloat; they knew just how many ships their submarines could sink every month, and from these statistics they mathematically deduced, with real German precision, the moment when the war would end. They did not like the idea of adding the United States to their enemies, but this was because they were thinking of conditions after the war; for they would have preferred to have had American friendship in the period of readjustment. But they did not fear that we could do them much injury in the course of the war itself. This again was not because they really despised our fighting power; they knew that we would prove a formidable enemy on the battlefield; but the obvious fact, to their eyes, was that our armies could never get to the front in time. The submarine campaign, they said, would finish the thing in three or four months; and certainly in that period the unprepared United States could never summon any military power that could affect the result. Thus from a purely military standpoint the entrance of 100,000,000 Americans affected them about as much as would a declaration of war from the planet Mars. We confirmed this point of view from the commanders of the occasionally captured submarines. These men would be brought to London and questioned; they showed the utmost confidence in the result. "Yes, you've got _us_," they would say, "but what difference does that make? There are plenty more submarines coming out. You will get a few, but we can build a dozen for every one that you can capture or sink. Anyway, the war will all be over in two or three months and we shall be sent back home."