resort. The men, who will decide that time will be Hindenburg and
Batocki. The successful siege of Germany is a stupendous though
not impossible task.

On the other hand, the human system is a very elastic piece of
mechanism, and modern man, far from being the degenerate which some
admirers of cave-man hardihood have pictured him, is able to
undergo a tremendous amount of privation. Besieged cities have
nearly always held out longer than the besiegers expected. In the
besieged city the civilian population is for the most part a drag
on the military, but in besieged Germany the civilian population,
reinforced by slave labour from Belgium, France and Poland,
continues working at high pressure in order to enable the military
to keep the field. Fat is the vital factor. The more munitions
Germany heaps up the more fat she must use for this purpose, and
the less she will have for the civil population, with a consequent
diminution of their output of work. Germany simply cannot burn the
candle at both ends. It is my personal opinion that Verdun marks
the supreme culmination of German military offensive in the West,
and the West is the decisive theatre of war. If that is
Hindenburg's opinion, then he realises that another colossal German
offensive in the West would not bring a victorious peace. There
remains only the alternative of building up a defensive against the
coming Allied attacks--an alternative depending for its success
upon sufficient food for the mass of the people. Thus the U-boat
decision clearly rests upon the Chief of Staff and the Food
Dictator, since their advice to the Imperial Chancellor and the All
Highest War Lord must be determinative. When the day comes for
Germany to proclaim to the world that she will sink at sight all
ships going to and from the ports of her enemies, that day will be