ABSTRACT
The opening days of 1917 marked the nadir of Allied fortunes in the First World War. John Grigg1 argues persuasively that Britain’s situation at the time was even more perilous than that faced during the Battle of Britain in 1940. On the Western Front there was stalemate. Relations with a devastated France were under strain, and morale at home was affected by hundreds of thousands of casualties, with no end in sight. The United States would not enter the war until April, and as yet it was not certain that this would happen. The Eastern Front was crumbling away, and within weeks the February revolution would lead to the abdication of the Tsar, the separate peace between Russia and Germany, and the consequent diversion of many divisions of German troops to the West. Most perilous of all for Britain was the submarine threat to the shipping lanes and the importation of the goods from abroad needed to keep the war going.
