William H. Buckler to Colonel House

EMBASSY OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
C O P Y.

London,


Dear Colonel House
Many thanks for your letter of April 19th (received May 1) about the change in peace terms, and for your kind messages through Mr. Whitehouse with whom I had a long talk yesterday. He thoroughly appreciates his luck in having been spectator of events – from a “stage box” so to speak – at that great crisis, and is filled with gratitude to The President and to yourself.
His escapes on the BALTIC were narrower than he could have wished: at 250 miles from Ireland one torpedo was dodged, at 25 miles out another; clothes were kept on all night, and a boatload of torpedoed sailors could not be picked up. The captain saw only the wake of the oncoming torpedoes, but in neither case any sign of the submarines, so that gunnery was of no avail.
The gravity of this warfare of “U against you” (to quote the Daily Mail) is but partly revealed to the public here, the tonnage figures are still withheld and one of the best naval critics Pollen, – a great friend of Symington, our Naval Attachie has been muzzled, as you will see from the enclosed “Star”.
I had a long talk yesterday with Walter Runciman who does not hide his profound anxiety, and whose views are of special interest because he has within the last fortnight been visiting the great shipbuilding works on the Wear and the Tyne – i.E. Sunderland and Newcastle –, as well as Cardiff and Bristol. Also his wife's brother-in-law, Sir Kenneth Anderson, is now head of a big department under the Shipping Controller (Sir Joseph Mclay). For the first time I learnt that all British freight steamers in the Indian and Far Eastern trades, as well as in other parts of the world, have for the past six weeks been withdrawn in order to carry foodstuffs. This is a great blow to British Commerce as well as to manufactures, for it means that the Lancashire Cotton-Mills will shortly close down.
As to new output of British tonnage it was the concensus of opinion among the big builders whom R. consulted that for 1917 this could hardly exceed one million tons. The men all work with unflagging energy but are handicapped by a loss of 25% of the skilled hands; in other words the yards have barely 75% of the skilled staffs of peace time.
It seems incredible that the War Office cannot be induced to release such men at the present crisis, but R. failed last year in persuading them to do this, and his successors at the Board of Trade seem to succeed no better. A month ago the total loss of world tonnage was at the rate of six million tons a year; now it is at the rate of over ten million tons a year (1,700,000 tons for the two months February and Marchm, multiplied by six – 10,200,000) and the loss of British ships alone is at the rate of about six million tons a year.
Thus, even if there be no increase in rate of losses this summer, England is annually losing 6 million and replacing only 1 million tons. Runciman says – and these figures say it even more plainly – that everything depends on what the U.S. can do.
Five things are important for us to produce as quickly as possible:
(1) fast sea-going destroyers,
(2) small freight-carrying steamers for running foodstuffs through the blockade,
(3) guns for arming merchant ships,
(4) gunners to serve these guns – four to a gun
(5) engineers trained to operate merchant ships' engines. The explanation of this last need is that within the past fortnight at Cardiff ship's engineers have shown a disquieting tendency to seek munition-jobs on shore instead of going to sea in a deathtrap, i.E. the engine-room of a tramp-steamer slow enough to be torpedoed.
This same tendency has for some time been growing among firemen, but they are readily replaced. The defection of the engineers is a far more serious symptom, yet not surprizing; occupants of the engine room are more likely than are deck hands to be killed by the explosion or drowned if their ship sinks quickly. The seriousness of all this is painfully obvious, especially when one hears from Captain MacDougall (our Naval Attachè) that the type of destroyer required takes a year to turn out, and that the gears of their high powered turbines can only be cut in this country where the gear-cutting machines are already in arrears with their work. How long, I wonder, will it take American energy to produce at home these essential gear-cutters? One feels that the saving of the situation is literally a race against time.
May our press face these facts and not copy the self-complacent clap-trap about sea-power, invincible fleets, etc., with which the British public has so long been drugged.
This morning's TIMES account of things in Washington gives one hope, yet I cannot imagine that our people as a whole have yet grasped what they are up against.
I cannot help wondering whether a realization that the Entente were “all in” did not have much to do with our entrance into the war, for it is fairly clear that but for this intervention it would soon be over and that peace would be by no means “without victory”.
This inevitable increase in our burdens will have the great advantage of making our voice more potent in the Peace Conference I am glad that Mr. Whitehouse will disabuse his Liberal frinends of their fears, which I mentioned last week, as to our unpacific tendencies. This month's ENGLISH REVIEW is interesting for the complete conversion of Austin Harrision (son of Frederic Harrison) from ultra-smashing jingoism to the ideals of the President's speech. By way of contrast I am enclosing Blackwood's, with an article about us and the Russians that might almost have been written before 1789 but is none the less amusing.
I call your attention to the letter of welcome from Liberal M.P.s to Russia, which was cabled by the Embassy and widely published there.Nabokow, their Chargé d'Affaires, a decided progressive, is rather hurt, I understand, by the official coolness shown here to the Revolution and by the fact that Lloyd George is holding meetings with members of the Entente regarding foreign affairs without the attendence of any Russian representative.Rosen, the new Ambassador to Washington, seems an excellent appointment, as he is moderate and anti-annexationist – so far at least as Constantinople is concerned.

(Signed) W. H. BUCKLER

W. R. expressed surprise at the recent German estimate of total Allied and neutral tonnage sunk in February and March being so near the actual figures: 1,800,000 tons instead of 1,700,000 the true amount. He said it showed how accurate the wireless reports from submarines must be and how well the submarine captains size up the dimensions of the ships which they torpedo.