World War One, despite the enormity and grand scale of the conflict, was ultimately a war of attrition. "Attrition in the end, was the main factor that decided who won the war. The Entente Powers simply had more men and resources than Germany and its allies (though there were some anxious moments between the time their Russian ally fell out of the war mid-1917 and the arrival of large numbers of American troops on the Western Front in mid-1918)."
             Both sides of the war were supplied with materials from their various colonies. Of necessity, this was by ship. But a new form of naval warfare emerged from the German shipyards. It was an improved submarine, the U-boat. There were strict traditional and international warfare rules regarding submarines. "The traditional rules of war stipulated that a warship must warn a merchantman and allow its passengers and crew to abandon ship before sinking it, unless the merchant ship resisted or attempted to escape, or was in convoy under the protection of warships. A limited armament on a merchant ship, such as a gun or two for protection against pirates or lightly armed raiders, did not necessarily nullify the ship's immunity to attack without warning. A cargo of munitions or war materiel did not affect a merchant ship's status in this respect, although it certainly legitimized destruction of the ship and cargo after removal of passengers and crew." There was an alleged armament of the Lusitania in which twelve six-inch guns were placed and hidden. "Twelve six-inch guns is heavy armament, equivalent to the main battery of a large World War Two light cruiser. It would require at least a hundred men to man such a battery, and probably considerably more . To hide a contingent this large, in a crew of about 700, would be impossible. It is equally implausible that Lusitania's own crew could have manned these guns; every account, indicates that she had a largely inexperienced crew of wartime recrui...