Disheartened by their failure at sea, the enemy therefore turned their eyes once more toward the land. The destruction of Russian military power had given the German armies a great numerical superiority over those of the Allies. There seemed little likelihood that the French or the British, after three years of frightfully gruelling war, could add materially to their forces. Thus, with the grouping of the Powers, such as existed in 1917, the Germans had a tremendous advantage on their side, for Russia, which German statesmen for fifty years had feared as a source of inexhaustible man-supply to her enemies, had disappeared as a military power. But a new element in the situation now counterbalanced this temporary gain; that was the daily increasing importance of the United States in the war. The Germans, who in 1917 had despised us as an enemy, immediate or prospective, now despised us no longer. The army which they declared could never be raised and trained was actually being raised and trained by the millions. The nation which their publicists had denounced as lacking cohesion and public spirit had adopted conscription simultaneously with their declaration of war, and the people whom the Germans had affected to regard as devoted only to the pursuit of gain and pleasure had manifested a unity of purpose which they had never before displayed, and had offered their lives, their labours, and their wealth without limit to the cause of the Allies. Up to March, 1918, only a comparatively small part of this American army had reached Europe, but the Germans had already tested its fighting quality and had learned to respect it. Yet all these manifestations would not have disturbed the Germanic calculations except for one depressing fact. Even a nation of 100,000,000 brave and energetic people, fully trained and equipped for war, is not a formidable foe so long as an impassable watery gulf of three thousand miles separates them from the field of battle.