and probably by as much as one-third, as against January.  In January arrivals amounted to 2.2 million net tons.  I may supplement the incomplete English statistics by the information that in March the arrivals were only 1.5 to 1.6 million tons net, and leave it to Mr. Carson to refute this.  The 1.5 to 1.6 million tons represent, compared with the average entries in peace time, amounting to 4.2 millions, not quite 40 per cent.  This low rate will be further progressively reduced.  Lloyd George at the beginning of the war reckoned on the last milliard.  Those days are now past.  Then he based his plans on munitions.  England has here, with the aid of America, achieved extraordinary results.  But the Somme and Arras showed that, even with those enormous resources, England was not able to beat us.  Now, in his greeting to the American Allies, Lloyd George cries out:  ‘Ships, ships, and yet more ships.’  And this time he is on the right tack; it is on ships that the fate of the British world-empire will depend.

“The Americans, too, have understood this.  They propose to build a thousand wooden vessels of 3,000 tons.  But before these can be brought into action they will, I confidently hope, have nothing left to save.

“I base this confidence upon the indications which are visible, despite the English policy of suppression and concealment.

“Take the total British trade.  The figures for March are still not yet available, but those for February tell us enough.

“British imports amounted in January of this year to 90 million pounds sterling, in February to only 70 million; the exports have gone down from 46 to 37 millions sterling—­imports and exports together showing a decline of over 20 per cent. in the first month of the submarine warfare.  And again, the rise in prices all round has, since the commencement of the U-boat war, continued at a more rapid rate, so that the decline in the import quantity from one month to another may fairly be estimated at 25 per cent.  The figures for imports and exports, then, confirm my supposition as to the decrease of tonnage in the traffic with British ports.

“The British Government has endeavoured, by the strictest measures rigorously prohibiting import of less important articles, to ward off the decline in the quantity of vital necessaries imported.  The attempt can only partially succeed.

“In 1916, out of a total import quantity of 42 million tons, about 31 millions fall to three important groups alone, viz., foodstuffs and luxuries, timber, and iron ore; all other goods, including important war materials, such as other ores and metals, petroleum, cotton and wool, rubber, only 11 million tons, or roughly one-fourth.  A decline of one-fourth, then, as brought about by the first month of unrestricted submarine warfare, must affect articles indispensable to life and to the purposes of war.

“The decline in the imports in February, 1917, as against February, 1916, appears as follows: