LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 AMERICA IN THE WAR 
 
 III 
 HOW WE WENT TO WAR
 
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 AMERICA IN THE WAR 
 
 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 NELSON LLOYD 
 
 ILLUSTEATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1919
 
 DS70 
 L5G 
 
 COPTBIGHT, 1918, BT 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAO1I 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 II. THE TASK 19 
 
 III. THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 26 
 
 IV. THE CANTONMENTS . , 42 
 
 V. MILITARY PREPARATION 64 
 
 VI. THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 78 
 
 VII. NAVAL PREPARATION . . .^ 101 
 
 VIII. OUR NAVY IN ACTION 120 
 
 IX. THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 139 
 
 X. HELPING OUR ALLIES 157 
 
 XI. THE WAR BUDGET 167 
 
 XII. LABOR 187 
 
 XIII. THE COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE . . 206 
 
 XIV. THE RAILROADS 225 
 
 XV. THE COLLEGE 237 
 
 XVI. CONCLUSION . 247
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Ships building at Hog Island Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Marching out to dine after short period of training at one 
 
 of the National Army cantonments 52 
 
 Making cartridge-shells at the Bethlehem Steel Works . . 70 
 Mess at the Pelham Bay Naval Station 136 
 
 Selling Liberty Bonds in front of the Sub-Treasury, New 
 
 York City 178 
 
 Patriotic rally for ship-builders in hull of a wooden ship 
 
 building at Seattle, Washington 196
 
 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 'nr^HERE is nothing finer in American history 
 * than the way in which the American peo- 
 ple, as a whole, responded to the call for war 
 with Germany. This statement might seem 
 too broad. Some critics might take issue with 
 it. They might point to the peace-at-any-price 
 campaign which was wide-spread over the coun- 
 try from the beginning of the World War in 
 1914 to the very hour when America was forced 
 to take up arms. They might point to sporadic 
 outbursts of disloyalty by certain foreign-born 
 elements of our population, who placed the 
 cause of the lands of their birth above the wel- 
 fare of their adopted country. They might 
 point to certain members of Congress, even, 
 who by their obstructionist tactics gave evidence 
 of lukewarmness for the war, and even of out- 
 right lack of patriotism. Every community has
 
 2 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 had its pacifists, its pacifists with honest hearts 
 and weak heads, its dishonest pacifists working 
 in the interest of the country's enemy, its slack- 
 ers, its malcontents. This has been true of 
 every nation in every past war. But certain it 
 is that when on April 6, 1917, our government 
 accepted the German challenge to our rights 
 and liberties, the American people ranged them- 
 selves behind their leaders with a steadfast pur- 
 pose to meet their heavy task, to make every 
 sacrifice that the world might be freed from 
 the horror of German militarism and Kultur. 
 
 Look at their record. 
 
 In the first eighteen months of the war by the 
 volunteer system and the selective draft they 
 raised their armies from hardly 250,000 men to 
 3,000,000, of whom more than one-half were 
 moved to the battle-front in France. 
 
 Their navy was increased by volunteers from 
 65,000 men to over 500,000, and ships by the 
 hundred were added to their sea force. 
 
 Starting with an almost negligible number of 
 merchant vessels, they had laid the foundation 
 of the greatest merchant marine in the world. 
 
 During the same period they had paid to
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 their government more than $4,000,000,000 in 
 taxes, and had advanced to it in loans by the 
 purchase of Liberty Bonds and War Savings 
 Stamps more than $9,000,000,000. 
 
 To make easier the lives of their fighting men 
 and to heal the wounds inflicted on the world 
 by German Kultur, they had given, through the 
 Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Knights of 
 Columbus, and other philanthropic agencies, full 
 a half-billion dollars. But, above all, they had 
 offered the lives of their men and their women 
 and stood ready to bear increasing sorrows and 
 heavier burdens. 
 
 These figures are not to be read in a spirit of 
 boastfulness. America 'has not yet had to drain 
 the very dregs of the cup of sorrow, as have 
 France and Great Britain, Belgium, Serbia, and 
 Italy. America has not had to stand with her 
 back to the wall to meet the onslaught of hordes 
 of modern savages, the product of years of a 
 system of perverted education, based on a per- 
 verted system of morality. These figures are 
 given because they answer the charges of the 
 Germans abroad and the Germans at home, 
 that the American people were not whole-
 
 4 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 heartedly in the war. They answer the old 
 argument of the pacifists that the American 
 people would not suffer themselves to be 
 dragged into a conflict 3,000 miles away, and 
 would endure dishonor and outrage rather than 
 fight in defense of their own and the world's 
 liberty. The things that the Germans and 
 pacifists said the Americans would not do they 
 have done, and they have done it in full measure. 
 It is true that following the outbreak of the 
 European War we had two and a half years of 
 divided opinion and hesitation, but those were 
 years of education and they brought us to a 
 common opinion and a common purpose. Had 
 the heads of our government been less idealistic, 
 of less pacific minds, that period might have 
 been briefer and we might have faced the 
 conflict better prepared for it. They did not 
 lead the people to war. They did not even 
 teach the people to prepare for war. Their 
 every effort was to keep the country at peace. 
 But they, too, were learning. Few people in 
 the United States at the beginning of the World 
 War realized the peril that lay in Germany's 
 aggression. Few had ever heard of the Pan-
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 German movement. Few believed that Ger- 
 many was really carrying out a well-laid scheme 
 to secure the rule of the world by force. The 
 full depth of Germany's guilt was not known. 
 When the neutrality of Belgium was violated 
 and there followed a series of excesses that 
 shocked civilization, some public men and 
 writers did proclaim our danger and warn us to 
 make ready to meet it. But the lesson was 
 learned slowly. The rape of Belgium shocked 
 all decent people, but Belgium was three thou- 
 sand miles away, and we did not see those hor- 
 rors close at hand. It took time to reveal them 
 to us. Military necessity was the excuse of 
 Germany's apologists, and with some it found 
 credence. We did not realize that the Belgium 
 horror was but a part of a long-laid plan to 
 bring the world to its knees under the lash of 
 frightfulness. That a nation supposed to be 
 civilized could commit such crimes seemed in- 
 credible. 
 
 In 1915 blinking eyes began to open wide. 
 Clouds of poison -gas were rolled across the 
 British front, dealing a hideous death to gallant 
 soldiers who were fighting fairly, and Germany
 
 o HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 | 
 was seen again violating the rules of warfare 
 
 laid down by The Hague conventions to which 
 she had acceded. While men still had faith in 
 her honor, her scientists were experimenting on 
 cats and dogs to devise the cruellest form of 
 weapon for her army's use. Liquid fire followed 
 the gas, and then began the murderous career 
 of her submarines. 
 
 From the first the sympathy of the great 
 majority of Americans was with the Allies. 
 Even then Germany might have taught us to 
 respect her. She taught us to despise. Her 
 declaration of a war zone around her enemies' 
 coasts on February 4, 1915, gave us the first 
 real warning of trouble ahead. The right of 
 American ships and American citizens to tra- 
 verse the seas in time of war was firmly estab- 
 lished by long-standing principles of interna- 
 tional law. If Germany could have maintained 
 a blockade of enemy ports the case would have 
 been different, but even then she would have 
 had to safeguard the lives of passengers and 
 crews of both enemy and neutral merchant ves- 
 sels. This she could not do. Her navy, except 
 her submarines, had been driven from the seas,
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 and, disregarding President Wilson's warning 
 that she would be held to "strict accountability" 
 for her acts, she sent those submarines forth on 
 their mission of piracy. On March 28 the 
 British steamship Falaba was sent to the bot- 
 tom with 111 lives; on April 8 the Harpalyce, 
 carrying food to starving Belgium, was torpe- 
 doed, and fifteen of the crew were lost. Vessel 
 after vessel was sunk without warning. It was 
 the sinking of the Cunard liner Lusitania on 
 May 7 that fanned America's anger into full 
 flame. By that crowning murder 1,154 men, 
 women, and children lost their lives, and of 
 these 114 were Americans. This alone was 
 enough to convince the unbiassed of the sinister 
 nature of Germany's plans and the peril to the 
 world in the victory of such a people. 
 
 Had the German Government deliberately 
 planned to open the eyes of America to Ger- 
 many's intentions and to the danger that lay 
 behind those intentions, it could not have acted 
 more efficiently. Slowly the whole system of 
 frightfulness was unfolded, and the perversion 
 of the German mind laid bare. Despite our 
 warnings, ship after ship was murderously sunk.
 
 8 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 German Zeppelins and airplanes dropped their 
 bombs on open towns, dealing death to hun- 
 dreds of innocent men, women, and children. 
 There was no respect for that emblem of mercy, 
 the Red Cross. The wounded and the nurses 
 of the hospitals became fair game for any Hun- 
 nish warrior of the air, and hospital-ships, with 
 their freight of wounded, choice marks for those 
 that lurked under the sea. Even as I write 
 comes the news of the sinking of the hospital- 
 ship Llandovery Castle, when on an errand of 
 mercy, and 258 persons, including 14 women 
 nurses, were killed. 
 
 Future historians, reviewing the events of 
 these times, will certainly wonder at those two 
 and a half years when America endured so 
 many wrongs at Germany's hands, and took no 
 other action than to strive to bring her to rea- 
 son by argument, unsupported by even a show 
 of force. They will wonder why, when the 
 threat was so evident, we made no preparation 
 to meet the storm. The truth is we had a 
 pacific and altruistically minded administra- 
 tion ; we had a Congress which contained a large 
 number of pacifists, some pacifists from sin-
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 cerely patriotic motives, and others for rea- 
 sons purely selfish. To-day no man in the 
 world is more hated by the Germans than 
 President Wilson. They charge him with being 
 a tool of Great Britain, and with deliberately 
 leading us to war, to the ruin of their hope for 
 victory and world dominion. Nothing could be 
 more false. He strove patiently to keep us at 
 peace, often in the face of bitter opposition at 
 home, but that day came, when, as he has said: 
 "The right is more precious than peace." From 
 that day he has been for "force, force to the 
 utmost," and he has had behind him a united 
 Congress and a united people. But they were 
 not for war because, as a German has written, 
 "war is the most august of all human activi- 
 ties"; they were for war because only by war 
 could the world be made "a decent place in 
 which to live." 
 
 "The object of America in this war," the 
 President has said, "is to deliver the free peo- 
 ples of the world from the menace and the 
 actual power of a vast military establishment, 
 controlled by an irresponsible government, 
 which, having secretly planned to dominate the
 
 10 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 world, proceeded to carry out the plan without 
 regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty 
 or the long-established practices and long-cher- 
 ished principles of international action and 
 honor; which chose its own time for the war, 
 delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly, stopped 
 at no barrier, either of law or mercy, swept a 
 whole continent within the tide of blood not 
 the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of in- 
 nocent women and children, also, and of the 
 helpless poor, and now stands, balked but not 
 defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the 
 world. . . ." 
 
 We can imagine the historian puzzling over 
 the question as to why we were so long in dis- 
 covering this menace, why we did not see it 
 when Belgium was overrun and ruined, and the 
 Lusitania sunk. His perspective will be better 
 than ours. He will be able to trace the whole 
 series of great events from their beginning to 
 their end. He will find the germs of the war 
 in those days fifty years ago when the Germans 
 overran France and formed the German Empire, 
 with Prussia at its head. He will review Ger- 
 many's fifty years of military preparation. He
 
 INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 will study the outpourings of Germany's states- 
 men, her educators, her publicists, and see them 
 all tending to instil in the German mind a de- 
 sire for conquest, and to prepare the people for 
 a sudden rush that would carry them on the 
 first stage toward world domination. He will 
 marvel that the rest of the world was so blind 
 as not to foresee what lay ahead and prepare 
 for it. 
 
 There were, before the war, in France and 
 England some far-sighted men who urged their 
 people to make ready for a German attack, but 
 it is doubtful if even these realized the com- 
 pleteness of Germany's preparations or her con- 
 templated barbarity of warfare. It was incredi- 
 ble that a great modern nation should have been 
 drilled and educated into a race of barbarians. 
 
 Lord Roberts warned England, and England, 
 lost in a maze of party squabbles and Irish 
 quarrels, did not listen, so that when the Ger- 
 man hordes struck into France she could only 
 send against them an army of 150,000 men. A 
 gallanter army never went to battle, but it was 
 hopelessly outnumbered and almost wiped out. 
 For our own lack of preparation before 19 J 4>
 
 12 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 there was good reason. We were separated 
 from Europe by 3,000 miles of sea, and it did 
 not seem that we could ever be involved in a 
 European conflict or threatened seriously by 
 a European Power. For our policy of un- 
 preparedness after 1914 there was less reason, 
 for we had before us a lesson to study the 
 events in Belgium and France, and incident 
 after incident which betrayed the German 
 method and true purpose. We had our public 
 men who foresaw our danger, and warned us, 
 even if we did not go to war, to prepare for 
 eventualities. We did not listen. We did order 
 a considerable increase in our naval establish- 
 ment, but as to our army we did practically 
 nothing. 
 
 It is a fact that at the beginning of the 
 war we had many pronounced pacifists in 
 places of influence in the government. Our 
 foreign relations were in the hands of William 
 J. Bryan, whose hobby was peace maintained 
 by treaty and arbitration, an excellent, but at 
 that time an unworkable, plan. When war 
 threatened us he was for peace at almost any 
 price and against military preparation. His
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 declaration that a million Americans would 
 spring to arms overnight if danger threatened 
 us has become a hackneyed joke. However, he 
 did sign those two able notes which President 
 Wilson sent to Germany on the sinking of the 
 Lusitania, and then, finding the American peo- 
 ple becoming warlike and out of sympathy with 
 his policies, retired. He was followed by Rob- 
 ert Lansing, who has conducted the State 
 Department with dignity and courage, and in 
 the spirit of its best traditions. 
 
 The then Secretary of War, Lindley M. Gar- 
 rison, seeing trouble ahead, did make every 
 effort to secure some measure of military prep- 
 aration, but he met opposition in both houses 
 of Congress, and he did not seem to have hearty 
 support from most of the other members of the 
 administration. There was a theory that to 
 arm thoroughly would be a threat to Germany 
 which might disarrange the delicate negotiations 
 then proceeding. Besides, Count von Berns- 
 torff and his army of propagandists were active 
 in holding us to the ways of peace. Universal 
 service on a modified scale was talked of, but 
 the politicians declared that the American peo-
 
 14 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 pie would never suffer such a system. Mr. 
 Garrison tried to obtain a compromise with his 
 plan for a " continental army," an army of 
 500,000 volunteers serving part time, but this, 
 too, was blocked, and on June 3, 1916, the Na- 
 tional Defense Act was passed which made the 
 inadec ately trained National Guards of the 
 States a second line of national military 
 
 defense. Under this act the government was 
 authorized to recruit the Guard up to 300,000 
 men, while the war strength authorized for the 
 regular army was raised to 287,000. Mr. Gar- 
 rison retired and was succeeded by Newton D. 
 Baker, who had been mayor of Cleveland, a 
 man generally credited at that time with hold- 
 ing pronounced pacifist principles. Certainly 
 under Mr. Baker's leadership in the months 
 preceding our entry into the war little was done 
 to strengthen our military arm in any large 
 way. There began a wide-spread agitation for 
 preparedness all over the country. Mass-meet- 
 ings were held; great parades, emphasizing the 
 demand, marched the streets; many patriotic 
 organizations carried on a campaign of educa- 
 tion, but little effective work was done by the
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 government. There could be only two reasons 
 for this. The first is political. The men of all 
 parties, who had the power to act effectively, 
 misread the character of the mass of the Ameri- 
 can people and feared for their political future. 
 The-r second is ignorance and lack of foresight. 
 Having little knowledge of German history and 
 German character, they sincerely believed that 
 we were able to continue honorably at peace. 
 The President himself, a year before the war 
 broke out, declared in a public speech that we 
 were in no danger from any quarter. Some 
 time later he weakened and declared that this 
 was the last great war America could keep out 
 of. One conspicuous man who did see the 
 danger, warned us of it, and acted to the best of 
 his limited power, was General Leonard Wood. 
 By establishing a series of camps for intensive 
 military training he secured the nucleus of the 
 great corps of officers we were so soon to need. 
 Meanwhile the eyes of the Americans, from 
 the President down, were being opened to the 
 true menace of Germany. Mr. Wilson worked 
 patiently to bring Germany to reason and to 
 avoid war honorably, but he and the whole
 
 16 
 
 people were fast losing patience. Those who 
 failed to see in Germany's atrocities in Europe 
 and on the seas, or in her violations of inter- 
 national law, a just reason for our entering the 
 war, were aroused when she was caught carry- 
 ing on in our own neutral land a campaign of 
 violence and intrigue. Factories were blown 
 up, infernal machines were placed on our mer- 
 chantmen, strikes were fomented, efforts were 
 made to destroy our rail and water communica- 
 tions. Two attaches of the embassy, Captains 
 Boy-Ed and Von Papen, were caught and sent 
 home. Still we were patient and the arch- 
 plotter, Count von Bernstorff, remained. The 
 Germans fooled themselves. It was a common 
 argument of theirs that the Americans were a 
 people sunk in the sloth of prosperity, who 
 thought of nothing but the dollar, and were 
 deaf to the calls of honor and justice. Could 
 they clean up Europe, the German supermen 
 would make short work of these imbeciles. 
 They misread President Wilson a college pro- 
 fessor, they said, given to words, not action, 
 especially warlike action. Brazenly they broke 
 all their promises, and tore up all their agree-
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 ments with us. It was on January 31, 1917, 
 that their government announced that it would 
 sink without warning the vessels of any nation- 
 ality found in certain areas of the seas surround- 
 ing their enemies. The one thing to do, the 
 President did promptly. On February 3 he 
 broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. 
 
 The breaking of diplomatic relations between 
 states does not of necessity lead to war. In this 
 case, considering the temper of the German 
 mind, war seemed inevitable, and yet we made 
 no great effort to be ready for it. The navy 
 was tuned up, and work was rushed on the new 
 vessels on the ways, but save for a flurry of 
 recruiting for the army and the National Guard, 
 to bring them up to their full peace strength, 
 our military forces were not augmented. For 
 two months more we endured with fair equa- 
 nimity German intrigue, outrage, and insult. 
 Ship after ship was sunk without warning, with 
 the loss of many lives. Not content with this, 
 Germany was endeavoring to stir Japan and 
 Mexico to war with us, as was discovered by 
 the intercepting of a note of January 19 from 
 the German Foreign Office to the German min-
 
 18 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 ister in Mexico. There was nothing left but 
 war. President Wilson met the issue, and Con- 
 gress and the people stood ready to support 
 him to the utmost. 
 
 "The right is more precious than peace," said 
 the President in his address to Congress on 
 April 2, "and we shall fight for the things which 
 we have always carried nearest our hearts 
 for democracy, for the right of those who sub- 
 mit to authority to have a voice in their own 
 governments, for the rights and liberties of 
 small nations, for a universal dominion of right 
 by such a concert of free people as shall bring 
 peace and safety to all nations and make the 
 world itself at last free. 
 
 "To such a task we can dedicate our lives 
 and our fortunes, everything that we are and 
 everything that we have with the pride of those 
 who know that the day has come when America 
 is privileged to spend her blood and her might 
 for the principles that gave her birth and hap- 
 piness and the peace which she has treasured. 
 
 "God helping her, she can do no other." 
 
 America could, indeed, do no other. She 
 girded herself for the task.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE TASK 
 
 OUCH a task ! To accomplish it demanded 
 ^ the co-ordination of all the energies and all 
 the industries in the country. Our enemy was 
 3,000 miles away, over a sea infested by his 
 merciless submarines. He had overrun nearly 
 all of Belgium and a goodly part of northern 
 France, and stood intrenched from the English 
 Channel to *He Swiss border; he had conquered 
 Serbia, Montenegro, and half of Rumania. In 
 the east Russia still held, but only feebly. On 
 March 3 the Czar had abdicated, and when we 
 became Russia's ally she was in control of a 
 government too unstable to be relied on, how- 
 ever good its intentions. Russia's military as- 
 sistance had become even then almost nil. Our 
 allies, France, Great Britain, and Italy, were 
 worn by more than two years of the cruellest 
 war in history. To us they looked for food to 
 fill their depleted larders, for raw materials and 
 fuel for their munition factories, for finished 
 
 19
 
 20 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 munitions for their armies, and for soldiers to 
 fight with those armies and help them drive the 
 Germans over the Rhine. To transport the 
 food, materials, and men, the sea had to be 
 made safe and ships found. The food had to 
 be raised, the fuel and metals mined, the armies 
 drilled and equipped. 
 
 Fortunately, we came to the task a united 
 people, more than 100,000,000 strong, possess- 
 ing the richest country in the world. It has 
 been argued in some quarters that had our 
 government not shown such patience in its in- 
 tricate dealings with Germany, but had brought 
 us earlier into the conflict, it would have found 
 a people less united on war, and in their purpose 
 to carry that war to a victorious end. It has 
 been contended that the calm which the Presi- 
 dent preserved in his two years of difficult ne~ 
 gotiations with Germany, his efforts to secure 
 peace, even "without victory," his admirable 
 speeches, and his strong notes to the German 
 Government served a purpose to prepare us for 
 war and to reconcile us to it. Undoubtedly 
 they did. What would have happened had we 
 been less patient and long-suffering, had we
 
 THE TASK 21 
 
 supported our protests against German barbar- 
 ism with a great preparation for military move- 
 ment, is a matter on which opinions differ. War 
 might have been avoided that is a pure sur- 
 mise. Had we intervened earlier the war 
 would be over to-day that is another pure 
 surmise. We do know that when the war 
 came to them the American people, unprepared 
 though they were, accepted it with a surprising 
 unanimity of purpose to cany it through. 
 
 We had been told that there lay a possibility 
 of trouble among our millions of citizens of 
 German birth and descent, and the aliens in 
 our country. The great number of them have 
 proved absolutely loyal. It is true that in 
 some localities largely settled by these people 
 there were made feeble attempts at protest and 
 obstruction, but these were quickly conquered 
 by the general outburst of patriotism. Those 
 at heart disloyal were quick to realize their 
 danger and to shape their conduct so as to keep 
 themselves within the law. Against the really 
 dangerous aliens and disloyal citizens the gov- 
 ernment was quick to act, and within twenty- 
 four hours after war was declared thousands of
 
 22 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 them were safe behind the bars. The prompt 
 and effective work of the Secret Service, sup- 
 ported by local police, prevented outbreaks of 
 any kind. The hopes and plans of Germany 
 for wide-spread disorders blocking our prepara- 
 tion for hostilities were blasted, and to-day it is 
 a common thing to see in German newspapers 
 bitter comment on what they deem the supine 
 attitude of the Germans in America traitors 
 to the Fatherland. If there were dangerous 
 efforts at obstruction anywhere, they were in 
 Congress, made by a few short-sighted pacifists, 
 who could not see that America had to fight if 
 she was to keep her liberty, and by timid poli- 
 ticians who pandered to the pro-German senti- 
 ments of their constituents. Even these trimmed 
 their sails when they found how the wind blew. 
 The administration realized the danger, and 
 once the die was cast set itself with all vigor to 
 meet it. For the fight we had ready a navy in 
 weight of gun-power rated then third in the 
 world, and manned by a personnel than which 
 there is none better. But in a military force 
 with which to engage effectively in so great a 
 conflict we were woefully lacking. Our regular
 
 THE TASK 23 
 
 army on April 1, 1917, consisted of 5,791 offi- 
 cers and 121,797 men; the National Guard 
 available for federal service numbered 3,733 
 officers and 76,713 enlisted men, and there were 
 in the army reserve approximately 4,000 en- 
 listed men. This made a total armed force of 
 approximately 212,000, a number utterly in- 
 adequate for the conflict ahead. 
 
 The problem faced by the country was a 
 mighty one. Briefly stated, these were its 
 main elements: 
 
 To strengthen our navy, that it could meet 
 and whip unaided the navy of Germany. 
 
 To raise an army of at least 5,000,000 men, 
 well trained and equipped. 
 
 To bridge the sea with ships that we might 
 transport these men to the battle-front and 
 maintain a steady flow of food and munitions 
 for our own and our allies' use. 
 
 To stimulate the production of food and 
 munitions, that we might fill the shortage in 
 our allies' lands. 
 
 To raise by taxation and loans more money 
 than had been spent by our government since 
 the beginning of its history.
 
 24 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 Time pressed. The collapse of all orderly 
 government in Russia meant a threat of in- 
 creased German armies on the western front. 
 Our allies were calling to us for food, money, 
 men, and munitions. Fortunately for us, their 
 armies held the enemy rigidly, while we pre- 
 pared to send them succor in an ever-increasing 
 flow. 
 
 In a military way we had one great asset, our 
 munition-factories. During the years of our 
 neutrality, answering the demands of Great 
 Britain, France, Russia, and Italy, private en- 
 terprise had developed on an enormous scale 
 plants for the manufacture of guns of all sizes, 
 shells, and high explosives everything, in fact, 
 needed for the equipment of an army. These 
 were at our government's disposal, and those 
 who manned them, from manager and engineer 
 to the workmen at the lathe and forge, became 
 a part of our great patriotic army of defense. 
 Then, too, we had wisely, by government and 
 private enterprise, laid the foundations of a 
 great merchant marine. 
 
 Every element in the problem was vital to its 
 solution army, navy, food, transport, and fi-
 
 THE TASK 25 
 
 nance but when we found ourselves at war the 
 most immediately pressing question was that 
 of shipping. Manifestly it was impossible for 
 us to conduct a war overseas if we did not have 
 the vessels in which to transport the soldiers 
 and, moreover, our allies were sorely beset by 
 the ravages of the enemy submarines, and were 
 in grave danger from lack of food, fuel, and 
 metal. The Germans' unrestricted submarine 
 warfare was working havoc with the world's 
 merchant marine, and at the moment when 
 America became a belligerent, German piracy 
 was on the high wave of success. Ships were 
 being sunk at the average rate of more than 
 600,000 gross tons a month. In the month of 
 April, alone, 893,877 gross tons of the world's 
 merchant fleet were sent to the bottom. There 
 were but two ways to overcome this menace: to 
 conquer the submarines and to build ships. 
 The first warlike act of our government was to 
 send our navy to help our allies combat the 
 pirates of the underseas.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 
 
 IN discussions of the shipping problem much 
 misunderstanding often results from a con- 
 fusion of the terms of ship register. The ton- 
 register of a ship, used by all maritime nations, 
 is 100 cubic feet. The gross tonnage of a ves- 
 sel is the sum in cubic feet of all its enclosed 
 spaces divided by 100. 
 
 The net tonnage is the gross tonnage less cer- 
 tain deductions on account of crew quarters, 
 engine-room, water-ballast, and other spaces not 
 used for passengers and cargo. 
 
 The dead-weight tonnage, or carrying capac- 
 ity, is the number of long tons (2,240 pounds) of 
 cargo and bunker-coal that the vessel is capable 
 of carrying when loaded to the load water-line. 
 
 Displacement tonnage is the number of tons 
 of sea-water displaced by the vessel when 
 charged to the load water-line. 
 
 The dead-weight tonnage of a vessel can be 
 obtained by multiplying the gross tonnage by 1.6. 
 
 26
 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 27 
 
 At the beginning of the war, in 1914, accord- 
 ing to the best available figures, there were in 
 the world 45,403,877 gross tons of steam -ves- 
 sels and 3,685,675 net tons of sailing vessels. 
 Figuring gross for steam and net for sail, this 
 gave a total tonnage of 49,089,552. Of the 
 steam-vessels, Great Britain and her allies owned 
 23,638,966 gross tons, and of the sailing, 1,131,- 
 463 net tons, a total of 24,770,429. At the 
 same date the United States had on the seas, 
 the Great Lakes, and in the Philippines steam- 
 ers of a gross tonnage of 4,330,078, and sailing 
 ships of a net tonnage of 1,038,116, a total of 
 5,368,194. Of this American tonnage but a 
 small part was fit for foreign trade. 
 
 It must be remembered, also, that of the 
 world tonnage not a little part consisted of 
 small vessels unfitted for overseas carrying, and 
 in reckoning the vessels available for the mer- 
 chant service after the outbreak of the war, the 
 tonnage of Germany and her allies must be sub- 
 tracted, for the greatest number of these ves- 
 sels had found refuge in home and neutral har- 
 bors. 
 
 The British Isles in peace-times depend on
 
 28 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 the world for more than one-half of their food, 
 and this has to be carried to them by the seas. 
 Great Britain is, in fact, dependent on her 
 shipping for her life. When millions of her men 
 had to be taken from her farms, her factories, 
 and her mines to fight her battles, this condi- 
 tion was intensified. She had to import from 
 every quarter of the world vast quantities of 
 materials, both raw and manufactured, to be 
 used in her defense against the Hun. Increas- 
 ing the strain on her shipping, she had to trans- 
 port large armies to the battle-fronts in France, 
 in Mesopotamia, the Balkans, and South Africa. 
 France was in like case. She was not as de- 
 pendent as Great Britain on the outside world 
 for food, but the greater part of her coal and 
 iron deposits were lost to her in the first rush of 
 the Germans, and these losses had to be re- 
 placed from overseas. Italy's entrance into the 
 war in 1915, while it added valiant armies to 
 the cause of the Allies, put another burden on 
 the world's carriers, for Italy has within her 
 borders practically none of the raw materials 
 needed for the prosecution of so great a con- 
 ilict. Germany was quick to see this weak 
 spot in her enemies' armor. If she could drive
 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 
 
 theirs and neutral merchantmen from the seas, 
 she would stop the flow of food and munitions 
 into their countries, and quickly bring them ta 
 a disastrous peace. It was for this that she 
 began her lawless submarine warfare, and risked 
 the hostility of America. She underestimated 
 the courage of America. She underestimated 
 the power of America. Granted that America 
 would fight, how was she to bridge those 3,000 
 miles of sea ? So laughing at America's protests 
 against her barbarity, Germany's submarines 
 began the destruction not only of her enemy's 
 shipping but of the shipping of the neutral 
 world. 
 
 The damage done to the world's shipping 
 from the beginning of the war to the end of 
 1917 is shown in the following table, issued by 
 the British Government: 
 
 
 BRITISH 
 
 FOREIGN 
 
 WORLD 
 
 Losses, in gross tons, through 
 enemy action and marine risks. 
 
 7,097,492 
 
 4,730,080 
 
 11,827,572 
 
 Gains new construction 
 
 3,031,555 
 
 3,574,72 
 
 6,606,275 
 
 Enemy tonnage captured 
 
 780,000 
 
 1,809,000 
 
 2,589,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 3,811,555 
 
 5.383,720 
 
 9,195,275 
 
 
 
 
 
 Net loss to the world 
 
 
 
 2,632,297 
 
 
 

 
 30 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 The losses in the first quarter of 1918 were 
 1,123,310 tons. Did they continue at that rate 
 the yearly loss would be more than 4,000,000 
 tons. 
 
 For the whole period the figures might not 
 seem so startling, but the full menace is clearer 
 when we find that more than one-half of the 
 sinkings occurred in 1917, following Germany's 
 announcement of unrestricted warfare. By 
 quarters the losses in that year were: 1,619,373; 
 2,236,934; 1,494,473; 1,272,843. It is seen that 
 the apex of destruction was reached about the 
 time of America's entry into the war. 
 
 The danger was great. The continued loss 
 of more than 5,000,000 tons yearly, if not offset, 
 would soon separate us from our allies and leave 
 them in dire distress. A chart issued by the 
 British Government shows graphically how the 
 danger has been met. The curve showing the 
 world's loss of ships by months holds fairly 
 steady until the third quarter of 1916, when it 
 rises with startling abruptness, reaching its 
 highest point in April, 1917, in which month 
 893,877 gross tons were destroyed; it falls away 
 as abruptly to December, when 452,063 tons
 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 31 
 
 were lost. Struggling after it, but below it, is 
 the curve showing the world's output of new 
 vessels. At the close of the last year there was 
 still a wide gap between them. But America's 
 new shipyards were not then in full operation. 
 They are to-day, and those lines will cross, to 
 Germany's discomfort. 
 
 When we entered the war there were under 
 the American flag hardly 2,000,000 gross tons 
 of merchant shipping available for the heavy 
 overseas work required. Nearly all of this was 
 employed in the Great Lakes and coastwise 
 trade. We had to send great armies to Europe. 
 It is estimated that to move one soldier to France 
 and to keep him supplied with food and equip- 
 ment requires a carrying capacity of five dead- 
 weight tons constantly on the sea, so that to 
 transport an army of 1,000,000 men to the 
 battle-ground and keep them there demanded 
 a carrying capacity of 5,000,000 dead-weight 
 tons. Little wonder that the Germans made 
 light of America as a belligerent and predicted 
 confidently that their submarines would be 
 able to keep our armies at home. 
 
 When it became evident in the fall of 1916
 
 32 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 that because of the demands and ravages of the 
 war there was threatened a dangerous shortage 
 of merchant vessels for even our ordinary 
 peaceful commerce, our government acted to 
 overcome the difficulty. On September 17 the 
 Federal Shipping Act was passed, forming the 
 United States Shipping Board, with two func- 
 tions the first, in time of peace to promote the 
 development of our merchant marine; the sec- 
 ond, in event of war, to meet the shipping prob- 
 lems that might arise. To carry out the second 
 task, after we had entered the war the Emer- 
 gency Fleet Corporation was organized for the 
 purpose of constructing the needed vessels. 
 To-day the Fleet Corporation is building the 
 vessels and the Shipping Board is operating 
 them. 
 
 The early history of the Shipping Board is 
 not one of great accomplishment. Plans were 
 made and foundations laid, but there was a 
 great deal of delay in the pressing work caused 
 by disagreements among the five members. 
 Valuable time was wasted in controversies over 
 designs for the ships, and the frequent changes 
 in the personnel of the board by resignations
 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 33 
 
 further impeded the work. Of the first board 
 the chairman, William Denman, a San Fran- 
 cisco lawyer, held on longest, until July, 1917. 
 He and General George W. Goethals, of Panama 
 Canal fame, then head of the Fleet Corporation, 
 became engaged in a controversy over the types 
 of ships to be built and methods, which bid fair 
 to delay dangerously the whole programme. 
 President Wilson settled the matter by securing 
 the resignations of both men. General Goethals 
 was subsequently placed at the head of the 
 quartermaster's department of the. army. The 
 early experiences of the board made it plainly 
 evident that if its great work was to be carried 
 on successfully it must have at its head an able 
 business man and organizer. One of the cheer- 
 ing things about the conduct of the war has 
 been the promptness with which our leaders of 
 industry have answered the government's call 
 to service, abandoned all other pursuits that 
 the country might have the benefit of their ex- 
 perience. In this case the President sent for 
 Edward N. Hurley, of Illinois, a man accus- 
 tomed to business operations on a large scale, 
 and from the moment he took charge new im-
 
 34 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 petus was given to the work, and the record of 
 the board's accomplishment has become one of 
 the marvels of industry. 
 
 The early programme .called for the construc- 
 tion of vessels of an aggregate of 13,000,000 
 dead -weight tons. This meant more than 1,850 
 passenger, cargo, refrigerator ships and tank- 
 ers of between five and twelve thousand tons. 
 As the war went on and the submarine con- 
 tinued its ravages, as our military plans were 
 enlarged and it was seen that we must put 
 immense armies in the field, our ship-building 
 plan had to be greatly increased and pushed 
 with a vigor well-nigh superhuman. To con- 
 duct this operation Charles M. Schwab, the 
 steel manufacturer, was called on, and under 
 his direction as head of the Fleet Corporation 
 great strides have been made in the construc- 
 tion work. 
 
 When in 1916 the Shipping Board began its 
 work, there were in the United States only 37 
 steel shipyards, with 162 ways, and these were 
 running at full capacity, 70 per cent of their 
 work being on naval vessels. We had 24 wooden 
 shipyards, with 73 ways, but these were almost
 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 35 
 
 defunct. The number of men employed in 
 these yards was 45,000, and in that year 600,000 
 dead-weight tons of ships were built. But it 
 was estimated that now 6,000,000 tons a year 
 was the minimum we must have. To secure 
 them existing yards had to be enlarged, new 
 yards built, expert ship architects and operating 
 heads obtained. More difficult was the labor 
 problem. Ship mechanics were scarce and 
 wooden ship-building was almost a lost art. A 
 great labor army had not only to be enlisted 
 but trained. The carrying of material from the 
 source to the water-front involved great traffic 
 difficulties. But the work is being done. The 
 United States has to-day the greatest ship- 
 building machine in the world. In 1917 it pro- 
 duced 1,400,000 dead-weight tons of shipping. 
 It is expected that in the current year nearly 
 5,000,000 tons will leave the ways. Between 
 January 1 and August 24, 535 vessels, totalling 
 2,923,973 dead-weight tons, were launched. 
 
 By July, 1918, there were in operation 158 
 shipyards on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and 
 the Great Lakes. The ways numbered more 
 than 750, of which 398 were for steel, 332 for
 
 36 
 
 wooden, and 10 for concrete and composite ves- 
 sels. The men employed were over 300,000. 
 Day after day the ships were slipping into the 
 water. On the national holiday the world 
 heard "the big splash," when nearly 100 steel 
 and wooden vessels, adding a dead-weight ton- 
 nage of 474,464 to our merchant fleet, were 
 launched with patriotic demonstrations. By 
 this date we had increased our merchant marine 
 to a carrying capacity of nearly 10,000,000 dead- 
 weight tons. Of these 730,176 were obtained 
 by the seizure of interned enemy ships. They 
 had been damaged, but were quickly repaired 
 and placed in service. 
 
 This is fine evidence of American ingenuity 
 and energy. Such a record could only be ac- 
 complished by wise direction and the whole- 
 hearted co-operation of every man engaged in 
 the task. Hundreds of business men and en- 
 gineers left their peace-time occupations to help 
 the government in this vital work. Thousands 
 of workmen gave up accustomed labor in famil- 
 iar surroundings and travelled far to learn a 
 new trade and do their bit in the war. Most 
 of these men were unskilled and had to be
 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 37 
 
 trained. To train them it was necessary to 
 have competent instructors, and these were 
 lacking, so schools were established where 
 skilled mechanics fitted others to go into the 
 yards and teach ship -building. To secure whole- 
 souled work a campaign of patriotic appeal has 
 been carried on and every man engaged made 
 to feel that his is a vital part in the cause of 
 liberty. 
 
 The speed in construction that has been at- 
 tained would not have been possible under the 
 old methods. The government had to resort to 
 the standardization of designs, and, as it is 
 called, to fabrication. Under the old method 
 nearly every part of the ship was made in the 
 yard. The frames and plates were cut, bent, 
 and fitted. Under the new system the parts 
 of the ship may be made at a dozen widely sep- 
 arated places. They are of standard sizes and 
 are shipped to the assembling-point, the yard, 
 and are fitted together with great rapidity. A 
 completed hull will be launched; it is hardly in 
 the water before the cranes swing over the 
 empty ways, and in fifteen minutes a new keel 
 will be in place. Neither time nor motion
 
 38 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 are wasted in our shipyards. The steel col- 
 lier Tuckahoe, of 5,550 dead-weight tons, was 
 launched on the Delaware on May 4, twenty- 
 seven days after her keel was laid, and ten days 
 later she was ready for sea. This record was 
 later broken. 
 
 This great programme of ship fabrication of 
 necessity put a strain on the mills of the coun- 
 try. These mills were already overcrowded 
 with war orders, and to meet the new demand 
 were obliged to enlarge their production ca- 
 pacity. Coincident with the construction of 
 the new yards arrangements had to be made to 
 secure a greatly increased output of turbines 
 and engines, and this meant the making of the 
 special tools of all kinds required in the engine- 
 shops. The work was done. There was an 
 early shortage of engines, but now this has been 
 overcome. The existing steel-mills could not 
 supply the plates fast enough, and three new 
 mills had to be built to make up the shortage. 
 The programme for building each year 604 
 wooden ships of the Ferris type, of 3,500 tons 
 dead-weight, was delayed four months by the 
 difficulty of securing proper lumber. When the
 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 39 
 
 board found it had to rake the country to get 
 the large timbers required, it stopped the build- 
 ing of additional wooden ways and contented 
 itself with a more modest programme. 
 
 A few years ago, before the exigencies of war 
 came upon us, the building of the Hog Island 
 assembling-yard would have been considered of 
 itself a big undertaking. On the swampy banks 
 of the Delaware, below Philadelphia, there was 
 built in less than a year a manufacturing city. 
 The major part of this work was done in the 
 hardest winter we have known in a long time, 
 when not only bitter weather but a railroad 
 blockade and a fuel famine were hampering in- 
 dustry. The land had to be drained, roads 
 built, ways, shops, and even homes constructed 
 for thousands of workmen. What was done 
 there has been duplicated in many other places, 
 and so great has been the success of the work 
 that in three of the new assembling-yards, those 
 at Hog Island, and Bristol on the Delaware, 
 and on Newark Bay, more vessels will leave the 
 ways in one year than all the English yards 
 have ever been able to build in the same time, 
 and hitherto England has been the greatest
 
 40 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 ship-building country in the world. Mr. Hurley 
 estimates that between April 6, 1917, and 
 June 1, 1918, the Shipping Board had added to 
 the shipping under its control nearly 4,500,000 
 dead-weight tons. This was done by new 
 construction, by the seizure of enemy vessels, 
 by the requisitioning of 86 Dutch vessels, and 
 by the charter of 215 vessels from neutral coun- 
 tries. The quantity production of ships did 
 not begin until January of this year, and since 
 then the output has been increasing month by 
 month. He estimates, further, that in 1919, 
 with 751 ways in operation, averaging each three 
 vessels of 6,000 tons a year, we should turn 
 out in that year fully 13,500,000 tons. This 
 rate of construction would give us by the end 
 of 1920 the largest merchant marine in the 
 world. To man this great fleet the Shipping 
 Board has established schools for officers and 
 seamen. In this work of training it spends 
 monthly $250,000. 
 
 There is a race between the submarine and 
 the shipbuilder, but the figures show how the 
 latter is winning. In the first six months of 
 the present year 2,089,393 gross tons of Allied
 
 THE SHIPPING PROBLEM 41 
 
 and neutral shipping were sunk. In the same 
 period America and Great Britain constructed 
 ships of 2,133,591 gross tonnage. There was 
 still a wide margin to overcome. But the 
 American output of shipping in May was three 
 times that of January, and was steadily in- 
 creasing. By the middle of July vessels were 
 being delivered to the Shipping Board at the 
 rate of nearly four for each working-day, a daily 
 output of 20,461 dead-weight tons, or 12,788 
 gross tons. Moreover, the increasing efficiency 
 of the naval fight against the submarine was 
 telling. 
 
 By the gallantry of our navy and the navies 
 of our allies, and by the energies of the ship- 
 builders of America and Great Britain has been 
 overcome the lawless and murderous submarine 
 campaign on which Germany staked her hopes 
 of victory. To-day a steady line of vessels 
 travels the sea lane, bearing our thousands of 
 soldiers to the battle-front, and carrying succor 
 to our hard-pressed allies.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE CANTONMENTS 
 
 THE second "contemptible little army" that 
 Germany had to face was the American. 
 The first was the British. England, not having 
 heeded the warnings of Lord Roberts and other 
 men of his vision, could throw into France 
 hardly 150,000 men to meet the first onslaught 
 of the Germans. Having shown like lack of 
 vision, despite the pleas of men like Theodore 
 Roosevelt and Leonard Wood, and in spite of 
 the tragic events in Europe, it took us two 
 years longer to see the German menace, and we 
 were unprepared to meet it. So coincident 
 with the vast work of bridging the sea, we had 
 to find the men to send across, to train them 
 into soldiers, and to make the arms with which 
 they were to fight. On the declaration of war 
 we had a regular army of some 127,000 men 
 fit for the battle-front, and about 80,000 na- 
 tional guardsmen, patriotic men who had vol- 
 unteered for service, but were only partly 
 
 42
 
 THE CANTONMENTS . 43 
 
 trained. The government had to act quickly 
 and wisely. It did so. First, recruiting was 
 stimulated by a patriotic campaign to bring 
 the Regular Army and the National Guard up 
 to the then authorized war strength of 287,000 
 and 450,000 respectively. But this did not 
 give us the force needed. The selective-draft 
 act was passed and enforced, the industry of 
 the country was speeded up to make the arms 
 and equipment. Within a year we had under 
 arms 1,652,725 officers and men. Within seven- 
 teen months 1,500,000 of these were in France 
 and hundreds of thousands of our soldiers were 
 in the front line of battle, conducting themselves 
 with a gallantry that stirred the heart of every 
 American. By then* bravery, their alertness, 
 and resourcefulness they had won the unstinted 
 commendation of the war-tried soldiers of 
 France and Great Britain. 
 
 We have heard much of delays and mistakes 
 in the conduct of the military administration. 
 Undoubtedly they have occurred. It took time 
 to get the right men in control of the machin- 
 ery. The airplane programme broke down la- 
 mentably. The ordnance programme was un-
 
 44 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 duly delayed. At one time, as a member of 
 the administration said recently, our war ma- 
 chinery almost ceased to function. The mis- 
 takes were rectified, many new and able men 
 were called in to aid in the war administration, 
 and by the middle of this year the machinery 
 was working with fair smoothness. Airplanes 
 and guns were coming from the factories in 
 quantities, and our armed men were going over 
 seas in a steady flow. 
 
 Our Navy Department has done its work so 
 smoothly since the war began that there has 
 been a tendency to compare its operations with 
 that of our Department of War. One is apt to 
 forget the difference in the problems presented. 
 The navy was a going concern. As our first 
 line of defense it had always been a pet of Con- 
 gress. When the conflict came its expansion 
 was necessary, but in nothing like the degree 
 that was required for our neglected army. The 
 War Department was organized to care for 
 about 250,000 men. Suddenly the work of 
 handling at least fifteen times that number was 
 thrown upon it. It is not to be wondered that 
 we had hesitation and trying delays.
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 45 
 
 It was early seen that for the conflict an 
 army of at least 3,000,000 men would be needed. 
 It was seen, too, that the difficulties of raising 
 such a number by volunteers would be great. 
 We had the experience of our own Civil War 
 and the more recent experience of England to 
 study. England came to the draft late in this 
 war. Our government wisely accepted that 
 method at once. Some members of Congress 
 did balk at the selective-service law, but they 
 did not succeed in delaying its passage for any 
 time. The American people, said the pacifists, 
 would never accept the principle of compulsory 
 service. Under pressure of the administration, 
 however, the selective-service law was passed 
 in a surprisingly short time, considering its 
 drastic change in our historic policy, and on 
 May 18 the President signed it. The Ameri- 
 can people accepted it willingly. They saw the 
 injustice of allowing one fit man to stay at 
 home in security while another volunteered to 
 give his life in the country's cause. 
 
 Here we had the beginning of our great Na- 
 tional Army, which within a year of its forma- 
 tion was conducting itself gallantly on the bat-
 
 46 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 tie-fields of France. Its success was due to the 
 wise policy of the administration and to the 
 energy of those officers of our Regular Army 
 on whom fell the heavy task of organizing and 
 training it. Under the law all men in the coun- 
 try between the ages of twenty-one and thirty- 
 one years had to register, that their fitness and 
 liability for military service might be deter- 
 mined. On June 5 nearly ten million were en- 
 rolled by the boards which had been organized 
 all over the country to conduct the draft. The 
 efforts to obstruct the work were few and con- 
 temptible. Of this great number of registrants 
 the boards classified 2,428,447 in Class A, com- 
 prising those who could be placed in the mili- 
 tary service with the least disturbance to the 
 industrial, agricultural, and domestic interests 
 of the nation. Every man was numbered, and 
 the order of his call to service settled by a lot- 
 tery drawn in Washington. Before December 
 15 there were in the army 897,061 of these se- 
 lected men, including delinquents reported as 
 deserters. 
 
 Class A received an increase on June 5, 1918, 
 of about 400,000 men, who had come of age in
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 47 
 
 the course of the year. By August 1, 
 1,347,512 of these men were in the National 
 Army. General E. H. Crowder, the provost 
 marshal-general, who had charge of the conduct 
 of the draft, estimated that 875,000 more would 
 be called to service before the end of the year, 
 and that there were available in the first class 
 for fighting material 877,359 registrants. This 
 narrow margin of hardly more than 2,000 indi- 
 cated the necessity of either increasing the 
 draft age or of raking the other classes already 
 registered for the men sure to be needed. 
 Congress, therefore, in August amended the 
 law so as to make all men from 18 to 45 years 
 of age liable for military service. 
 
 When the National Army was first planned 
 we had at hand not enough officers to train and 
 command it. The problem of obtaining them 
 was difficult. Quick steps had to be taken to 
 have them ready by the time the men were 
 assembled. Fortunately, there had been held in 
 the two summers preceding the war, through 
 the enterprise of General Wood and a group of 
 army officers and private citizens, a small series 
 of training-camps from which could be obtained
 
 48 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 the nucleus of the great corps of officers needed. 
 Now sixteen of these camps were organized in 
 different parts of the country, and a three 
 months' course of intensive training given to 
 volunteers. From them came nearly 50,000 
 young men who had qualified for commissions 
 in the various arms of the service. Thus was 
 the personnel of our new military force provided 
 for. 
 
 Coincident with this great work there had to 
 be accomplished one of the most difficult tasks 
 that had ever fallen to the War Department. 
 No places were ready where the new armies 
 could be trained. We were embarked on an 
 enterprise of unknown possibilities. Not a mil- 
 lion but millions of soldiers might be needed, 
 and this meant the organization of huge and 
 permanent military schools. We had provided 
 the method and the machinery for getting the 
 men. Now we had to prepare the means of 
 training them. The General Staff of the army 
 had foreseen that such a contingency might 
 arise, and had prepared before the war a gen- 
 eral scheme to meet it. They had designed a 
 standard cantonment capable of sheltering what
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 49 
 
 was then an army division, 36,000 men. The 
 plan was very simple. On it the buildings for 
 the various units were stretched along in a 
 straight line, regiment after regiment, with their 
 barracks, officers' quarters, hospitals, and sta- 
 bles arranged on a single street, so designed that 
 it could be cut and twisted to suit the confor- 
 mation of any site. The War Department 
 needed thirty -two of these cantonments, sixteen 
 to house an increased National Guard, and six- 
 teen for the coming National Army. Congress 
 promptly appropriated the money asked, some 
 $79,000,000, but when the work of letting the 
 contracts began, it was found that so greatly 
 had the price of labor and material increased 
 since the plan was made, there were not suffi- 
 cient funds. It was therefore decided to place 
 the sixteen National Guard divisions under 
 canvas in the South, and to construct the more 
 permanent quarters for the National Army. To 
 build sixteen cities, with every house provided 
 with electric light, running water, and heat, in 
 the three months allotted, was a task to strain 
 any organization. In this case it fell to the 
 construction branch of the quartermaster's de-
 
 50 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 partment, consisting of a colonel, two captains, 
 and a stenographer. That useful body, the 
 Council of National Defense (of which I shall 
 speak later), was turned to for aid. The coun- 
 cil formed an emergency construction commit- 
 tee and sent a call for men skilled in town- 
 planning, for engineers, for experts in water- 
 supply and sewage-disposal, landscape-archi- 
 tects, and builders. The best in the country 
 hurried to Washington and rendered patriotic 
 service. Many of them served without pay. 
 Others received commissions in the army. All 
 worked, without ceasing, to have the canton- 
 ments ready by September 1, and with few ex- 
 ceptions they succeeded. 
 
 After the work was authorized the choosing 
 of the sites took time. Consideration had to 
 be given to many elements of the problem. 
 The camps had to be located near large centres 
 of population, with good railroad facilities at 
 hand; the ground had to be capable of proper 
 drainage, and a great water-supply available. 
 In every case at least 2,000 acres of land were 
 needed to give space for 1,400 buildings, ma- 
 noeuvring-grounds, and rifle-ranges. June had
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 51 
 
 half passed before the last site had been settled 
 on, and July was at hand when the last contract 
 for construction was let. There was no time 
 for the taking of competitive bids. The work 
 had to be put in the hands of the great contract- 
 ing firms who had the machinery to handle it, 
 and they did it on a cost-plus-a-commission 
 basis, with their profit being limited to $250,000. 
 This method, while designed to save the gov- 
 ernment money, had in reality quite the oppo- 
 site effect, for the contractors, being limited in 
 their profit and being called on for the highest 
 possible speed in construction, had little reason 
 for economy in labor or material. But how- 
 ever high the cost, the work was done, and on 
 September 5 the first increments of the new 
 army were moving into the soldier towns. 
 
 The first call for service in the National Army 
 brought 687,000 men to the colors. Beginning 
 in September, they were sent to the cantonments 
 in successive increments. They found waiting 
 there officers to train them, and for many a life 
 of more comfort, health, and interest than they 
 had ever known. Then began the work of our 
 greatest schools of Americanism and democ-
 
 52 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 racy. Rich man and poor man, business man, 
 laborer, farmer, and mechanic bunked side by 
 side, ate the same food, wore the same uniform, 
 and performed the same duties. In six months 
 they were welded into a patriotic and efficient 
 army. No praise is too high for the officers 
 who led in this great task or for the men who 
 seconded them by their readiness to learn and 
 to serve. Most of these men had known noth- 
 ing of military life; thousands of them nothing 
 of the healthy life of out-of-doors; there were 
 among them men who were discontented with 
 the fate that had fallen to them, but even of 
 these the greater part soon found contentment 
 in the new environment; before the winter of 
 training was over the shirkers were few in num- 
 ber. 
 
 We in New York saw the procession of our 
 selective-draft men march up Fifth Avenue on 
 the eve of their departure for Camp Upton. 
 Men from the banks and offices, men from the 
 stores and shops, moved along in straggling 
 lines, and out of step, cheerful and cheering, 
 and yet a motley body. Of many of them pale 
 stooping shoulders, and shuffling gait
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 53 
 
 told the story of sedentary living. They looked 
 as though but little hardship would break them. 
 They did not seem the stuff of which soldiers 
 could be made. Six months later we saw them 
 march again on Fifth Avenue on a bitter day. 
 A miracle seemed to have been worked. Brown 
 and hard, clean-limbed, they swung along, bod- 
 ies erect, heads up, in perfect step and align- 
 ment. You were conscious of their pride in 
 their uniform, in the task they had accom- 
 plished, and of their part in the greater task 
 that lay ahead of them. To-day they are over- 
 seas and many of them have paid the great 
 price that must be paid if men are to be 
 free. 
 
 The material with which the War Department 
 had to work in forming the first divisions of the 
 National Army was very raw, and it came not 
 in driblets through recruiting-stations, so that 
 it could be readily absorbed in trained units, 
 but it came in mass. Besides, there was the 
 widest possible divergence in the character of 
 the men. Every nationality was represented, 
 even to Turks and Chinese. Of the whole 
 fully 10 per cent could not speak English, and
 
 54 
 
 in every cantonment there were at least a thou- 
 sand who could not read or write. The can- 
 tonment became not only a camp but a school. 
 For the foreign-born, classes in English were 
 formed, and for the illiterate, classes in elemen- 
 tary studies. Schools, too, were established to 
 fit the more intelligent for different services in 
 which they were needed. There are a great 
 number of these services. The commander of 
 one of the camps had a list of nearly one thou- 
 sand occupations for which specialists were 
 wanted for the army. It included dog-trainers. 
 Our National Army has been a success be- 
 cause neither energy nor money has been spared 
 in the care for the men in their early service. 
 The quarters are comfortable, electric-lighted, 
 and screened in summer, and in winter well 
 heated. Every man has his own cot, and is 
 amply provided with blankets and clothing. 
 The food is wholesome and plentiful, and the 
 active Me in the open air gives a zest to the 
 appetite. The health and morals of the men 
 have been safeguarded in a degree never before 
 known in our military history. Liquor is taboo. 
 When you watch a company of these soldiers in
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 55 
 
 the crisp air of the early morning, swinging in 
 rhythmic unison through the physical drills, 
 you do not wonder at the erect and sturdy 
 figures in khaki to be seen by the hundreds in 
 our streets in these war-times. 
 
 The life of the soldier is not all work. From 
 reveille to retreat there is a pretty steady round 
 of drill and police duty, but let there be but a 
 few minutes to spare and the grounds are alive 
 with athletic games. At times you might think 
 a cantonment just a great school for baseball, 
 football, or basket-ball. In the evening, for re- 
 laxation, there are the theatre, the moving- 
 picture show, the library, and the huts of the 
 Y. M. C. A. and Knights of Columbus, with 
 their variety of entertainment. 
 
 One afternoon last spring I watched a party 
 of some two thousand recruits arrive at Camp 
 Upton. When the long train had stopped they 
 assembled quickly on the platform of the sta- 
 tion, the men from each local board under the 
 charge of an officer. They were from the fac- 
 tory towns and farms of New England and by 
 their appearance represented varying degrees of 
 worldly prosperity. There were bent little fel-
 
 56 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 lows who had just come from the looms of Fall 
 River, and tall, raw-boned youths who had left 
 their ploughs and hoes among the stony hills. 
 Most of them were cheery, facing the new ad- 
 venture with good-will, and they started toward 
 the camp in a ragged formation, with much 
 shouting and waving of flags. A few of the 
 faces were gloomy, filled with apprehension of 
 the days ahead. One could not wonder, for it 
 is no light thing to leave your home and occu- 
 pation for the hardships of the camp and the 
 danger of the field. But a company of fresh- 
 men just arriving at college would have shown 
 a like proportion of set and solemn faces. Some 
 of the men had little bags containing precious 
 possessions, which they hoped Uncle Sam would 
 allow them to take to France; others portman- 
 teaus with which they could have travelled 
 around the world; others had nothing in their 
 hands and wore neither hats nor coats; they 
 were stripped for action and trusted the gov- 
 ernment to give them all they needed. The 
 procession straggled across the plain and down 
 one of the long cantonment streets. From every 
 barrack -window came a volley of good-natured
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 57 
 
 gibes: "Hey, Sam, you won't look so chipper 
 when you get the needle!" "Say, Alonzo, why 
 don't you call your vally to carry your kit?" 
 "Oh, nurse, nurse, come quick; there's Jimmy 
 running away to war with ma's knitting-bag." 
 The men in khaki had forgotten that not so 
 long since they had shuffled down this same 
 street in this same way. 
 
 The motley procession crossed a parade- 
 ground and there divided, the improvised com- 
 panies being led off to their quarters. It was 
 the time for retreat*, and as the rookies squatted 
 on the ground before their barracks, resting 
 tired limbs, the band on the parade-ground 
 sounded the first notes of "The Star-Spangled 
 Banner." Instantly the life of the camp 
 stopped. Every moving figure in khaki halted 
 and stood at attention, facing the headquarters 
 on the hilltop a mile away, where the flag flew 
 from its tall mast. 
 
 From every side came shouts: "Stand up, 
 you men, face toward the flag hats off!" 
 
 They got to their feet with expressions of 
 wonderment on their faces and stood bare- 
 headed until the last notes of the national an-
 
 58 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 them died away and the flag fluttered down. 
 It was their first lesson in army life. 
 
 A few days later I saw these same men. 
 They were in uniform and every man of them 
 was shaved and scrubbed. Under the orders of 
 a martinet of a "non-com" they were keeping 
 good step and executing squads right and 
 squads left with fair precision. 
 
 Great melting-pots so our cantonments have 
 been justly called. In them thousands of our 
 foreign-born have become true Americans. 
 They have learned the language of America 
 and the ideals of America and have turned will- 
 ing soldiers in her cause. That this is true is 
 shown by the great number of foreign-born men 
 who were called to the army under the selective- 
 service law, and have since become naturalized 
 as citizens. By act of Congress this process 
 was rightly made easy for them. In one after- 
 noon at Camp Upton I saw 300 men forswear 
 old-time allegiances and become citizens of the 
 , United States. Among them were men of every 
 nationality. There were Russians and Poles, 
 Danes and Swedes, citizens of the British Em- 
 pire and the French Republic. Among them
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 59 
 
 there were a score of Germans and Austro- 
 Hungarians. Again, in our cantonments class 
 feeling has been swept aside, for the selective- 
 service law showed no favoritism. Its provi- 
 sions called to service rich and poor alike, and 
 so they have come to understand one another 
 better. The only class distinction known in 
 the new army comes through intelligence and 
 merit. The men called as privates have their 
 opportunity to win commissions. Training- 
 schools have been established for them and 
 many have proved themselves worthy to wear 
 the officers' insignia. 
 
 These cantonments have given their lesson 
 not only to those who have served in them but 
 to the whole country. The bugaboo of mili- 
 tarism has been laid low. We are not willing to 
 accept the German brand of militarism that 
 makes for conquest and Kultur. But a milita- 
 rism that strengthens the country's uanhood 
 and trains and fits it to defend its hones and 
 fight for justice has proved its worth. Every 
 community over the land has seen its young 
 men called to service by the law. Many of 
 them answered with reluctance and with rebel-
 
 60 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 lion in their hearts. The same communities have 
 seen those men months later, upstanding in 
 their uniforms, improved in physical and men- 
 tal vigor and imbued with a new sense of pa- 
 triotism and desire for service. They have seen 
 what our kind of militarism has done for our 
 men. America has been caught once unpre- 
 pared to fight. She will not be so again. One 
 feels confident that when peace comes there will 
 be a wide-spread demand that the work of our 
 cantonments be continued and that we do not 
 abandon these great schools for the discipline 
 and improvement of our manhood. 
 
 Only by a visit to one of the cantonments 
 can a conception be had of the magnitude of 
 the work which the government has done and 
 is doing. They are all cut to the same pattern, 
 generally being laid out in a great U. An ex- 
 ample of the best of them is Camp Dix at 
 Wrightstown, New Jersey. Going by train 
 through a quiet farming country, you pass into 
 a deep railroad cut, and when you emerge from 
 it you have suddenly before your eyes a great, 
 busy city. You enter it by a wide, clean road.
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 61 
 
 At one hand you see the great "hostess house," 
 managed by patriotic women for the entertain- 
 ment of the soldiers' visitors. Beyond that, 
 stretching for a long mile on either hand, are 
 the barracks of the men, set in broad, open 
 spaces. The striking note is the absolute clean- 
 liness not a scrap of paper, not a bit of rub- 
 bish to be seen anywhere. The traffic on the 
 road is heavy. There is a constant movement 
 of wagons and motors, but it is carefully regu- 
 lated by the military police at the crossings. 
 From headquarters hill, in the camp's centre, 
 you see the whole place under your eyes, a 
 great U of buildings, two miles in depth, en- 
 closing the broad drill-grounds. There is life 
 everywhere. The drill-grounds are alive with 
 men. Here a company working at the manual 
 of arms; here one swinging through the physical 
 drill; here an awkward squad, not yet in uni- 
 form, learning the rudiments of marching. 
 
 The routine of the enlistment is rather com- 
 plicated. First we go to the big hall where the 
 recruits are received on their arrival. Here 
 the records of the local draft boards are checked 
 up and the men accounted for. Then they have
 
 62 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 their physical examination. A small percentage 
 are rejected as unfit. A large percentage are 
 found to have remediable defects, and provision 
 is made for their treatment. Fully 2 per cent, 
 we were told, have the unpleasant but much- 
 needed experience of being fumigated, and all 
 have a good bath. Thence the recruit goes 
 to the personnel-office, where hundreds of soldier- 
 clerks are at work at long desks. The journey 
 from end to end takes a half -hour. Multiple rec- 
 ords are made out for the War Department, 
 the camp-office, and the company commander. 
 These records give a condensed history of the 
 recruit, show his marks of identification and 
 his qualifications for special duties. When they 
 have been completed, he makes his allotments 
 of pay and files his application for government 
 
 insurance. He leaves the building a member 
 
 I 
 
 of the army and gets his uniform. 
 
 While we were watching this process, scores of 
 men moving from clerk to clerk down the long 
 line, our guide, an upstanding young soldier, 
 informed the captain in charge that one recruit 
 that day had refused to sign any papers. To 
 our inquiry as to what would be done in such a
 
 THE CANTONMENTS 63 
 
 case the soldier said: "He'll go to the guard- 
 house. One of the officers will give him a 
 pleasant talking to, reason with him, and the 
 chances are he will come around to-morrow 
 most of them do. And when they do they get 
 to like the life it's a fine life."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 MILITARY PREPARATION 
 
 ENG before the first increments of our 
 National Army were called to the colors, 
 our soldiers were pouring into France. Within 
 three weeks after we declared war, missions 
 from France and England, headed by General 
 Joffre and Mr. Balfour, were in our country. 
 The first thing they asked for was men, if only 
 a division, to strengthen the morale of the 
 Allied armies by the visible evidence that armed 
 America was coming to their aid. This request 
 was promptly granted, and on June 26 a divi- 
 sion of our Regular Army landed in France. We 
 had available for active service when war came 
 only our Regular Army of 127,588 officers and 
 men. In physique and morale, there was no 
 finer body in the world, but their number was 
 inadequate to make an impression on the battle- 
 front. Under the national-defense act the gov- 
 ernment had power to call into service the 
 National Guards of the various States, number- 
 
 64
 
 MILITARY PREPARATION 65 
 
 ing then about 80,000 officers and men. The 
 personnel of these troops was fine, all the men 
 being volunteers, but they were neither hard- 
 ened nor well trained. A part of them had 
 seen service in the previous year on the Mexi- 
 can border, but the work for which they were 
 now needed was of a different character. By 
 recruiting, the Regular Army was increased in a 
 year to 513,840 officers and men, and to-day 
 exceeds that number. The recruiting for the 
 federalized National Guard was not so suc- 
 cessful. Thousands who would otherwise have 
 volunteered were deterred by the operation of 
 the selective-service law. Some of the units 
 could not be filled by volunteers and had to be 
 brought to war strength by the breaking up of 
 other organizations. A number of the Guard 
 regiments received large increments from the 
 National Army camps. But we find at the end 
 of the first year of war the strength of the 
 National Guard was 448,476 officers and men. 
 Besides these troops and the National Army 
 there was in the federal service a reserve corps 
 of 96,210 officers and 77,360 men. 
 
 America could not choose the battle-ground
 
 66 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 against Germany. The battle-front was in 
 France and it was imperative that our armies 
 get to it with all possible speed and in the 
 greatest possible numbers. There were three 
 elements in the problem which had to be nicely 
 balanced. The programme of man-power had 
 to be carried on without upsetting the munition 
 programme. Both of these programmes had to 
 be adjusted to that of tonnage. We have seen 
 how the men were gathered. The Regular Army 
 was started overseas with great promptness. 
 General Pershing, who was to command abroad, 
 arrived in Paris with his staff on June 13. Fol- 
 lowing the first contingent of troops, there was 
 a steady movement of soldiers overseas. A di- 
 vision of the National Guard and a division of 
 marines went early, with regiments of engineers, 
 railroad men, and foresters. On these last fell 
 the work of preparing the port of debarkation 
 for the thousands who were to follow, and of 
 building lines of communication to the training- 
 camps inland and to the front. All the fighting 
 units, even those of the Regular Army, have had 
 to be schooled in the modern methods of war- 
 fare, and at least four months' training behind
 
 MILITARY PREPARATION 67 
 
 the lines are required before the troops can be 
 sent into action. It was October 10, 187 days 
 after war was declared, before our men were on 
 the firing-line. 
 
 Meantime the work at home was pushed with 
 vigor, but it was hampered by our lack of mo- 
 bilization-camps. For nearly five months the 
 whole National Guard could not be called into 
 service because there were no training-camps 
 ready for them. The idea of constructing for 
 them cantonments like those of the National 
 Army had been abandoned early, and in Sep- 
 tember they were mobilized under canvas in 
 sixteen camps in the South. Here they worked 
 hard through the winter in preparation for the 
 contest ahead, and before the spring had come 
 they were most of them in France. Following 
 them promptly went the first divisions of the 
 National Army, and by July 4 Secretary Baker 
 was able to announce that we had more than 
 1,200,000 soldiers on or near the battle-front. 
 By late July our men were in action in larger 
 numbers than ever before in our history, and 
 we were hearing daily of their deeds of gal- 
 lantry.
 
 68 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 This great movement of troops over the sub- 
 marine-infested Atlantic is of the highest credit 
 to the War Department and to the navy that 
 guarded it so effectively. Considering the num- 
 bers involved the loss of life was remarkably 
 small. But one loaded transport, the Tuscania, 
 was lost during the year, and several hundred 
 men went down with her. The movement was 
 made possible by the co-operation of our allies, 
 Great Britain and France, who turned over to us 
 many of their vessels for the carrying of the men. 
 
 While the man-power programme has worked 
 with admirable smoothness, the same cannot 
 be said of the munition programme in the early 
 part of the war. There were delays which were 
 the subject of much criticism in Congress and 
 elsewhere. A lack of co-ordination and too 
 much experimentation were the cause. Then, 
 too, in the early part of the war the right men 
 were not in the right place. A marked im- 
 provement came when the government called 
 to its service able business men like Edward R. 
 Stettinius and John D. Ryan. The first was 
 made an assistant secretary of war in charge of 
 munitions, and the last was given the direction
 
 MILITARY PREPARATION 69 
 
 of aircraft production. Had they been in these 
 places of responsibility earlier we should not 
 have seen nearly a year go by before machine- 
 guns and aircraft were coming from the fac- 
 tories in quantities. 
 
 When you have a mad dog in your yard you 
 do not go out to find an improved rifle with 
 which to shoot it. You use the one you have. 
 When the war came we were lacking in guns of 
 all kinds, from the light machine to the nine- 
 inch heavy. We had at our disposal the Lewis 
 machine-gun, an American invention, and other 
 types which were being used with success on 
 European battle-fields. Moreover, our factories 
 had been making them for our allies in large 
 quantities, and were prepared to make prompt 
 deliveries. The Ordnance Department wanted 
 something better, but instead of paralleling a 
 programme of manufacture in large quantities 
 of the other types with a programme of experi- 
 mentation, it spent months in experimentation 
 alone. The Browning guns, a splendid weapon, 
 were the result. It was a year before they 
 were being delivered in large numbers, and in 
 the meantime we had to depend largely on our
 
 70 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 allies to equip our troops in France with such 
 ordnance. The same process was followed in 
 regard to the heavier guns. According to the 
 evidence before the Senate Military Affairs 
 Committee, efforts to improve details of the 
 gun-carriages used by France, England, and 
 Italy caused such a delay that the output of 
 pieces of field-artillery this year will be very 
 small, and we have been compelled to rely 
 largely on the factories of our allies. It is true 
 that they have been able to help us in this way 
 because we have sent them large quantities of 
 raw material and thousands of mechanics to 
 work it into shape. 
 
 Once the machinery of the Ordnance Depart- 
 ment did get in motion it worked with increas- 
 ing momentum. We find that by May, 1918, 
 the production of the modified Enfield rifle for 
 the army had been speeded up to 45,000 a 
 week. By the middle of August more than 100,- 
 000 machine-guns of various types had been 
 made, of which 19,100 were light Brownings 
 and 11,200 of the heavy types. An ultimate 
 yearly production was promised of 15,000 field- 
 pieces of calibers ranging from 3% to 9 inches.
 
 MILITARY PREPARATION 71, 
 
 In criticism of the delays incurred in the Ord- 
 nance Department consideration must be given 
 to the size and complexity of the task which 
 confronted it. When war was declared it had a 
 commissioned personnel of ninety-seven officers, 
 and was operating with a yearly expenditure of 
 about $14,000,000. The war programme re- 
 quired the expansion of its personnel to more 
 than 5,000 officers, and in the first year it 
 directed the expenditure of more than $4,500,- 
 000,000. To a peace-time task of operating 
 eleven government arsenals it had added the 
 supervision of several thousand factories en- 
 gaged in the production of munitions of all 
 kinds. It had to develop industries hitherto 
 unknown in the country, such as that for reduc- 
 ing nitrate from the air. For the manufacture 
 of gun-carriages on a large scale it had to create 
 organizations and build great shops. It con- 
 structed and is operating two large plants for 
 the making of high explosives, each of which 
 cost $45,000,000. Under its charge came the 
 development of new weapons of warfare of all 
 kinds and their production. The Browning gun 
 alone was a fine achievement. The heavy type
 
 72 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 in a government test fired 20,000 shots in 48 
 minutes and 16 seconds, without malfunction. 
 
 The task this department has had to face has 
 been one of the heaviest of the war. The num- 
 ber of items it has had to secure and supply to 
 the troops will number at least 100,000, and 
 they range from the firing-pin of a rifle to a 
 sixteen-inch gun or a motor-truck. Fortunately 
 it was able to draw into its personnel the best 
 minds of industrial America. It has made mis- 
 takes. There have been trying delays at times, 
 caused by hesitation and lack of initiative, but 
 it can be said that by the end of the first year 
 of war its direction and its methods had greatly 
 improved, and that it was functioning smoothly. 
 
 The other great supply department of the 
 army, the quartermaster's, has had a problem 
 nearly as great, though not so intricate. Its 
 work at the outbreak of the war had to be done 
 quickly, as its first large task was to supply 
 camps for the gathering armies. The department 
 was at first handicapped by lack of money, since, 
 because of obstructive tactics by the opponents 
 of war, the Congress which adjourned on March 4 
 had failed to pass the army appropriation bill.
 
 MILITARY PREPARATION 73 
 
 Red tape was cut; extraordinary care was taken 
 in expenditures; money was borrowed from the 
 appropriation for national defense; the Federal 
 Reserve Board financed the contractors. The 
 work was pushed rapidly, but it was not until 
 June 15 that the new Congress made the needed 
 appropriation. The making of the camps and 
 cantonments has been described. But the de- 
 partment had to repeat these feats abroad, 
 building in France great training and rest 
 camps, and supplying buildings for the storage 
 of vast quantities of war material. 
 
 To the subsistence division has fallen the feed- 
 ing of the army, and its operations have been on 
 a huge scale, and its purchases in a year run 
 into hundreds of millions of pounds of staple 
 foods of all kinds, and hundreds of millions of 
 cans of vegetables and fruit. In the operations 
 of the equipment division we notice purchases 
 of such items as 75,000,000 yards of olive-drab 
 cloth, 50,000,000 pairs of heavy stockings, 
 11,000,000 pairs of field-shoes, and 14,000,000 
 pairs of woollen breeches. The remount divi- 
 sion, which has charge of the purchase, mobili- 
 zation, and shipment of animals, spent nearly
 
 74 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 $45,000,000 in one year. Great remount sta- 
 tions had to be established at all the camps, 
 where the horses and mules could be assembled 
 and put in condition before they were shipped 
 to the war zone. It is estimated that in the 
 army's operations one animal is needed for 
 every five men. The mortality among these 
 animals is very heavy, and constant replacement 
 is required. With every 1,000,000 men we send 
 abroad, at least 200,000 horses must go. 
 
 An idea of the multitude of smaller but none 
 the less essential matters which require the War 
 Department's attention can be had from an in- 
 cident which occurred in Washington last win- 
 ter. It was during the fuel famine, and the 
 department appealed to the fuel administration 
 for coal for a large candy -manufacturing com- 
 pany. Candy hardly seemed essential then. 
 But inquiry developed the fact that this com- 
 pany was furnishing the government with co- 
 coanut-shells in great quantities, and from them 
 was obtained the fibre used in the respirators 
 of gas-masks. Then there arose trouble in get- 
 ting castor-oil. It is used as a lubricant in air- 
 plane motors, and the supply is limited. The
 
 MILITARY PREPARATION 75 
 
 government prepared to meet its needs by 
 planting thousands of acres of land with castor- 
 beans. 
 
 This vast work of equipping our army for war 
 could not have been carried on with the success 
 it has had it not been for the Advisory Com- 
 mission of the Council of National Defense and 
 its many subsidiary committees. These commit- 
 tees were composed of men representing every 
 branch of our industry, and co-operated with the 
 various military bureaus. Their function was 
 at first purely advisory. But when any special 
 article was called for they knew where it could 
 be obtained or made in the least possible time. 
 Mistakes were made. There were delays, as in 
 the aircraft and gun production. In the rush 
 of work sometimes important items seem almost 
 to have been forgotten. For example, there 
 was the problem of gas warfare. Our gas de- 
 fensive was early provided for; not so the gas 
 offensive. It was late in the spring of 1918 be- 
 fore we were ready to supply our armies abroad 
 with gas-shells in the great quantities needed. 
 It is no secret that the gas they are now using is 
 the most effective known. Such defects in our
 
 76 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 war preparations seem to have been due to a 
 lack of co-ordination. The country was stirred 
 in the fall of 1917 when Senator Chamberlain 
 of Oregon, in a public speech, charged the War 
 Department with procrastination, and declared 
 that it was not functioning properly. In Con- 
 gress charges were made that our war pro- 
 gramme had broken down. Whether or not 
 they were fully justified is not the main issue 
 now. Certain it is that their effect was salu- 
 tary. The work was speeded up. Shifts were 
 made among the bureau heads. New men were 
 called in to supervise certain operations. More 
 power was given to committees whose functions 
 had hitherto been advisory. By the passage of 
 the Overman bill by Congress in May of this 
 year more power was given to the President as 
 directing chief of all our war activities. Under 
 its provisions he can make whatever adminis- 
 trative changes he wishes without hindrance 
 from Congress. Under it the President has 
 been able to secure the needed co-ordination in 
 the gigantic task which the country has had to 
 face. There is no divided opinion as to the 
 necessity of accomplishing that task. The men
 
 MILITARY PREPARATION 77 
 
 of both the great political parties have heartily 
 supported every move that promised victory, 
 and the men of every industry have bent their 
 energies to that end.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 
 
 THE two most effective weapons used in the 
 World War have been the machine-gun 
 and the airplane. Both are American inven- 
 tions. Yet when we declared war on Germany 
 even the little army we had was insufficiently 
 supplied with machine-guns, and possessed not 
 a single fighting-plane. In April, 1917, the army 
 air service consisted of 65 officers and 1,120 men. 
 It had 300 second-rate planes and three small 
 flying-fields. 
 
 It is a fact not generally known that even the 
 Zeppelin had its forerunner in America, and 
 that in the early nineties Congress appropriated 
 $100,000 for the construction of a lighter- than - 
 air machine. Its designer was a Doctor de 
 Boussuet, a Frenchman, who planned a rigid 
 balloon made of very thin steel plates, supported 
 inside by light steel tubing. He was to obtain 
 buoyancy by exhausting the air from the cylin- 
 der, and to propel it by the simple gas-engine 
 
 78
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 79 
 
 of that day. All his figures as to strength and 
 power were approved by naval engineers. It 
 was designed to carry mail, but it was never 
 built, because a disagreement arose between the 
 government and its inventor as to his reward, 
 should it prove a success. I can remember the 
 doctor in his house in Brooklyn in 1896, sitting 
 surrounded by a confusion of detail drawings, 
 bewailing the stupidity of a government which 
 was so parsimonious as to block his experiment, 
 because of a matter of a few thousand dollars. 
 At that time Samuel P. Langley was experi- 
 menting in heavier-than-air machines. He was 
 working on the correct principle of aeronautics 
 simply put, the faster you skate over thin ice 
 the less is the likelihood of breaking through. 
 He lacked satisfactory means of propulsion, yet 
 in 1896 a model of his, driven by steam, did fly, 
 and demonstrated the possibility of airplane 
 navigation. In 1903 a model driven by a gas- 
 engine made a prolonged flight, and he con- 
 structed the first man-carrying airplane. This 
 he never succeeded in launching. Death ended 
 his experiments. In 1914 Glenn Curtiss made 
 a successful flight in that machine.
 
 80 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 In the fall of 1907 Wilbur and Orville Wright 
 came from Dayton, Ohio, to New York, seeking 
 capital. They asserted that they had solved 
 the flying riddle, but their claims were listened 
 to somewhat sceptically in the quarters where 
 they were heard. It was not until the next year 
 when they went to France, and made extensive 
 flights at low altitudes around French race- 
 tracks, that the full measure of their success 
 was realized by the world. In the summer of 
 1910 a little flying-school was established at 
 Mineola, Long Island, on what is now the site 
 of two great army fields, and it was a favorite 
 afternoon diversion of Long Islanders to go 
 there and watch a half-dozen aviators soaring 
 around, hardly higher than the housetops. In 
 the four years before the beginning of the Euro- 
 pean War the development of aviation in this 
 country was very slow. Such machines as we 
 had were to be seen generally at county fairs, 
 and what attention was paid to the aviation 
 problem was by private individuals. Even up 
 to the time of our entrance into the war the 
 only indication that we had any air section in 
 our army at all came from occasional reports of
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 81 
 
 fatal accidents. Meantime abroad the science 
 of airplane building and flying advanced with 
 startling rapidity. The exigencies of war were 
 the cause. From the primitive reconnoissance 
 plane, the combatants went quickly to heavy- 
 armed observation-planes, fitted with wireless 
 and photographic apparatus, to very fast, high- 
 flying, fighting-machines, and to large machines 
 capable of carrying tons of bombs to spread 
 devastation behind the battle-lines and in the 
 cities. Systems of aerial acrobatics and combat 
 were developed to a degree hitherto undreamed 
 of. In none of these developments in military 
 aeronautics did we follow. In all the years 
 previous to April 6, 1917, we had spent just 
 $1,500,000 in this branch of army service. We, 
 in whose country the first plane had flown, had 
 to sit humbly at the feet of our allies and learn. 
 One trouble has been that our humility was 
 not great enough. 
 
 It was believed that the armies that held the 
 mastery of the air would win. Blind the Ger- 
 mans ! It would be easier and quicker to send 
 overseas an overwhelming air force than an 
 overwhelming army. Though we had few avi-
 
 82 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 ators and no fighting-planes, we had thousands 
 of young men ready and willing to train for fly- 
 ing, and great industrial plants to produce the 
 machines rapidly. Then we had money. Con- 
 gress quickly appropriated $640,000,000 to be 
 available for the first year, and we began to 
 work on our ambitious programme. This sum 
 was later increased to over a billion dollars. 
 The programme was not too ambitious. It was 
 admirable. The disappointment came from our 
 being made too sanguine of its first part being 
 accomplished in a year. The American public 
 and our allies were led to expect too much. 
 There was too much talking. Who was respon- 
 sible for this inflation of our expectations is a 
 mooted question. The official Bureau of Public 
 Information in its early career certainly had a 
 way of issuing bombastic statements. 
 
 Within a year we were to have thousands of 
 fighting-planes on the western front. How was 
 this to be accomplished ? The work was put in 
 charge of a special board of the Signal Corps 
 of the army working in conjunction with the 
 newly formed Aircraft Production Committee of 
 the Council of National Defense. This com-
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 83 
 
 mittee was made up of a number of men con- 
 spicuous as successful in the manufacture of 
 automobiles. There were fine engineers in both 
 of these bodies, but no experts in practical aero- 
 nautics. 
 
 Now consider their task. According to the 
 programme, to blind the German armies we 
 were to send to the western front as fast as pos- 
 sible at least 20,000 airplanes and aviators. It 
 was desired and expected that a large part of 
 these would be in service in the campaigns of 
 1918. The call for young men to train for avi- 
 ation was sent out promptly, and they volun- 
 teered by thousands. As fast as they could be 
 cared for they were accepted for service. At 
 the time of our entry into the war we had in 
 the country but a small number of aircraft in- 
 ventors and experts, and some dozen factories 
 which were making airplanes, or airplane parts 
 and accessories. Now aircraft companies began 
 to spring up like mushrooms and to prepare for 
 the work ahead. The main elements in the 
 problem faced were to secure quickly large 
 numbers of engines, material for the wings, 
 linen, cotton, wood, and navigating instru-
 
 84 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 ments. The construction of engines and planes 
 had to be carried on simultaneously. Our allies 
 promptly placed at our disposal all their best 
 models of engines and planes, and it might have 
 seemed a wise thing to begin at once copying 
 these and producing them as fast as possible. 
 But it was believed that with our methods of 
 manufacturing it would not be possible to pro- 
 duce such planes in the great numbers needed. 
 It is a fact that we did not then have in the 
 country enough expert mechanics to build in 
 quantities engines as they are built abroad, that 
 is by the most careful hand labor. Our me- 
 chanical labor has always been done largely by 
 machinery. By a standardization of design and 
 the use of machinery it would be possible to 
 make engines in large numbers. So this method 
 was adopted. We might have followed the two 
 courses, copying the foreign engines with as 
 much speed as possible, and at the same time 
 experimenting with and perfecting our own. 
 We did not, and time was lost. 
 
 In June the country was electrified by the 
 announcement given out by the War Depart- 
 ment, through the Bureau of Public Information,
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 85 
 
 that American mechanical genius had invented 
 an airplane engine which was superior to all 
 others, and was, moreover, capable of being 
 manufactured in great numbers by machine 
 processes. Twenty-two thousand were prom- 
 ised within a year. We can smile now at that 
 bombastic announcement. We recall the story 
 which we were told of two engineers locking 
 themselves in a few rooms in a Washington hotel 
 and completing in three weeks designs for a mo- 
 tor which equalled, if not surpassed, in quality 
 the best results of years of experiment and prac- 
 tice abroad. The inference was that our en- 
 gineers went into those rooms with nothing in 
 their heads but ideas, and emerged with working 
 plans. As a matter of fact, as we know now, 
 the engineers of a well-known automobile com- 
 pany, foreseeing our entry into the war, had 
 been working for two years on the construction 
 of an efficient airplane motor. Several models 
 had been made and tested successfully on a 
 block. The last, equipped with an air-propeller, 
 had driven a truck about the streets of Detroit 
 and had given proof of great power. It was on 
 this design, which was offered to the govern-
 
 86 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 ment, that the engineers worked, and they made 
 on it a number of changes and improvements 
 in their three weeks' conference. On July 3 
 the manufacturers were able to ship to Wash- 
 ington the first of the new engines, and it was 
 named the Liberty motor. To-day Liberty 
 motors are being built in large numbers, but 
 before they attained their present efficiency in 
 certain kinds of airplane work, months had to 
 be spent in experiment, and these months were 
 of vital importance in the war. The first motor 
 in block tests proved itself very powerful. 
 Weighing but little over 800 pounds, it devel- 
 oped 400 horse-power, giving it a weight of ap- 
 proximately two pounds per horse-power. In 
 practice on an airplane trouble developed. In 
 the design of airplane motors consideration has 
 to be given to the fact that they work in high 
 airs and changing temperatures, and their cool- 
 ing systems have to be so devised that they 
 function smoothly in changing altitudes. The 
 first Liberty motors did not do this, and changes 
 had to be made in the radiation system. De- 
 fects developed, also, in the lubrication, and 
 certain parts were found to be not sufficiently
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 87 
 
 strong. The improvements added to the weight. 
 On September 12 Secretary Baker made a pub- 
 lic announcement of the success of the final 
 tests and assured the country that a large num- 
 ber of motors would be ready for service in "a 
 comparatively short time." The comparatively 
 short time proved to be nearly a year. 
 
 Contracts for the manufacture of the motors 
 were let to five large companies. That there 
 should be no profiteering, these contracts pro- 
 vided that the manufacturers should receive a 
 profit of \% 1 A per cent on an estimated cost of 
 $5,000 per engine. If the actual cost exceeded 
 $5,000 the manufacturer was to be reimbursed 
 for the outlay but would receive a reduced profit 
 or none at all; if the cost was less than $5,000 
 he was to receive a bonus of 25 cents on every 
 dollar saved. While the percentage of profit 
 might seem large, it must be remembered that 
 the manufacturers had to provide special plants 
 and equipment in order to fill the orders. Such 
 contracts would give assurance of profiteering 
 only by the most devious methods. Certain of 
 the needed parts the manufacturers could not 
 make, and to obtain them they had to place
 
 88 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 orders with numerous other plants. To equip 
 all these plants with the necessary machinery 
 took time, and once the quantity production 
 programme was started, more time was lost by 
 the constant changes in design ordered by the 
 Signal Corps. These changes were continued up 
 to April, and it was not until that month that 
 the production of motors had reached any 
 numbers. By June 1, instead of nearly the 
 20,000 promised, there had been delivered about 
 1,500. In that month, however, the factories 
 got into their stride, and week by week the out- 
 put increased, so that by August the engines 
 were being delivered at a rate of nearly 1,000 a 
 week. 
 
 The delay in the aircraft programme was 
 known in Washington in the fall of 1917, and 
 this delay was due not only to the motor prob- 
 lem but to the plane construction. Apparently 
 little effective work was done to speed up. It 
 was not until the following April that the Ameri- 
 can public became aware of the trouble, and 
 explanations were demanded. Congress took 
 up the matter. It wanted to know why, when 
 it had provided for an expenditure of many
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 89 
 
 millions in one year so few machines had been 
 produced, and we had sent no battle-planes 
 abroad. It came out that of this money only 
 $270,000,000 had actually been paid out, a large 
 part of it for flying-fields, and that the rest was 
 represented in contracts let and uncompleted. 
 The men mainly responsible for the carrying 
 out of the programme were called and ques- 
 tioned. Without doubt they were men of the 
 highest patriotism and had acted with the best 
 intentions, but it was felt in some quarters that 
 serious mistakes had been made. Considerable 
 acrimony developed. The President acted. He 
 had hardly signed the Overman bill, on May 20, 
 when he used its powers by ordering a sweeping 
 reorganization. The production of aircraft was 
 placed in the control of John D. Ryan, who had 
 wide powers given him. The old Aircraft Pro- 
 duction Board was continued in an advisory 
 capacity. The control of aircraft operation was 
 taken from the Signal Corps and placed with 
 the newly organized Department of Military 
 Aeronautics, which now has charge of all aerial 
 work, of observation balloons and photography, 
 as well as of the fighting-planes.
 
 90 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 The original scheme for our airplane motor 
 was an excellent one could it have been carried 
 out in all its parts. It contemplated a stand- 
 ardized engine which could be produced in 
 quantity and fitted to almost any kind of plane. 
 The value of such a standardized engine at the 
 battle-front is manifest. All the parts would 
 be interchangeable and kept at hand, so that 
 repairs could be quickly made. But experience 
 has proved that the Liberty motor works well 
 only in the heavier types of planes, such as 
 those used in bombing and observation. It is 
 very powerful for its weight, but its weight is 
 too great for small fast-flying scout planes. A 
 large number of these had been ordered, but it 
 was found that the Liberty engine was too 
 heavy and powerful for them. So for this spe- 
 cial work we had to turn at a late date to types 
 of motors originally offered to us by France, 
 England, and Italy. Our air programme had 
 to be materially altered. Our main task be- 
 came to supply a great number of machines of 
 the heavy type, for bombing, observation, and 
 photography for our own use and the use of 
 our allies. To our friends abroad we had to
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 91 
 
 trust largely for equipment in the little single- 
 seater fighters. 
 
 Even had the production of Liberty motors 
 been accomplished on schedule time, it is doubt- 
 ful that we should have had ready the planes on 
 which to mount more than a small number. 
 Without the planes the engines were useless. 
 In the excitement tending the development of 
 the motor other essential features of the pro- 
 gramme were delayed. Millions of square yards 
 of especially prepared cloths and millions of 
 feet of carefully treated timber had to be secured 
 for the construction of the wings. As every air- 
 plane carries some seven delicate instruments 
 needed in its operation, the simultaneous pro- 
 duction of thousands of these was a necessity. 
 It was late in the summer of 1917 before these 
 vital needs had been provided for. 
 
 The wood used in the construction of air- 
 plane wings has to be light, hard, straight- 
 grained, and free from defects. Spruce has 
 proved the best for the purpose, and of this 
 wood our largest supply comes from the North- 
 west. Before we entered the war the Allied 
 governments were buying spruce there in large
 
 92 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 quantities, but the added needs of our own war 
 programme required that the government take 
 over these outstanding contracts, assume con- 
 trol of the timber production, and supply the 
 demands of all. At first the work of getting 
 out the lumber was carried on in rather slipshod 
 fashion. There were labor troubles during the 
 summer and a subtle propaganda of disloyalty 
 developed among the workers, hampering the 
 operations. It was seen that it was necessary 
 that the government not only supervise the 
 spruce output, but that it operate the industry. 
 In September the spruce production division of 
 the army was formed and placed in charge of 
 an officer, with headquarters at Vancouver. He 
 organized a corps of officers, engineers, foresters, 
 lumber-jacks, and mill-hands, numbering nearly 
 12,000 men. To counteract the insidious agita- 
 tion of the I. W. W. an appeal to the patriotism 
 of the workers was made. The Loyal Legion of 
 Loggers and Lumbermen was formed in the 
 forests and thousands of men enrolled in local 
 chapters all over the lumber district. Labor 
 disputes were satisfactorily settled, and disloy- 
 alty so stamped out that it ceased to be a
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 93 
 
 menace. When the division was formed the 
 forests and mills were putting out only 2,000,000 
 feet of lumber monthly, and 10,000,000 monthly 
 were urgently needed. New methods had to be 
 inaugurated; new roads had to be laid to reach 
 distant stands of trees, and railroads constructed 
 to get out the timber; new saw-mills had to be 
 built and kilns provided for the drying of the 
 spruce pieces. The task was difficult, but it 
 was carried on with success. The production 
 increased steadily month by month and the 
 time spent in moving it across the continent to 
 the factories was greatly reduced. By the sum- 
 mer of 1918 spruce in ample quantities was 
 being obtained for our airplanes. 
 
 To provide the men to drive and care for 
 these projected planes the War Department 
 acted with promptness and energy. Great fly- 
 ing-fields were established all over the country 
 and barracks and hangars were constructed in 
 quick time. Within one year our air service 
 was expanded until a personnel of some 1,100 
 officers and men became over 100,000. An air- 
 plane squadron consists of eighteen machines 
 and 154 men. Eighteen of these men are com-
 
 94 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 missioned pilots. The rest are ground officers, 
 observers, mechanics, cooks, and guards. It 
 can readily be calculated that if we had 20,000 
 planes in service we should have 1,100 squadrons, 
 for the operation of which more men would be 
 required than we had in our army when the war 
 began. As a matter of fact, in the first year we 
 produced fliers four times as fast as we produced 
 motors. In the middle of June, 1918, we had in 
 our service 9,000 flying officers of whom about 
 1,500 were abroad, most of them completing 
 their training in French and English schools. 
 We had in our service some 5,000 machines, the 
 greatest number of which were training-planes. 
 By the middle of July the War Department an- 
 nounced that we had built 733 bombing-planes, 
 of which 425 had been sent abroad. Most of 
 these were of a type known as the De Haviland 
 4, and as in practice they were not proving 
 entirely satisfactory, orders were given late in 
 July to build no more, but to construct a later 
 and better type known as the De Haviland 9. 
 Meantime orders had been given to scrap a 
 large number of Bristol fighting-planes which had 
 )been completed. It was found that the Liberty
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 95 
 
 motor was too powerful for them, and even had 
 motors been at hand the type had become out 
 of date, so rapidly are the improvements made 
 by those who are actually developing planes 
 under the trying conditions of battle. The 
 needed instruments, such as altimeters and 
 compasses, were not at this time forthcoming 
 in the numbers needed even for training pur- 
 poses. 
 
 At the beginning of the war we had few 
 skilled aviators in the country, and they had 
 to be utilized as instructors. The corps of in- 
 structors was enlarged by a large number of 
 foreign flying officers who were sent overseas to 
 our fields to teach our men. That we were able 
 to increase so rapidly our possible flying per- 
 sonnel was due to the energy of the War De- 
 partment in providing fields and schools, to the 
 patriotism of thousands of young Americans 
 who volunteered for this dangerous service, and 
 to the co-operation of the colleges and universi- 
 ties of the country. These last turned their 
 technical departments over to the government 
 service, and in many of them ground schools 
 were founded, where the embryo fliers could be
 
 96 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 instructed in the mechanics of motors and in 
 the construction of planes before going to the 
 flying-fields for training in the air. Since the 
 summer of 1917 there has been a steady stream 
 of young men passing through these schools to 
 the flying-fields. So great has their number 
 been that when the airplane production was 
 delayed not enough machines could be had hi 
 which to teach them all to fly. Hundreds were 
 sent abroad to take their training in the schools 
 of our allies. The war was a year old before 
 even the training-planes were coming from our 
 factories in numbers sufficient for our needs. 
 
 Not only did we have to provide training for 
 our aviators, but schools had to be established 
 to fit men for many phases of the work of the 
 air service. At the factories and in the fields 
 instruction was provided for mechanics, pho- 
 tographers, balioonists, engineers, armorers, and 
 supply and administration officers. The organ- 
 ization of so great a personnel in so short a 
 time has been a work well done. 
 
 The work of our aeronautical department has 
 been gaining in momentum. To realize that it 
 is at last under way effectively one has only to
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 97 
 
 visit Long Island. Not a day passes but from 
 early morning to night one can hear the drum of 
 engines high in the air. The planes fly over- 
 head by the scores, some singly, some in battle 
 formation. Often one sees lone aviators prac- 
 tising acrobatics, looping and spiralling, shoot- 
 ing toward earth in the nose-dive or tail-spin, 
 in hair-raising fashion. The skill with which 
 they perform these evolutions gives evidence 
 of their training. In fields all over the coun- 
 try this same dangerous work is being done 
 by an army of as fine young men as have ever 
 taken to the air. To scores of them the train- 
 ing has ended in death, and they have given 
 themselves to the cause of liberty and justice as 
 truly as though they died in battle. The first 
 Americans to die in battle were aviators, and 
 daily the list grows longer with the names of 
 those gallant young souls who have made the 
 supreme sacrifice. 
 
 Our aircraft programme will succeed, if some- 
 what tardily. The invention of the Liberty 
 motor, a good motor which could be made 
 rapidly in large numbers, was an achievement. 
 The trouble was that it was too much adver-
 
 98 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 tised and so much expected of it that other 
 matters of equal importance were neglected. 
 One wonders why it was advertised at all. The 
 Germans never knew of the tanks until the 
 tanks were rolling toward them over the Flan- 
 ders fields, spitting fire. By the vaunting of 
 the motor's virtues and the announcement that 
 it alone would be used on our airplanes, capa- 
 ble inventors were discouraged from efforts in 
 improving engines. We should have had avia- 
 tion experts in charge of the programme from 
 the beginning, and we did not. More work and 
 fewer optimistic statements on the part of the 
 War Department would have brought efficiency 
 out of confusion much sooner than it really 
 came. 
 
 This practically sums up the situation. What 
 has been said is corroborated in the report 
 made public on August 22 by the Senate's 
 investigating committee. This committee found 
 that a substantial part of the original appropria- 
 tion of $640,000,000 had been wasted. It de- 
 clared that of the planes sent abroad but 67 
 De Haviland 4's had reached the front by 
 August 1, and that these were good only for
 
 THE MASTERY OF THE AIR 99 
 
 day bombing and observation; that at the same 
 date we had not at the front a single American- 
 made chasse (or plane of attack) or heavy 
 bombing-plane. It found that $6,500,000 was 
 wasted on Bristol planes, as these had to be 
 scrapped, after several lives had been lost in 
 trials. It found that, though 3,000 fast fighting 
 Spads were ordered in September, 1917, this 
 order was cancelled because they could not be 
 adapted to the Liberty motor. It found that, 
 though facilities were ready to build the Caproni 
 bombing-machine in the fall of 1917, only one 
 experimental plane had been completed. While 
 commending the Liberty motor for certain pur- 
 poses, the committee declared that it was too 
 heavy and too powerful for the lighter types of 
 planes, and that we should have manufactured 
 the best types of foreign motors contemporane- 
 ously with its development, instead of which 
 we subordinated all the other phases of the 
 aircraft programme to its perfection and pro- 
 duction. 
 
 A few days after the Senate committee's re- 
 port was made public Secretary of War Baker 
 again acted to correct the trouble. He ap-
 
 100 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 pointed Mr. Ryan, second assistant secretary of 
 war, with full charge of all our activities in the 
 air. Mr. Ryan not only was made responsible 
 for the production of aircraft, but for operation 
 of the department of military aeronautics, for 
 the purpose of co-ordinating both of these 
 branches of the work. By the same order 
 Benedict C. Crowell, first assistant secretary, 
 was placed in charge of the munitions pro- 
 gramme, succeeding Mr. Stettinius, who was 
 then abroad as a special representative of the 
 department. 
 
 The placing of a man of Mr. Ryan's abilities 
 at the head of our air programme should prove 
 beneficial. After he became head of the pro- 
 duction board marked changes for the better 
 were noticed. Engines and planes of the best 
 types were ordered, and our real programme 
 was put under way. A year late, but still next 
 year we should prove a power in the combat 
 in the air.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 
 
 IN considering the problems faced by America 
 in her preparation for war there has been, 
 at times, a tendency to compare the work of 
 the Navy Department with that of the War 
 Department. Such comparison is unfair. Our 
 navy, at the outbreak of the war, was a finely 
 organized machine, ready for instant action. 
 Our army was so small that it hardly sufficed 
 for police work. Under the theory that the 
 sea protected us from foreign aggression, the 
 navy was always considered our first line of de- 
 fense, and had been treated with fair generosity 
 by Congress, while the army was stunted and 
 starved by niggardly appropriations. Nearly 
 a year before the beginning of hostilities Con- 
 gress more than doubled the customary appro- 
 priation for naval purposes, allotting large 
 sums of money for new ship construction, for 
 machine-shops, dry-docks, and ordnance. In 
 
 the same session the army was practically neg- 
 
 101
 
 102 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 lected. When we declared war the expan- 
 sion of the naval force was already under way. 
 Since then the personnel has been increased 
 nearly seven times. In the same period the 
 War Department has had to increase the per- 
 sonnel of the army more than twenty-five 
 times, and contemplates still greater additions 
 to its force. Both departments faced great 
 tasks. The quietness and efficiency with which 
 the Navy Department has been doing its work 
 has merited the highest praise. 
 
 The navy was ready. Even before war had 
 been officially declared our sailors were in ac- 
 tion from the decks of armed merchantmen, 
 exchanging shots with German submarines. In 
 such an engagement, in the sinking of the Aztec 
 on April 1, the first of our fighting men lost his 
 life in service. When war seemed inevitable, 
 Admiral William S. Sims was hurried abroad to 
 get in touch with the British and French ad- 
 miralties and make arrangements for our en- 
 trance into the conflict. When war was begun 
 every available ship was manned and prepared 
 for action. The navy worked quickly and si- 
 lently. On May 4, in less than a month after
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 103 
 
 hostilities began, we learned that our first flotilla 
 of destroyers had reached a British port, and 
 with added gratification we heard how the Brit- 
 ish commander, asking when the boats would 
 be ready for action, received the reply: "We are 
 ready now." War-ship followed war-ship. By 
 the close of the year we had in service in Eu- 
 ropean waters 35,000 officers and men, more 
 than one-half the navy's total strength on April 
 6. One destroyer detachment in the first six 
 months steamed 1,000,000 miles, was 3,600 days 
 at sea, attacked 81 submarines, and escorted 
 717 merchant vessels safely to port. The first 
 of our armed forces to reach France were naval 
 aviators, who landed on June 8. From the 
 first our navy has made a record for efficiency 
 and daring of which every American has reason 
 to be proud. Working with the fleets of our 
 allies, it has battled with the submarines so 
 successfully as to lessen greatly the menace of 
 the undersea pirates; it has so guarded the 
 ocean lanes that we have landed in France more 
 than a million and a half of men, with a loss of 
 life almost negligible, and have kept moving a 
 stea ly stream of supply -ships in comparative
 
 104 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 safety. Under the direction of able men the 
 splendid traditions of our navy have been upheld. 
 The man directly responsible for these opera- 
 tions at sea is the secretary, Mr. Josephus 
 Daniels. Few men in public life in the past 
 decade have been subject to so much criticism 
 as Mr. Daniels. When, in 1913, he left the 
 editorial desk in his North Carolina newspaper 
 office to join the cabinet, he had little knowl- 
 edge of naval affairs. He somewhat jarred the 
 sensibilities of both the rank and file of the 
 navy, accustomed to long-established methods 
 of operation and discipline, by instituting a 
 series of reforms. The impression got abroad 
 that he regarded the navy as not so much a 
 fighting-machine as a school for young men. 
 In common with most men in public life he had 
 a hobby, democracy, and he rode it with vigor. 
 His early actions in reform have been described 
 as "amiable floundering." But Mr. Daniels 
 was willing to learn and to listen to able pro- 
 fessional advisers, whom he trusted. Many of 
 his reforms proved excellent, even to the minds 
 of those who at first opposed them. Others 
 which were found inadvisable he quietly ^
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 105 
 
 doned. Increased efficiency has come from his 
 fight against the use of alcoholic liquors among 
 the rank and file. The navy has never been an 
 aristocratic institution, but it was formerly im- 
 possible for an enlisted man to win an officer's 
 commission. For the responsibilities attend- 
 ing the command of a ship, men had to be 
 trained carefully. The government provides 
 this education at the Naval Academy. The 
 Annapolis cadets come from every part of the 
 country, and every walk of life under carefully 
 laid down rules. Through the initiative of Mr. 
 Daniels the law has been so changed as to allow 
 each year the appointment to Annapolis of 100 
 enlisted men under the age of twenty. Such a 
 system, while in no way lessening the qualifi- 
 cations required for a commission, certainly 
 gives encouragement to hundreds of ambitious 
 young men who could in no other way find the 
 road open to the quarter-deck. Under the old 
 methods promotions in the commissioned corps 
 were made by seniority. An officer was sure of 
 his promotion even though his attainments and 
 work were mediocre,, Mr. Daniels secured the 
 passage of a law by which the promotion of
 
 106 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 officers above the rank of lieutenant-commander 
 is made by selection. While this does offer 
 an opportunity for favoritism, it allows the 
 placing in posts of responsibility younger, and 
 often abler, men than could be obtained by the 
 seniority principle. There have been times 
 when the secretary's amiable ways and ideas 
 seemed to tend to upset discipline, that neces- 
 sity in all fighting-machines, but since we en- 
 tered the war we have heard nothing of these 
 things. He has gathered around him able ad- 
 visers. Competent men have been placed at 
 the heads of bureaus, and able men in com- 
 mand of our fleets. From the beginning a great 
 work has been carried on efficiently and without 
 friction. 
 
 At the outbreak of the war in Europe the 
 American Navy ranked third. Great Britain 
 led with a tonnage of 2,500,000; Germany sec- 
 ond, with 951,713 tons; the United States third, 
 with 774,353. In the previous decade we had 
 fallen from second place, a fact not due to the 
 present naval administration but to the failure 
 of an earlier Congress to provide money with 
 which to lay down new vessels. In that decade
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 107 
 
 the general board of the navy had recom- 
 mended the construction of 326 new ships of 
 all classes. Congress granted but 153. From 
 the beginning of the World War the Navy De- 
 partment worked consistently to secure a large 
 increase in the naval establishment, but for the 
 first two years we find no marked addition to 
 the appropriations. In 1916 the growing strain 
 in our relations with Germany did arouse 
 Congress to action, and legislation was passed 
 looking to our future needs, both as to ships 
 and personnel. By the act of August 29, of 
 that year, the appropriation for the previous 
 year was more than doubled, and provision 
 was made for the beginning of a great construc- 
 tion programme, to be carried over three years. 
 Besides the new ships, the programme provided 
 for an increase in personnel, a greater aero- 
 nautical equipment, new dry-docks, new armor- 
 plate and projectile plants, new shops, enlarged 
 navy-yards, instruction camps, and an increase 
 in reserve supplies of all kinds. For new ships 
 the programme contemplated the earliest pos- 
 sible construction of ten battleships, six battle 
 cruisers, tn scout cruisers, fifty destroyers, nine
 
 108 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 fleet submarines, fifty-eight coast submarines, 
 and a number of repair and supply vessels. Ap- 
 proximately, a half billion of dollars was needed 
 to complete the construction. Scenting danger 
 in the break in our diplomatic relations with 
 Germany, the Sixty-fourth Congress before its 
 adjournment in the following March passed a 
 still greater appropriation bill for the navy, and 
 the next Congress, in special session, following 
 the declaration of war, enacted two deficiency 
 bills. 
 
 The appropriations for the navy for the fiscal 
 year 1917-18 and including the special appro- 
 priation of 1916 were as follows: 
 
 Act of August 29, 1916 $312,888,060.25 
 
 Act of March 4, 1917 516,491,802.08 
 
 Act of June 5, 1917 514,805,033.87 
 
 Act of October 6, 1917. . 561,436,023.50 
 
 Total $1,905,620,919.70 
 
 For the fiscal year ending July 1, 1919, the 
 present Congress has appropriated $1,616,550,- 
 360 for naval purposes. The sum of these ap- 
 propriations exceeds the total expenditures in 
 our navy from 1794 to 1916.
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 109 
 
 When we went to war our navy numbered 
 in service fifteen dreadnaughts, twenty pre- 
 dreadnaughts, ten armored cruisers, twenty-five 
 light cruisers, seven monitors, seventy-four de- 
 stroyers, nineteen torpedo-boats, and sixty-six 
 submarines. A number of these vessels were 
 out of date. The foresight of the department, 
 in inaugurating the three-year programme seven 
 months before, allowed a rapid and powerful 
 increase in our forces. Within a year many 
 vessels of all classes were added to the navy. 
 How the new construction has proceeded, and 
 details as to the vessels launched or laid down, 
 have not, of course, been announced. In the 
 fall of 1916 there were on the ways six battle- 
 ships in various stages of construction. Of 
 these only the launching of the Arizona has 
 been made public. There were also on the 
 ways at that time ten destroyers and thirty- 
 four submarines, besides several supply-ships. 
 The three-year programme called for the con- 
 struction, in 1917, of four battleships, four fast 
 battle cruisers, four scout cruisers, twenty de- 
 stroyers, thirty-one coast-defense submarines, 
 and several supply-ships. When war was de-
 
 110 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 clared a large number of additional destroyers 
 were at once ordered, and every available yard 
 set to work on them. Since then the progress 
 of such work has not been made public. Mr. 
 Daniels has stated that within a year the ves- 
 sels in service have been increased from some 
 300 to over 1,000, and that we had laid down 
 more destroyers than were to be found in any 
 two combined navies before 1914. It must be 
 remembered, however, that among that thou- 
 sand vessels are many armed yachts and small 
 submarine chasers which have no value other 
 than for scouting. 
 
 The department has officially stated that on 
 April 1, 1917, there were building or authorized 
 for the navy 123 vessels, as follows: 
 
 Battleships 15 
 
 Battle-cruisers 6 
 
 Scout-cruisers 7 
 
 Destroyers 27 
 
 Submarines 61 
 
 Fuel-ships 2 
 
 Supply-ship 1 
 
 Transport 1 
 
 Gunboat 1 
 
 Hospital-ship 1 
 
 Ammunition-ship 1
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 111 
 
 It has announced, further, that since that 
 date contracts have been placed for 949 vessels 
 of all kinds, including 100 submarine-chasers 
 for the navies of our allies. 
 
 The work thrown on the department by the 
 building programme has been very great, but 
 it has been carried on rapidly and well. At 
 first we lacked yards, ways, shops, and dry- 
 docks. Consideration had to be given also to 
 the pressing needs of the merchant marine, and 
 the programme so carried out as to allow a 
 coincident increase of both the naval and mer- 
 chant services. These handicaps have been 
 overcome and very rapid construction accom- 
 plished, particularly in the matter of torpedo- 
 boat destroyers, so urgently needed to hunt 
 the submarine. Formerly it took from one to 
 two years to build a destroyer. Now the feat 
 is accomplished in from three to five months. 
 Seventeen and a half days after the laying of 
 her keel, the Ward was launched at Mare 
 Island, 84 per cent completed. On July 4 
 sixteen new destroyers slipped from the ways 
 in various parts of the country. To attain 
 this speed in construction the same system of
 
 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 standardization and fabrication as is used for 
 the merchant marine is followed largely. A no- 
 table example of the way in which the work is 
 done is to be found at the Ford works at Detroit. 
 Here a fast steel submarine chaser, 200 feet long, 
 is built on a track. The keel is laid, the frame 
 set, the plates riveted on in successive opera- 
 tions as the vessel rolls through the shops, and 
 in an incredibly short time it slips into the river 
 more than 80 per cent completed. The plans 
 for these vessels eagles, as they are called 
 were not finished until January. In June the 
 first was launched, and since then the navy has 
 had an almost daily accession of fast and ca- 
 pable little fighters. 
 
 To man the greatly increased number of 
 naval vessels demanded an enlargement of the 
 personnel of the force. On April 6, 1917, there 
 were in the navy 69,046 officers and men, and 
 in the Marine Corps 13,692. On July 23 the 
 department announced that the personnel num- 
 bered 503,792 officers and men in the regular 
 navy, 219,158; in the Marine Corps, 58,463; in 
 the Naval Reserve, 219,566; in the Coast Guard, 
 6,605.
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 113 
 
 When it authorized the three-year building 
 programme Congress foresaw that more men 
 would be needed for the ships, and in the same 
 act authorized an increase in the regular per- 
 sonnel, and gave the President power to aug- 
 ment the force further in case of emergency. 
 The same legislation formed the United States 
 Naval Reserve. This force is divided into six 
 classes, with varying qualifications laid down 
 for admission, and varying rules as to terms of 
 service. The necessity of war, however, has 
 required that the whole force be treated as one, 
 and as a part of the regular naval service. The 
 men serve in the fighting ships, in the transports 
 and supply-vessels, wherever they are needed. 
 All of this great force has been secured by vol- 
 untary enlistment. The selective-service law 
 operates only to furnish men to the army. 
 For the service on the sea young Americans 
 have been offering themselves as fast as they 
 can be equipped and trained. The beginning 
 of the war found the navy some 20,000 men 
 short of its authorized strength, and there 
 were enrolled in the Naval Reserve not more 
 than 10,000. It was necessary to carry on
 
 114 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 a wide campaign to secure the much-needed 
 men. The nation had to be educated to the 
 needs of its navy. The Navy Publicity Bureau 
 flooded the country with posters and patriotic 
 appeals; meetings were held everywhere to 
 stimulate interest, and the recruiting-stations 
 sent out travelling parties to the remotest dis- 
 tricts. Under the stimulus of this campaign 
 the recruiting increased rapidly. To-day the 
 country realizes that it is at war, to a degree 
 that it did not realize a year ago, and little diffi- 
 culty has been experienced in keeping up a 
 steady flow of splendid young men into our sea 
 service. Every outstanding German outrage 
 has been followed by a rush of volunteers, those 
 who would not wait the operation of the selec- 
 tive-service law to do their bit in fighting the 
 menace of the Hun. Successive legislation has 
 greatly increased the authorized strength of the 
 regular navy, and the law places no limit on 
 the number that can be enrolled in the reserve. 
 For the same reasons the Marine Corps has 
 been increased from hardly more than 10,000 
 to nearly 75,000. 
 
 The equipment and training of these great
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 115 
 
 forces has been a mighty task for the depart- 
 ment. Old training-camps had to be greatly 
 enlarged and new ones built. The problem 
 faced here was much like that of the army in 
 regard to the cantonments, though the con- 
 struction has not been on so large a scale. In 
 every case model camps have been formed, and 
 every effort has been made to give the young 
 men in them clean and wholesome surroundings 
 during their apprenticeship. The Commission 
 on Training Camp Activities works here as well 
 as in the army cantonments, and with the co- 
 operation of the Y. M. C. A., the Knights of 
 Columbus, and other patriotic bodies, sees that 
 the men's hours of leisure are filled with clean 
 sport and amusement. 
 
 The period of service in the naval camps is 
 brief, extending only over a few months. The 
 men are trained there in the rudiments of sea- 
 manship and military practice, and then are 
 passed on to service on the sea. For the more 
 intelligent, schools are provided to develop cox- 
 swains, quartermasters, naval aviators, aviation 
 mechanics, radio operators, and hospital-corps 
 men.
 
 116 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 An idea of the work of these great naval 
 schools can be had from that at Great Lakes, 
 111. When the war broke out it was a perma- 
 nent station fitted to accommodate 1,500 ap- 
 prentices. Then the boys of the Middle West 
 poured into it by the thousands. At first they 
 had to be sheltered in tents, but a permanent 
 cantonment was built quickly, and to-day 
 nearly 30,000 young sailors are comfortably 
 housed in thoroughly sanitary quarters. In the 
 first six months of the war 50,000 were passed 
 through the camp to the fighting ships. In all 
 the camps the percentage of sickness has been 
 very small, so carefully have the men been 
 guarded against contagion of all kinds. Every 
 newcomer is quarantined for several weeks be- 
 fore he is allowed to come in contact with the 
 main body of his fellows, and he is carefully 
 examined to make sure that he carries no disease 
 germs. 
 
 The work of training men for the navy is 
 more difficult than for the army, for the reason 
 that the operation of ships requires many men 
 thoroughly qualified for highly technical tasks. 
 This has been especially true in the matter of
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 117 
 
 officers. The merchant marine was so small 
 at the beginning of the war that it could furnish 
 to the navy few officers qualified for the duties 
 of the bridge and engine-room. Fortunately 
 there were in the country thousands of young 
 men who had had experience in operating small 
 boats of all kinds, and others whose training at 
 our technical schools had given a sound basis 
 for education in the special branches of naval 
 work. They went to the classes at the Naval 
 Academy and to officers' schools hi the camps, 
 and in a year of intensive training fitted them- 
 selves for commissions in the reserve and for 
 service at sea. Certain vessels have been used 
 as schools in gunnery and engineering, and 
 through them hundreds of young men have 
 been passing to active duty on our war-ships, 
 and as armed guards on our merchantmen. 
 The task of arming our merchantmen has 
 added greatly to the work of the department. 
 Before we had declared war we were arming 
 our merchant ships as a defense against the 
 submarine, and short though the navy was in 
 men, thousands of gunners and hundreds of 
 guns had to be provided for this new service.
 
 118 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 A special armed guard division of the navy 
 was formed, and its work has been steadily 
 increased by the output of new vessels, which 
 must have this protection. 
 
 Another division that has seen a tremendous 
 increase in personnel and equipment is the 
 Naval Aviation Corps. A year ago this de- 
 partment of our naval work was not greatly 
 developed. At the outbreak of the European 
 War it was, in fact, but little developed in any 
 other navy. The flying-boat, however, early 
 proved its value, not only for scouting purposes 
 but as a weapon against the submarine. As 
 has been said, the first of our armed forces to 
 land in France were naval aviators. Since that 
 time this branch of the service has been greatly 
 augmented. The flying sections of the regular 
 navy, Marine and Reserve Corps now number 
 more than 30,000 men, including flying officers, 
 mechanics, and others. One great plant for 
 the construction of hydroairplanes has been 
 built, and it is turning out machines rapidly. 
 
 The foregoing facts give some idea of the vast 
 work entailed on the Navy Department by the 
 war. That the great increase in fighting ships.
 
 NAVAL PREPARATION 119 
 
 in personnel and supplies has been secured so 
 rapidly and smoothly speaks well for the offi- 
 cers who have had charge of the task. First of 
 these is Admiral William S. Benson, Chief of 
 Naval Operations. He is responsible for the 
 operation of the fleet and for its preparation for 
 battle; he has to co-ordinate every phase of 
 naval work so as to secure the greatest effective- 
 ness against the enemy. We have legally no 
 general staff in the navy. The Chief of Opera- 
 tions and the heads of the various bureaus, 
 meeting with the secretary, constitute a war 
 council, which can act quickly on any important 
 question that arises. The country has been 
 fortunate to have, in these trying times, able 
 men at the head of these important naval bu- 
 reaus. They had a magnificent machine ready 
 for war, and steadily they have increased its 
 power and efficiency. The one thought of these 
 men, long trained in the high traditions of the 
 navy, is the good of the service, and the good of 
 the service is the good of the country.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 
 
 OUR allies were hard pressed when we 
 joined them in the war on Germany. 
 The collapse of Russia had freed great German 
 armies for service in the west instead of the 
 east. The unrestricted submarine warfare was 
 in the heyday of its success, and the steadily 
 declining merchant tonnage was threatening 
 disaster to Great Britain. Our own ship- 
 building programme was being delayed, and 
 month after month showed more vessels lost 
 than built. Two things had to be done at 
 once: the submarine had to be met in its own 
 haunts, and fighting men sent to the front with 
 all speed and in all possible numbers. 
 
 The most troublesome weapon which America 
 had to combat, the cause, in fact, of our en- 
 trance into the war, was an American device. 
 As a newspaper man, the writer watched with 
 interest the early development of the subma- 
 rine. In the fall of 1897, with the assistance 
 
 120
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 121 
 
 of John Holland, he wrote in the New York 
 Evening Sun a page giving an account of the 
 then known experiments in underwater naviga- 
 tion, and including prophecies of some naval 
 men of vision as to its future development. 
 Since then volumes have been written on the 
 subject. If he remembers correctly, the first 
 known experiment with a submarine was made 
 in a Spanish harbor some two hundred years 
 ago, and it ended disastrously for the inventor. 
 In our Revolution, Bushnell, an American in- 
 ventor, contrived a hand-propelled underwater 
 boat, which navigated from Tarrytown to Fort 
 George, Staten Island, and there attempted, 
 unsuccessfully, to blow up a British war-ship 
 with a crude bomb. A keg of powder was car- 
 ried in the top of the submarine, and it was 
 purposed to attach this to the hull of the war- 
 ship by means of a screw, cast loose, and let 
 a timed clock explode the bomb. The war- 
 ship's hull so resisted the turn of the screw that 
 the operator had to abandon the enterprise, 
 but he got safely home. Robert Fulton de- 
 vised a submarine of much the same type, and 
 offered it to Napoleon for service against the
 
 122 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 fleets of England. In the Civil War, a sub- 
 marine of considerable size which had been 
 devised by a Confederate officer went down 
 with all on board, in Charleston harbor, while 
 attempting to attack a Federal cruiser. All 
 these boats submerged by taking on water-bal- 
 last, and the great problem of the inventors 
 was to find means of propulsion. Holland, in 
 his experiments with the boats which he built 
 in the '80's, had a small gas-engine, and this 
 used up the air so rapidly that he could not 
 stay submerged for any time. He devised a 
 new method of submerging by means of hori- 
 zontal rudders, and worked out devices to make 
 for safety and accuracy in navigation. The de- 
 velopment of the storage-battery as a means of 
 storing electric energy solved the difficulty of 
 power. In 1892 he secured an order from the 
 Navy Department to build a submarine tor- 
 pedo-boat, the Plunger. It was to travel on 
 the surf ace by steam and under water by elec- 
 tric power. This craft was begun but never 
 finished. About this time a French inventor 
 was working on a submarine with success. 
 With the help of private enterprise Holland,
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 
 
 in the fall of 1897, laid the keel of another 
 submarine, called the Holland, at Nixon's ship- 
 yard at Elizabethport, N. J. It was launched 
 in March of the next year, and the Evening 
 Sun of that date published a page account 
 of the vessel, but the event was regarded 
 as of so little importance as to be almost dis- 
 regarded by the other papers. Not many 
 weeks later the tiny vessel was navigating 
 under the waters of New York harbor, her 
 performances being watched with wondering 
 eyes by naval men. But the Navy Depart- 
 ment did not take kindly to the submarine. 
 The craft was too revolutionary, the battle- 
 ship was the pet of the construction depart- 
 ment, and it gave little encouragement to Hol- 
 land or to the other men who now set about 
 perfecting this manner of craft. A few boats 
 were ordered, but for years we lagged behind 
 other nations in the development of the type 
 Great Britain, Germany, and France were less 
 slow in seizing on the new naval weapon, and 
 how Germany has used it the world knows te 
 its sorrow. 
 
 The fleets of Great Britain drove the German
 
 124 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 Navy from the sea almost the day war was de- 
 clared. Only in her submarines had Germany 
 an effective naval weapon, and these proved 
 almost powerless to accomplish anything against 
 the vigilant British men-of-war. To the aston- 
 ishment of civilized peoples, they were turned 
 against helpless merchantmen, and began their 
 career of murder. An unarmed ship was at 
 their mercy. From an armed ship they could 
 always seek safety in the depths. To destroy 
 the submarine became the perplexing problem 
 of the allied navies. Numerous methods were 
 followed, but it was found that the most effec- 
 tive was a careful patrol by armed vessels of 
 the infested sea areas. Many small, fast, armed 
 motor-boats were built, and for a while did good 
 work, but the ever-increasing size of the pirate 
 craft and their heavier armament soon made 
 them more than a match for the lightly armed 
 chaser. Now the main reliance is placed on 
 fast destroyers and hydroairplanes. 
 
 Our Navy Department early realized the 
 danger of the submarine, and long before we 
 entered the war it was devising means to meet 
 it, should the necessity arise. An important
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 125 
 
 step in the work of preparedness was the forma- 
 tion of the Naval Consulting Board, a body of 
 men skilled in every branch of science, who 
 placed their services at the government's dis- 
 posal. It was formed in 1915, with Thomas 
 A. Edison at its head, an I has been working 
 ever since at the problems of offense and defense 
 in naval warfare. Naturally, a flood of sugges- 
 tions for dealing with the submarines has been 
 submitted to it, and the great part of them 
 have not proved of value. Since we went to 
 war the National Research Council, another 
 scientific body connected with the Council of 
 National Defense, has been working over tL? 
 same problem. The results of the labors of these 
 two bodies have not been made public, but it 
 is known that they, in conjunction with similar 
 bodies in the service of our allies, have perfected 
 some very effective devices for locating and 
 destroying the submarine. One of them, the 
 depth-bomb, which dropped from a vessel or hy- 
 droairplane explodes at a given depth, destroy- 
 ing any craft within a considerable area, has 
 proved the destruction of many of the pirates. 
 The first duty of the navy when war was
 
 126 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 declared was to attack the submarine, and it 
 did so with great promptness. In less than a 
 month our first flotilla of destroyers had ar- 
 rived on the other side of the Atlantic and was 
 engaged in active operations against the Ger- 
 mans. The patrol of this side of the sea was 
 taken over by our vessels, releasing for service 
 in the more infested waters a number of our 
 allies' ships. The first flotilla was followed by 
 other squadrons, and to-day thousands of our 
 seamen are working with their fellows of Eng- 
 land and France making the seas safe for 
 transport of all kinds. That the co-operation 
 or the allied navies has been attended with 
 marked success is evidenced by the gradual 
 but steady decline in the number of ships tor- 
 pedoed, and by the continuing increase in the 
 number of hostile U-boats sunk. The exact 
 figures as to the destruction of these U-boats 
 have never been made public, but we have the 
 assurance of the British Government that, be- 
 cause of the strengthened patrol and unproved 
 offensive methods, their destruction since the 
 beginning of the year 1918 has exceeded their 
 replacement.
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 127 
 
 The second great operation of our navy was 
 to get our military forces overseas. Germany 
 has belittled America as a foe because she did 
 not believe it possible for us to send a force of 
 any importance so great a distance, especially 
 through waters infested by her U-boats. She 
 learned her mistake when, in June, our gallant 
 marines at Chateau-Thierry helped to stop her 
 rush toward Paris. Had she doubts then, she 
 must have been convinced that we really had 
 an army at the Marne when thousands of our 
 soldiers threw themselves upon her armies and 
 helped to drive them from the Chateau-Thierry 
 salient. A million and a half men moved in 
 a year and a half to France, and the prospect 
 of the number doubled within a year must 
 make her wonder. 
 
 The forces we could send to France in the 
 early months were only small. Aside from our 
 Regular Army, we had not the men then ready. 
 But France was calling for even the moral 
 support of a small force. Ships for transports 
 were lacking. Almost at the moment war was 
 declared we had seized in our ports 118 interned 
 enemy vessels, but these had been so badly
 
 128 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 damaged by their crews as not to be ready for 
 service at that time. Such suitable vessels as 
 could be had from our small merchant marine 
 and from our allies were gathered together in 
 various harbors, and about the middle of June, 
 in one great convoy, they set forth over the 
 Atlantic carrying the first contingents of our 
 Regular Army and a vast quantity of supplies. 
 The Germans had been apprised of their com- 
 ing and a flotilla of submarines was lying in 
 wait. They attacked the convoy off the French 
 coast, but the vigilance of our destroyers and 
 the accuracy of their fire drove off the U-boats, 
 at least one of which, it is believed, was sent 
 to the bottom. On June 25 the entire fleet 
 arrived safely in a French harbor. Not a life 
 was lost in this expedition. Since that time 
 a steady movement of transports and supply- 
 ships has kept going and coming over the seas, 
 and thanks to the navy's vigilance the loss of 
 life as compared with the great number of 
 troops carried has been almost negligible. In a 
 year but two transports were lost. The Antilles 
 was sunk while returning from France. The 
 Tuscania, a British vessel carrying our soldiers,
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 129 
 
 was sent to the bottom and several hundred 
 lives were lost. The Finland was torpedoed, 
 but reached a British port under her own steam. 
 
 The German Government calculated that the 
 lack of vessels and the attacks of the submarines 
 would make a great movement of American 
 troops impossible. The navy has rendered the 
 submarine ineffective. The difficulty over the 
 ship shortage has been solved by the co-opera- 
 tion of the navy and the shipping board. At 
 the end of six months all the German vessels 
 which we seized had been repaired and were in 
 the government service. But to carry the 
 men has not been the only problem. With 
 them a steady supply of food and ordnance of 
 all kinds has to be kept moving and protected, 
 and the handling of so many vessels and the 
 vast quantities of stores necessitated practi- 
 cally the reconstruction of a French port and 
 a great increase in its docking facilities. 
 
 The movement of our troops abroad in 1917 
 was not great. Hardly more than 300,000 men 
 were sent over. Then in the late winter our 
 National Guard and National Army were ready 
 to start to the front. By this time the subma-
 
 130 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 rine had been curbed and many new vessels 
 were coming from our ways, though we had 
 still to rely largely on our allies, and particu- 
 larly on Great Britain, for transports. The 
 massing of heavy German armies in the west, 
 threatening a desperate attack on the allied 
 line, caused France and Great Britain to send 
 us an urgent appeal for all possible fighting 
 men, and the movement of troops in the spring 
 and summer was accelerated to a degree that a 
 year ago would have seemed incredible. In 
 the month of June, 276,370 soldiers were carried 
 over, and in July more than 300,000. To that 
 time the total loss of life in the .perilous move- 
 ment had been less than 300. In the meanwhile 
 the work of the allied navies against the sub- 
 marines was telling, as was shown by the 
 steadily decreasing loss of tonnage. The total 
 loss for June was 81,905 gross tons less than in 
 May. The sinkings in July were one-half those 
 of the same month last year. 
 
 The navy has not only had to protect the 
 transports, but in many cases it has had to 
 man them. The transport service is really in 
 charge of a division of the War Department,
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 131 
 
 which has branches in all our great ports, and 
 supervises the operation of the vessels. The 
 navy's main task is that of policing the seas, 
 but it has also to furnish armed guards to all 
 vessels that pass through the danger zone. 
 There has been difficulty in finding civilian 
 crews to man the great number of new mer- 
 chantmen sailing under our flag, and in such 
 cases the army and the shipping board have 
 had to call on the navy for assistance, and crews 
 have been supplied. For this work the Naval 
 Reserve force has proved of special value, as it 
 contains many men who have seen service in 
 the merchant marine. 
 
 In writing of the mobilization of our naval 
 forces for war, it is fitting thai mention should 
 be made of that gallant corps, our soldiers of 
 the sea, who have been acquitting themselves 
 so bravely on the soil of France. The motto 
 of the marine corps is Semper Fidelis. To the 
 popular mind it is "The First to Fight." In 
 every war in which America has engaged, the 
 marines have conducted themselves gallantly, 
 and never have they failed to live up to the 
 high traditions of their service. Under the
 
 132 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 old theory the marines were the police of the 
 ship, and as a consequence did not enjoy high 
 favor with the jackies. In battle they fought 
 with small arms and were of special value in 
 landing-parties. Before this war their service 
 was always in small units. To-day they are 
 fighting in divisions as a part of our army. 
 
 The history of the corps intertwines with 
 that of both army and navy. Marines fought 
 under John Paul Jones on the Ranger and the 
 Bon Homme Richard. In the war with Tripoli, 
 in 1803, they played a conspicuous part, and 
 they had a hand in the War of 1812, both on 
 sea and land. In the Mexican War a body of 
 marines were the first of our forces to enter the 
 city of Mexico. There is hardly a year in 
 American history when our marines have not 
 been on dangerous duty somewhere in the 
 world keeping order and upholding the honor 
 of the flag. They made the first landing in 
 Cuba in 1898, and fought their way to Pekin 
 with the allied troops in the Boxer campaign. 
 When the present war came the corps was 
 ready as always, trained to the minute and 
 equipped to the last button, and a brigade of
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 133 
 
 them formed part of our first forces to land in 
 France. 
 
 The strength of the corps has usually been 
 kept about one-fourth that of the navy per- 
 sonnel. On April 6, 1917, it numbered 13,692 
 officers and men, and the President was author- 
 ized to increase its war strength to 17,400, 
 which was rapidly done. Successive legisla- 
 tion, designed to make its growth keep pace 
 with that of our other forces, has raised its 
 numbers to nearly 75,000. All these have been 
 volunteers, and a finer lot of men would be hard 
 to find. The physical qualifications for the 
 service have always been very high, and even 
 under the necessity of obtaining thousands of 
 recruits these standards have been but little 
 relaxed. The romance of the service by sea 
 and land "from the shores of Tripoli to the 
 halls of Montezuma," has had a wide appeal 
 among the young men of the country. The 
 corps offers opportunities for rapid advance- 
 ment, and hundreds of highly educated men 
 have gone into its ranks with the purpose of 
 working their way up to commissions. The 
 needs of our growing navy in the past twenty
 
 134 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 years have made it necessary that all the 
 trained Annapolis graduates be put into the 
 line. For a time many of the marine corps 
 officers were appointed from civil life, but to- 
 day it secures them almost entirely from its 
 own ranks. It has become a great military 
 school in which every man is made to feel the 
 honor of the service and is taught the obligation 
 of upholding its splendid record. It has become 
 a body of fighting men in physique and train- 
 ing the equal of any in the world. 
 
 The rapid expansion of the corps in the past 
 year has been splendidly accomplished. Re- 
 cruits go to the great camps at Paris Island, 
 S. C., or Mare Island, Cal. Here they undergo 
 fourteen weeks of intensive training. Clean- 
 liness of person, implicit obedience, precision in 
 drill and accurate shooting are absolute require- 
 ments. The men who are chosen for overseas 
 duty are sent to complete their training at 
 Quantico, Va. This is one of the model war- 
 schools of the country. Here actual fighting 
 conditions have been simulated to a greater de- 
 gree than in any other of our cantonments. 
 The barracks are the acme of cleanliness and
 
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 03 '.3; 
 JS a 
 
 " *
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 135 
 
 healthful conditions. A training-ground hun- 
 dreds of acres in extent gives room for artil- 
 lery and rifle ranges, and a great trench system, 
 with wire entanglements and dugouts. From 
 these trenches in their training the men have 
 been sent out into No Man's Land behind a 
 real barrage of artillery -fire. Training under 
 such conditions is the nearest thing to actual 
 fighting that our men see on this side of the 
 water. 
 
 All of our navy camps are splendidly located 
 and managed. Their situation near large bodies 
 of water adds much to their health. The writer 
 has visited several of them and found them alike 
 in their standards of health and comfort. The 
 large station for the reserve at Pelham Bay 
 Park on Long Island Sound is an excellent ex- 
 ample of them. The writer was fortunate 
 enough to have a sailor friend there who guided 
 him from the main gate through all the work- 
 ing parts of this big school for seamen. Close 
 by the gate are the huts of the Y. M. C. A. and 
 the Knights of Columbus, where, it being noon, 
 scores of young sailors were found writing, 
 reading, and amusing themselves with music
 
 136 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 and games. To my guide's inquiry as to what 
 I wished to see first, the reply was, "Food," and 
 I was led to the great mess-hall. The kitchen 
 was spotless. We lined up before the affable 
 cooks and received a tin plate with a plentiful 
 helping of excellent beefsteak, carrots, pota- 
 toes, and green peas, a cup of coffee and a 
 plate of stewed peaches. These we consumed 
 at the long tables in the mess-hall with the 
 added luxury of the first white bread I had seen 
 in a year. The meal over, we began our tour, 
 going first to the bakery, where thousands of 
 loaves of that delicious white bread were being 
 made. Thence we went to the storerooms and 
 they would have been a model for any first- 
 class hotel. In the enlistment bureau we fol- 
 lowed the process that changes a civilian into a 
 seaman. In one room a score of young men 
 still in mufti were filling out their papers; in 
 the next another score were sitting in the clothes 
 they were born in beside the discarded apparel 
 of civil life; in the next a half dozen Apollo Bel- 
 videres were being pounded by surgeons and 
 jabbed with needles; in the last there were 
 more, scrambling into clothes again, but now
 
 OUR NAVY IN ACTION 137 
 
 the clothes allotted to them by Uncle Sam. 
 We emerged into the detention -camp. Here 
 the rookies stay three weeks in quarantine, 
 carefully wired off from the rest of the camp. 
 For the better control of any contagion their 
 barracks are divided so that only a small squad 
 is housed in one room. We passed back to the 
 main camp. Here each barrack is occupied by 
 one company. The buildings are light, airy, 
 and scrupulously clean. In them the new 
 sailors get their first taste of sea ways, for they 
 sleep in hammocks. In daytime the ham- 
 mocks are neatly rolled against the wall beside 
 the canvas bag that contains the owner's equip- 
 ment; at night they stretched between iron-pipe 
 jack-stays, and if the men feel none of the 
 motion of a ship they have at least a touch of 
 the fo'c'sle. 
 
 That afternoon the bay was alive with boats, 
 the crews pulling at their oars under the com- 
 mands of vociferous petty officers. In the 
 school barracks scores of young aspirants for 
 commissions were poring over text-books and 
 listening to lectures on the technic of the 
 sailor's profession. On the parade-ground,
 
 138 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 under the eyes of the commandant, six compa- 
 nies from the detention-camp were drilling ear- 
 nestly in a competition which promised a day's 
 leave from camp for the winning company. 
 On the water, in the schools, on the drill -grounds 
 thousands of white-clad young men were work- 
 ing hard to fit themselves for their country's 
 service. They were men from the colleges and 
 schools, from the factories, shops, and farms. 
 Many of them, perhaps, had little knowledge 
 of the underlying causes of the war. To all 
 of them the vital thing was that their country 
 was in arms against a race of outlaws and will- 
 ingly and cheerfully they were hardening them- 
 selves to do their bit in the whipping of the 
 Hun.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 
 
 THE fourth great problem which the gov- 
 ernment has had to solve in its conduct 
 of the war has been that of food. It is an ex- 
 aggeration to say that food will win the war. 
 Food is but one of the weapons with which 
 the victory will be won. The battle to pro- 
 duce and conserve food is one in which the 
 humblest of us has been able to have a part. 
 It was the campaign for increased production 
 and conservation that first brought to the mass 
 of the people a realization that we were in a 
 war the winning of which demanded personal 
 sacrifice of every American. Before an Amer- 
 ican soldier had set foot in France we were 
 ploughing new fields and taking stock of our 
 larder. 
 
 To reach an understanding of the pressing 
 food problem of txxlay one has to consider the 
 situation of the world as to food-supplies before 
 1914. In the decade before that Europe had 
 
 189
 
 140 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 been unable to increase the production of the 
 staple food, wheat. Vast as were our resources, 
 America, in the same period, had not increased 
 her power of export to any great degree. 
 Europe had to be fed largely from outside, and 
 for a great part of her wheat depended on the 
 plains of Asia, South America, and Australia. 
 When the war came our present allies were shut 
 off from the Russian and Rumanian fields. It 
 is estimated that in the year 1917 there were 
 in Russia, China, India, and Argentine about 
 four hundred million bushels of exportable 
 wheat, but war and lack of transport made it 
 impossible to get it to our allies. Australia to- 
 day has in her elevators an exportable surplus 
 of nearly two hundred million bushels of wheat, 
 but while a ship is making one round trip be- 
 tween Sydney and Europe she can make three 
 to America. The free movement of crops has 
 long been vital to the life of Europe, and when 
 this movement was hampered by the war, fam- 
 ine was threatened. Making the danger of 
 starvation greater was the fact that millions of 
 men were withdrawn from the farms to serve 
 in the armies and munition-factories. It is
 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 
 
 141 
 
 estimated that in the countries of our allies the 
 destructive activities of war have withdrawn 
 nearly forty million men from the productive 
 activities of peace. Before the war France had 
 to import 30 per cent of her food. In 1917 her 
 cereal crop was 40 per cent below the pre-war 
 average. Great Britain in peace-times imports 
 50 per cent of her food. To-day she is getting 
 nearly 44 per cent of her food-supply from 
 America. 
 
 The following table gives clear proof of Great 
 Britain's dependence on the sea for life. It 
 gives the average per cent of certain foodstuffs 
 home produced and imported during the years 
 from 1906 to 1913. 
 
 
 HOME PRODUCED 
 
 IMPORTED 
 
 Meat 
 
 59 
 
 41 
 
 Wheat 
 
 22 
 
 88 
 
 Barley 
 
 60 
 
 40 
 
 Oats 
 
 80 
 
 20 
 
 Potatoes 
 
 97 
 
 3 
 
 Butter 
 
 35 
 
 65 
 
 Cheese 
 
 25 
 
 75 
 
 Apples . . 
 
 58 
 
 42 
 
 Corn 
 
 practically none 
 
 
 Fish 
 
 practically all 
 
 
 

 
 142 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 When, in 1914, the great sources of supply in 
 Asia were cut off, and the long haul from India, 
 Australia, and South America made it unfeasi- 
 ble to secure much food there, our allies and the 
 neutral countries turned for help to the nearest 
 markets, our own. The result of this demand, 
 even before our entrance into the war, was a 
 rapid rise in the price of all foodstuffs. Ac- 
 cording to government reports in the five years 
 previous to June, 1918, there was an average 
 increase of 66 per cent of the price of all food- 
 stuffs in America. Had we not had recourse to 
 governmental regulation, that increase would 
 have been much greater. Wheat which in 1914 
 was selling around $1 a bushel, in the spring of 
 1917 rose from $1.44 to $3, and the prices of 
 all other basic foodstuffs were sky-rocketing in 
 the same way. 
 
 Our entrance into the war found our allies in 
 great distress as to food-supplies. It found their 
 own food production steadily declining, and the 
 submarine, then in the heyday of its successes, 
 smking many tons of precious cargoes vital to 
 their life. We promised them three things, 
 men, ships, and food. Germany was boasting
 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 143 
 
 that within six months she would by starvation 
 bring Great Britain to her knees. She has not 
 starved Great Britain and she will not because 
 Americans know that the life of Great Britain 
 and France is vital to America's safety; they 
 know that if our allies fail to get food we shall 
 be left to fight alone and that the war will 
 come to our coast. In the field and in the 
 kitchen they have been carrying on a work that 
 is a part of the great offensive to crush the 
 enemy. The moment they entered the war 
 they were told by the government what had to 
 be done, and they have done it willingly. The 
 food campaign has been one of universal service. 
 In pre-war days Great Britain, France, Italy, 
 and Belgium imported yearly some 750,000,000 
 bushels of grain and vast quantities of animal 
 and fat products. In the three years before the 
 war the United States exported a yearly aver- 
 age of 120,000,000 bushels of grain (wheat, 
 corn, oats, barley, and rye) and 500,000,000 
 pounds of animal products and fats. In the 
 year 1917 the Allies' production of cereals had 
 diminished by 525,000,000 bushels, and herds 
 of cattle, sheep, and swine by 30,000,000 ani-
 
 144 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 mals. The continuation of the war promised 
 an ever-increasing shortage in their supplies. 
 In the fiscal year 1916-17 we exported 400,000,- 
 000 bushels of grain and 1,500,000,000 pounds 
 of animal products and fats. To do this we 
 had reduced our food stocks to the lowest fig- 
 ure, relatively, in our history, and we were kill- 
 ing animals faster than we were raising them. 
 When we joined the Allies in the fight for free- 
 dom it ceased to be merely a matter of business 
 to send them food. It became a deep obliga- 
 tion and a work of patriotism. For the year 
 1917-18 our allies called for 525,000,000 bushels 
 of wheat, their basic ration, and our normal ex- 
 port of wheat had been only 80,000,000 bushels; 
 Canada's normal export was 100,000,000 bushels 
 and it was possible for them to get but little 
 from the more distant markets. This situation 
 left a wide gap to be filled, and the same diffi- 
 culty presented itself, not with wheat alone 
 but with every other foodstuff. The problem 
 could never have been solved without govern- 
 ment supervision and nation-wide co-operation. 
 Fortunately the government had ready for 
 service Herbert C. Hoover, who, from the out-
 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 145 
 
 break of the war in Europe until our own en- 
 trance into it, had been working as the head of 
 the American Commission for Relief in Bel- 
 gium. In working out the difficult problem of 
 rationing millions of starving Belgians Mr. 
 Hoover became an expert on food-supply and 
 food values. When he went to Washington in 
 the spring of 1917 he had for months no author- 
 ity for effective action. He could only work 
 informally with the sanction of President Wil- 
 son. He organized an office force, composed 
 largely of volunteers, and this force was the 
 nucleus of what subsequently became under the 
 law the United States Food Administration. 
 The first work done was largely that of propa- 
 ganda. A campaign of education was carried 
 on. The pressing needs of our allies were ex- 
 plained to the people of the country and on 
 them was impressed the absolute necessity of 
 raising more food and of using and wasting less. 
 On August 10 the so-called Lever bill became a 
 law, and under its broad powers the President 
 was enabled to organize the Food and the Fuel 
 Admin istrations . 
 
 As essential to the national security the bill is
 
 146 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 designed "to assure an adequate supply and an 
 equal distribution and to facilitate the move- 
 ment of foods, feeds, fuel, including fuel-oil and 
 natural gas" and of fertilizers and of the ma- 
 chinery and implements used in the production 
 of these necessities. 
 
 At his discretion the President is empowered 
 to license all persons engaged in producing, 
 storing, or dealing in these necessities, except 
 that farmers and gardeners, and retailers doing 
 less than $100,000 gross business yearly are 
 exempted. He can require the licensees to 
 make reports for inspection by his agents. If it 
 is found that "the storage charge, commission 
 profit, or practice of any licensee is unjust or 
 unreasonable, or discriminatory and unfair or 
 wasteful," and such practice is not discontinued, 
 the license may be revoked. Without a license 
 the business cannot be continued, under a pen- 
 alty of fine, or imprisonment, or both. 
 
 Hoarding is prohibited, and is made punish- 
 able by a fine, or imprisonment, or both. 
 
 The use of any foodstuffs, grains or fruits, in 
 the distillation of spirits for beverages is for- 
 bidden.
 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 147 
 
 The President is authorized when necessary 
 to the public welfare to requisition storage fa- 
 cilities, and he can take over and operate any 
 factory, packing-house, mine, and pipe-line or 
 other plant used hi the production or moving 
 of the necessities named, but hi all such cases 
 he must make just compensation to the owners. 
 
 He can purchase and provide storage facilities 
 for, and sell at reasonable prices for cash, wheat, 
 flour, meal, beans, and potatoes. In such cases 
 he must pay for these commodities the mini- 
 mum price, if such minimum price has been 
 fixed under the later provisions of the law. 
 
 If he finds that an emergency exists requir- 
 ing the stimulation of the production of wheat, 
 he can give public notice of what is a reasonable 
 price for wheat hi order to insure the producers 
 a reasonable profit. Thereupon the govern- 
 ment guarantees every producer of wheat this 
 reasonable price. The law provided that until 
 May 1, 1919, the price should not be fixed at 
 less than $2 per bushel. 
 
 The President was further authorized to fix 
 the price of coal and coke, "wherever and when- 
 ever sold, either by producer or dealer."
 
 148 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 An appropriation of $150,000,000 was made 
 to carry out the provisions of the act. This 
 sum constitutes a revolving fund to be used in 
 the work of purchasing and selling the com- 
 modities named. 
 
 Immediately on signing the bill the President 
 appointed Mr. Hoover United States Food Ad- 
 ministrator, and Mr. Hoover and his associates 
 organized the United States Food Administra- 
 tion. 
 
 The problem facing the Food Administration 
 was a difficult one. Production had to be in- 
 creased and consumption reduced with the 
 least possible disarrangement of the ordinary 
 processes of trade. Opinions as to the best 
 methods varied. High and rising wages with 
 wide-spread employment promised increased 
 consumption. On the other hand, if increased 
 production were obtained by allowing the prices 
 of foodstuffs to rise unrestrained, it w r as con- 
 tended that a great burden would be thrown 
 on those least able to pay. It was decided that 
 prices must be regulated and production stimu- 
 lated and waste eliminated by an appeal to the 
 patriotism of the people. The Food Adminis
 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 149 
 
 tration ?oon became a great business organiza- 
 tion, dealing in basic foodstuffs and regulating 
 trade and at the same time conducting a patri- 
 otic propaganda. 
 
 The President on August 14 authorized the 
 formation of the Food Administration Grain 
 Corporation, with a capital stock of $50,000,000, 
 all held by the government, with a purpose to 
 buy and sell wheat. This stock has since been 
 trebled. A few days later the Grain Corpora- 
 tion opened agencies at all the principal primary 
 grain -markets and began its work of dealing in 
 wheat, at a price of $2.20 per bushel, with cer- 
 tain differentials for locality and grade, fixed 
 by the President. There is nothing in the law 
 that prevents any one from buying or selling 
 at another price, but the government's action 
 acted automatically to hold the price at the 
 fixed figure. It is manifest that nobody would 
 sell wheat at a less figure than the government 
 was ready to give for it, and that no one would 
 buy it at a greater figure than the government 
 would pay for it, as the government was always 
 ready to undersell him afterward. Through 
 its system of licenses, the government has been
 
 150 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 able to supervise the dealings in grain, and has 
 wiped out much of the cost of the movement 
 from producer to consumer by reducing the 
 profits of the middlemen. After its purchase of 
 wheat it sells to the miller with only a very 
 small charge for overhead expenses of opera- 
 tion. It has eliminated speculation and extor- 
 tionate charges by middlemen. It has another 
 lever of control by its purchases of all foodstuffs 
 for our allies abroad and the supervision of the 
 exports to neutrals. The sales to the Allies are 
 made at price-levels prevailing here, so that the 
 producer has no better market than that at 
 home. To prevent the home wheat-market 
 from being undersold by imports, the President 
 has power to raise the tariff to a protective point. 
 The result of the first year of the operations 
 in wheat has been that the consumer has been 
 paying less per barrel for flour, while the 
 farmer's profit has increased more than 60 cents 
 a bushel for wheat, which is equivalent to about 
 $3 for a barrel of flour. In May, 1917, flour 
 was selling at Minneapolis for $16.75 a barrel. 
 A year later the price had gone down to $9.80. 
 In peace-tunes, of the price of a pound of bread
 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 151 
 
 the fanner took an average of less than 30 per 
 cent, the miller about 7 per cent and the baker 
 about two-thirds. In the present year the 
 farmer receives approximately 45 per cent, the 
 baker 49 per cent, and the miller 6 per cent. 
 By such processes has the planting of wheat 
 been stimulated and the price of flour, which 
 threatened to go over $20 a barrel, been kept 
 down. 
 
 To regulate the prices of all staple commodi- 
 ties the Food Administration exercised its right 
 to call on all wholesale dealers to take out li- 
 censes. It further asked their co-operation in 
 carrying out the provisions of the law and in 
 the great majority of cases this has been given 
 heartily. An arrangement with the sugar-re- 
 finers was early effected, by which they agreed 
 to refine on a net profit margin, between the 
 cost of their material and the selling price of 
 their product, of 1.3 cents per pound, after de- 
 ducting trade discounts. By this agreement 
 the price of sugar was prevented from sky-rock- 
 eting to $50 a barrel. Like results were ob- 
 tained from other agreements between the ad- 
 ministration and the dealers. By its power to
 
 152 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 call for frequent reports from the businesses 
 involved, the administration has been able to 
 scrutinize the charges and profits made. Where 
 it has found these unfair or objectionable prac- 
 tices indulged in, it has issued orders for imme- 
 diate correction. When its orders have not 
 been carried out, it has revoked the licenses of 
 the offenders. 
 
 But while the administration has wide powers 
 of control over the large dealers, its powers of 
 regulation of the small retailers are more lim- 
 ited. In Germany the final selling price of an 
 article is fixed by law, but the German Govern- 
 ment, with its autocratic power, can compel pro- 
 duction, no matter how dissatisfied the producer 
 may be with his return. Under our system of 
 government there was no power to compel a 
 farmer to raise crops. It was necessary to in- 
 sure him a just return for his labor, and then, 
 to keep down the ultimate price of his products, 
 the system established aimed to eliminate the 
 middlemen's profits as far as possible and to 
 reduce waste. The Food Administration has no 
 power to license retail dealers doing a gross 
 business of less than $100,000 a year and 9
 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 153 
 
 per cent of those in the country are in this class. 
 A wide campaign was carried on to secure the 
 co-operation of these unlicensed dealers. With 
 the help of travelling salesmen who were made 
 special representatives of the government, more 
 than 250,000 of the 350,000 small retail grocers 
 of the country enrolled as members of the Food 
 Administration. They signed pledges to give 
 their customers the benefit of fair and moderate 
 prices, which they could do because the govern- 
 ment controlled the prices until the products 
 reached their stores. Every retailer who joins 
 the Food Administration receives a certificate, 
 which every customer in his store can see. Any 
 retailer who does not live up to the pledge or 
 who charges unfair prices is likely to receive no 
 more supplies from the wholesale dealers, for 
 they are forbidden to sell to violators of the 
 regulations. 
 
 By all these means the prices of staple food- 
 stuffs have been held within reasonable bounds, 
 but coincident with this work it was necessary 
 to carry on a campaign of conservation. The 
 Food Administration became a great department 
 of our government, spreading its power into the
 
 154 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 remotest sections of our country. In every 
 state there is a federal food administrator, 
 and under him in nearly every county a sub- 
 ordinate food official. These men are charged 
 with the enforcement of the law, and have, be- 
 sides, to conduct a campaign of education, to 
 encourage production and conservation. The 
 work has been carried on largely by patriotic 
 volunteers. The food-saving movement quickly 
 assumed wide proportions. The co-operation of 
 the people was asked in limiting their consump- 
 tion and using those foods of which we have 
 abundance in place of those of which there was 
 a scarcity, in order that we might send every- 
 thing needed to our soldiers overseas, and to 
 those who were fighting with us. The people 
 responded willingly. Within a year after the 
 administration began its work, more than 
 12,000,000 persons signed cards pledging them- 
 selves to adhere to the rules laid down in the 
 conservation programme, as issued from tune 
 to time by the government. These pledges 
 called for certain wheatless and meatless days 
 every week, and for an endeavor to prevent 
 waste and to save sugar and fats.
 
 THE FOOD CAMPAIGN 155 
 
 To carry out successfully so great a campaign 
 of education has required an army of workers. 
 Through the churches, women's clubs, fraternal 
 lodges, and commercial travellers' organizations 
 the administration obtained thousands of vol- 
 unteers. Sixty thousand commercial travellers 
 have enrolled as special representatives, and 
 their reports on conditions as they find them 
 on their trips about the country have proved 
 exceedingly valuable. Through the efforts of 
 these various organizations fully half the people 
 of the United States have been reached per- 
 sonally and appealed to to do their bit in raising 
 food and in saving it. An important element 
 in the saving of food has been the spreading of 
 the knowledge of food values, the teaching of 
 economical methods of cooking, and the use of 
 substitutes having equal nutritious value. Along 
 these lines the Home Economics Division works. 
 This division has its representatives in every 
 State, and it works in close co-operation with 
 the county representatives of the Women's 
 Council of National Defense, through whom it 
 keeps in touch with hundreds of thousands of 
 housekeepers. Under its direction courses in
 
 156 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 household economics have been established in 
 485 colleges and 236 normal schools, from which 
 women trained in food uses and values have 
 gone into field-work to spread their knowledge. 
 Through the work of the Food Administration, 
 with the co-operation of the vast majority of the 
 people, the battle for food is being won.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 HELPING OUR ALLIES 
 
 WHEAT is the basic ration of all civilized 
 nations. It forms 39 per cent of the 
 total diet in the United States, 67 per cent of 
 the diet of France, and of Italy's a still larger 
 percentage. America uses in its ration a great 
 deal of corn, but our allies are not accustomed 
 to this food. They have but few mills where it 
 can be ground and the meal deteriorates so 
 rapidly as to make it not good for export. In 
 1917, as we have seen, our allies were calling on 
 us and on Canada for more than twice the 
 amount of wheat that was in normal times 
 available for export. They had reduced their 
 pre-war consumption of wheat more than 25 
 per cent; of sugar, fats, and oils 50 per cent. 
 Our own 1917 wheat-crop was 150,000,000 
 bushels short of the average of 800,000,000, 
 and by March, 1918, there was left in the coun- 
 try only enough for the normal needs of the 
 people. The entire surplus had been exported. 
 
 157
 
 158 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 To ship more abroad we had to save. The 
 President, on January 18, issued a proclamation 
 urging greater efforts to save food, especially 
 wheat. The Food Administration acted to cur- 
 tail the use of wheat. It ordered millers to 
 make more flour from a given weight of grain 
 by using 4 per cent more of the berry than had 
 been the custom. It issued orders limiting 
 wholesale dealers in cereals to 70 per cent of 
 the flour purchases in the corresponding periods 
 of 1917, and compelled them to sell wheat-flour 
 only to retailers who bought a corresponding 
 amount of other cereals. The retailers were 
 required to sell flour only to customers who 
 bought equal quantities of other cereals. All 
 manufacturers of macaroni, crackers, breakfast 
 foods, pastries, etc., were likewise limited to 70 
 per cent of their purchases of flour in 1917. 
 For the bakers a standard loaf was adopted with 
 regulations as to the quantities of sugar and 
 shortening, and they were required to mix with 
 their wheat-flour 20 per cent of the flour of 
 other grains. Through the bakeries alone a 
 great saving of wheat was effected, since 40 
 per cent of the country's stock passes through
 
 HELPING OUR ALLIES 159 
 
 them to the consumer. Further saving was 
 made by the action of more than 200,000 pro- 
 prietors of hotels and restaurants pledging 
 themselves to restrict the use of wheat in any 
 form until the new harvest was in, and by 
 the action of the householders in substituting 
 breads made of corn-meal and other cereals for 
 wheat bread. These measures were effective. 
 We saved enough wheat to tide over our allies 
 until the harvest of the present year was com- 
 ing in. On July 36 the Food Administration 
 announced that the crisis was passed and re- 
 leased the hotel and restaurant men from their 
 pledges. 
 
 It was impossible for the United States and 
 Canada to send to Europe all the wheat needed 
 there, but with small imports from other coun- 
 tries and by careful regulation and the substi- 
 tution of other foods, our allies were able to 
 pass safely a crisis that threatened serious con- 
 sequences. To accomplish this we had to re- 
 duce our own consumption of wheat from 
 42,000,000 bushels a month to 30,000,000 bush- 
 els. Answering the appeal of the government, 
 the farmers this year planted a greatly enlarged
 
 160 HOW WE WEN1 TO WAR 
 
 acreage. With a large crop, with an improve- 
 ment in our railroad traffic, and an increased 
 merchant marine, it is expected that the prob- 
 lem of getting the needed bread to our allies 
 will not in the future be so difficult as in the 
 past, if the wise regulation continues and the 
 people carry on their sacrifice, which, after all, 
 has proved but a little hardship. 
 
 Americans have not had to save wheat alone. 
 Wheat has been the most vital element in the 
 battle for food, but there have been other prob- 
 lems of almost equal importance. The herds of 
 our allies had been greatly reduced, and the 
 dislocation of shipping rendered it difficult for 
 them to get their meat products in the custom- 
 ary quantities from Argentine. It was not 
 feasible to carry sugar from the distant markets, 
 and to make good these deficits of meat and 
 sugar they had to look to us. Even before we 
 entered the war we had been slaughtering our 
 animals to a dangerous degree. To maintain a 
 continuous supply of meat products for our- 
 selves and our allies, it was necessary that the 
 killing of animals be curtailed as far as possible 
 and a steady supply of meat products secured
 
 HELPING OUR ALLIES 161 
 
 by a reduction of the individual's consumption. 
 This result was obtained through the agency of 
 the Food Administration's rules and propa- 
 ganda. Meatless days as well as wheatless 
 days were instituted, and as a result without 
 any appreciable diminution of our herds we 
 have been able to send abroad vast quantities 
 of meat products. By a gradual reduction of 
 the sugar ration per person per month we have 
 been able to spare considerable stocks for our 
 friends overseas. 
 
 The report of the Food Administration for 
 the fiscal year, July 1, 1917-18, shows clearly 
 what America has accomplished in the matter 
 of helping to feed our allies. 
 
 Of meats and fats, including dairy products 
 and vegetable oils, we sent to them and to our 
 expeditionary armies 3,011,100,000 pounds, an 
 increase of 844,600,000 pounds over the pre- 
 vious year. 
 
 Of cereals and cereal products, reduced to the 
 terms of cereal bushels, we sent them 340,803,000 
 bushels, an increase of 80,900,000 bushels. Of 
 these cereals our shipments of wheat were 
 131,000,000 bushels and of rye 13,900,000 bush-
 
 162 
 
 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 els. In addition 10,000,000 bushels of 1917 
 wheat were then on their way to allied ports. 
 The total shipment of wheat of the 1917 har- 
 vest was therefore about 141,000,000 bushels. 
 In 1916-17, when we had a larger crop, we sent 
 abroad 135,100,000 bushels of wheat and 2,300,- 
 000 bushels of rye. 
 
 In addition, we sent to neutral countries, de- 
 pendent on us for food, 10,000,000 bushels of 
 prime foodstuffs, wheat and rye. 
 
 The following table shows in what degree 
 our efforts have helped to feed our allies. 
 
 COUNTRY 
 
 POFOTATION 
 
 APPROXIMATE 
 NUMBER MEN 
 SUPPORTED BY 
 PRESENT UNITED 
 STATES EXPORTS 
 
 PER CENT OF 
 TOTAL POPULATION 
 SUPPORTED BY 
 PRESENT UNITED 
 STATES EXPORTS 
 
 United Kingdom . . 
 France 
 
 46,000,000 
 39,000,000 
 
 20,000,000 
 5,500,000 
 
 43.5 
 14.1 
 
 Italy 
 
 36,000,000 
 
 4,000,000 
 
 11.1 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mr. Hoover has calculated that, in spite of 
 the fact that the nutritional production of the 
 country for the past fiscal year was more than 
 7 per cent lower than the average of the three 
 previous years, we exported a nutritional sur- 
 plus at least 7 per cent greater, showing how
 
 HELPING OUR ALLIES 16 
 
 the consumption and waste of food was reduced 
 by the efforts of our people. 
 
 Besides helping to fill the larders of our 
 allies, America has been feeding the populations 
 of Belgium and the parts of northern France 
 occupied by the Germans. This means that 
 nine millions of people have been depending on 
 us for life. When the German armies had over- 
 run Belgium and northern France, ruthlessly 
 destroying all the sources of life for these unfor- 
 tunate people, an appeal was made to America, 
 then neutral, for help. The Commission for 
 Relief in Belgium was formed. It was at first 
 operated as a private charity. From the fall of 
 1914 to the day of our entering the war it had 
 sent to Belgium 2,562,000 tons of clothing and 
 foodstuffs. To carry this it chartered a fleet 
 of some forty steamships. German kultur has 
 not spared these vessels on their errands of 
 mercy. Eighteen of them have been destroyed 
 by submarines or mines. But their work has 
 continued and to-day, flying the flag of the 
 commission, they travel over certain fixed routes 
 under guarantee of the German Government 
 that they will not be molested.
 
 164 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 When we went to war all the American repre- 
 sentatives of the commission had to leave Bel- 
 gium, but the work has since been carried on 
 through different agencies. The commission has 
 established agencies in Washington, New York, 
 London, and Rotterdam, where all purchases 
 are handled. The food is shipped through Hol- 
 land and is controlled by representatives of the 
 commission up to the Belgium border. Here 
 the Belgium agent of the commission receives it 
 and turns it over to the Belgium National Com- 
 mittee which supervises its distribution. Under 
 a plan formulated before the withdrawal of the 
 American delegates on May 1, 1917, the Spanish 
 and Dutch delegates took charge of the work 
 of guarding the supplies and seeing that they 
 reached the suffering people. Any infractions 
 of the guarantees given by the German Govern- 
 ment not to confiscate any domestic or imported 
 foodstuffs, they report to their ministers, who 
 endeavor to have the agreement enforced. 
 
 To support this great work, the United States 
 Government advances to the commission 
 $9,000,000 monthly for Belgium and $6,000,000 
 for northern France. These sums are simply
 
 HELPING OUR ALLIES 165 
 
 loans to the respective governments. The Euro- 
 pean expenditures are met from the French and 
 British treasuries, and bring the total up to 
 about $20,000,000 monthly. This sum barely 
 suffices to send to the needy people a life-sus- 
 taining ration and much-needed clothing. The 
 basic ration provided is made up of wheat, corn, 
 rice, dried peas and beans, bacon, lard, and con- 
 densed milk, and an effort is made to see that 
 120,000 tons of these foods monthly cross the 
 Dutch border to the stricken regions. Sup- 
 plementary meals and medicines and supplies 
 for children, the aged and sick, have to be 
 supplied by private funds given to the com- 
 mission. 
 
 The food -conservation campaign has given a 
 great lesson to Americans. Feeding Belgium 
 is not rightly charity. It is rather helping to 
 pay a part of the great debt owing to the gallant 
 little nation which kept faith with the world 
 and delayed the first onrush of the Huns. To 
 the men who are offering their lives for us on 
 the battle-fields of France we owe another great 
 debt. To eat less and save more is an unheroic 
 way of helping the country to fight its battles,
 
 166 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 but it has been brought home to all Americans 
 that the field and the kitchen are supporting 
 lines of our armies and our allies, and they must 
 not fail them.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE WAR BUDGET 
 
 A FEW years ago it would have seemed in- 
 * ^ credible that America would ever be called 
 on to spend in one war more money than the 
 government had expended in its history of one 
 hundred and forty years. Yet such has come 
 to be a fact. In this battle for liberty, as we 
 have had to mobilize our fighting manhood, our 
 industrial power, our food power, so we have 
 had to mobilize our money power to a degree 
 hitherto undreamed of. Here we find the 
 fifth element of the problem that confronted 
 our country when we accepted Germany's chal- 
 lenge how to pay the enormous cost of the 
 struggle. Not so long since we thought we 
 talked largely when we spoke of millions in re- 
 lation to national finance. To-day we speak 
 undismayed in terms of billions. We are told 
 that in the year 1918-19 we shall spend as a 
 nation more then $24,000,000,000, and we ac- 
 cept the situation with complacence. 
 
 167
 
 168 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 Before the present conflict began it was a 
 common theory that another great war in the 
 world was unlikely, because it could be pre- 
 vented by the bankers. It was known that 
 hostilities under modern conditions would be 
 enormously costly, and it was calculated that 
 no nation, however rich, would be able to bear 
 the financial burden of their long continuance. 
 Germany had the correct idea of war finance. 
 She prepared herself for war as no other nation 
 had ever prepared, and attacked her neighbors 
 suddenly. Her expenses were to be paid by 
 her victims, through the robbery of their ter- 
 ritories and indemnities. Germany, as usual, 
 misread human nature. She found the victims 
 of her aggression ready to go down into their 
 pockets for their last cent, and into their lar- 
 ders for their last bone, to thwart her foul 
 purposes. A beaten Germany may see a na- 
 tion whose national income will be hard put to 
 it to pay the interest on her national debt. 
 Fortunately for her, this debt is owed almost en- 
 tirely at home. Unquestionably there have been 
 times in late years when smouldering sparks 
 of war have been prevented from bursting iato
 
 THE WAR BUDGET 169 
 
 full flame by action of the great financial cen- 
 tres, but when Germany thought she had her 
 neighbors by the throat, no question of money 
 could hold her back. As they have survived 
 the struggle of the battle-field, so have they 
 survived the struggle of the pocket-book, but 
 their financial problem was growing more diffi- 
 cult, and had not America taken up arms with 
 them, they might have been in sore straits, for 
 with their own productive power declining, 
 they were being compelled more and more to 
 go abroad for food and munitions. They would 
 soon have been hard-pressed for money with 
 which to pay, as the trade balances were steadily 
 against them. Our government, however, real- 
 ized that for more than two years they had been 
 valiantly fighting our battle as well as their 
 own, and when we declared war on Germany, 
 one of our first acts was to go to the aid of our 
 allies financially, to place large credits at their 
 disposal, and to protect them from the addi- 
 tional burden of mounting prices for the ma- 
 terials they needed. The Treasury Depart- 
 ment reported on August 23, 1918, that since 
 April 6, 1917, we had advanced to the Ai-
 
 170 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 lies $6,089,064,750. This sum represented the 
 money actually paid out. Under agreements 
 with them the total credits established for their 
 benefit amounted to $6,692,040,000, as follows: 
 Great Britain, $3,345,000,000; France, $2,065,- 
 000,000; Italy, $760,000,000; Russia, $325,000,- 
 000; Belgium, $154,250,000; Greece, $15,790,- 
 000; Cuba, $15,000,000; Serbia, $12,000,000. 
 In one year we advanced to our friends more 
 than five times the sum spent in an average 
 year for the expenses of our government. This 
 money has not, however, gone out of the coun- 
 try in the form of gold, the international medium 
 of exchange. It is represented by great ship- 
 ments of food and munitions, purchased through 
 our government for the Allies, for which they 
 have engaged themselves to pay when the war 
 is over. We have been advancing them nearly 
 $10,000,000 a day. Before our entrance into 
 the war the great financial burden was borne 
 by Great Britain, which was lending large sums 
 to those engaged with her in fighting the Hun. 
 This burden has fallen on our shoulders to a 
 large extent. The figures involved in these 
 loans would have staggered our imaginations a
 
 THE WAR BUDGET 171 
 
 few years ago, and we should have doubted our 
 ability to make them. But America has found 
 the money. It has found it in a far greater 
 sum. Americans have been pouring out their 
 treasure as well as their blood to assure the de- 
 feat of the arch-enemy of civilization. 
 
 A fine part of the German plot against the 
 world was to attack America when Europe lay 
 prostrate at Germany's feet. There is evidence 
 of this in the writings and speeches of hundreds 
 of her publicists, statesmen, and soldiers. Had 
 we not entered the war, it would not have taken 
 long for a victorious Germanj to have found 
 cause for a quarrel with us. In fact she had 
 long been planning it. With the friendly acqui- 
 escence of England we have upheld the Mon- 
 roe Doctrine for nearly a century. Germany 
 regards the Monroe Doctrine as an impudence, 
 and would have attacked it on the first oppor- 
 tunity. She would have sought to thrust her 
 horrid kultur down our throats, and then to 
 make us pay for it handsomely in indemnities. 
 Had we presevered in our long-standing policy of 
 non-interference in European affairs we should 
 probably have had, not so far in the future,
 
 172 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 a fine war of our own on our hands, with the 
 predatory German demanding indemnities. But 
 Americans found that the frontiers of their 
 liberty lay on the battle-fields of Europe, and 
 upset the German scheme. Since we went to 
 war it has been common to hear the German 
 press and German statesmen boastfully pro- 
 claiming their purpose to make us pay heavily 
 for taking up arms against their country. 
 To-day we pay billions for defense; we will not 
 pay one cent for tribute. 
 
 The income of the American people in 1917 
 was slightly less than $50,000,000,000. In the 
 last fiscal year before we declared war, ending 
 June 30, 1916, the total receipts of the govern- 
 ment were $1,153,044,639; the total disburse- 
 ments were $1,072,894,093. In the year fol- 
 lowing, ending June 30, 1917, we had three 
 months of war, and we find the total receipts, 
 including the sale of Liberty Bonds, certificates 
 of indebtedness, treasury notes, etc., $3,882,- 
 068,710; the total expenditures, $3,083,476,791. 
 Those three months of war increased the cost 
 of our army from $164,635,576 to $440,276,880, 
 and of our navy from $155,029,425 to $257,166.-
 
 THE WAR BUDGET 173 
 
 437. When one deals with such figures you 
 abandon the cents, even though the Secretary 
 of the Treasury records them. 
 
 The Sixty-Fourth Congress was generous to 
 the navy and niggardly to the army. This 
 Congress had in it many patriotic and far- 
 seeing men, but they were hampered in their 
 actions by dull-witted pacifists and pro-Ger- 
 mans. The Sixty-fifth Congress, which suc- 
 ceeded it almost immediately in special session, 
 had in its membership some of the same dull- 
 witted pacifists, and the pro-Germans turned 
 Americans. We wonder if even the lady from 
 Montana would to-day vote against war with 
 the inventors of gas and liquid fire as a means 
 of forwarding the aims of kultur. In the Sixty- 
 fifth Congress, from the start, the patriotic and 
 the far-seeing had their way. They were in a 
 heavy majority. The dull-witted pacifists and 
 the pro-Germans-turned-Americans did delay 
 legislation on the selective-service law, but not 
 for long. When it came to appropriations the 
 administration had only to ask and it received. 
 The loans to our allies were authorized. Issues 
 of bonds, surpassing any sum we had ever
 
 174 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 dreamed of, were authorized. And rightly ! 
 It was no time to cavil over expenses. We had 
 seen Belgium overrun and left ruined and starv- 
 ing; we had seen Serbia overrun and her popu- 
 lation almost wiped out; Russia dissolving 
 through Teuton intrigue into a state of an- 
 archy; our old friend France standing with 
 her back to the wall against the onrush of kul- 
 tur's savages; and Britain, the Mother of 
 Democracy, giving her children by the millions 
 that the horrid Thing that had attacked the 
 world might be killed. The Sixty-Fifth Con- 
 gress has given the administration everything 
 it asked for the prosecution of the war. The 
 same house that argued so long over the selec- 
 tive-service law a little over a year later ex- 
 tended its provisions to include all men from 
 18 to 45, by a vote of 336 to 2. We have to-day, 
 according to the German press, a crazy Presi- 
 dent, a crazy Congress, and a crazy people. 
 
 After we declared war, the government pro- 
 ceeded at once to the tremendous expansion of 
 our army, navy, and merchant marine. No 
 matter what the cost, the work had to be done. 
 In framing its estimates of expenditures for the
 
 THE WAR BUT 3ET 175 
 
 first year the government placed the figure at 
 about $21,000,000,000, or nearly twice the sum 
 that Great Britain had expended in any one 
 year of the war. It happened, however, that 
 the productive capacity of the country for war 
 was not fully organized, and that while enor- 
 mous orders of all kinds were placed, these orders 
 could not be filled as rapidly as was expected. 
 As a result, our expenditure in the first year of 
 the war was some $8,000,000,000 less than the 
 estimated figure. At the end of the fiscal 
 year, June 30, 1918, the treasury reported that, 
 including the money spent in the first three 
 months of the war, it had disbursed, $13,915,- 
 205,290. Of this sum nearly $5,623,029,750 
 was loaned to our allies. 
 
 The beginning of the present fiscal year found 
 our war programme in full swing. Plans had 
 been laid to double the size of our armies; war- 
 ships and merchant ships were slipping from the 
 ways and had to be paid for; ordnance in vast 
 quantities was coming from our factories; our 
 allies were calling for still more financial aid. 
 The government presented to Congress its esti- 
 mates of expenditures to June 30, 1919, and
 
 176 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 Congress authorized the disbursement of the 
 enormous sum of more than $24,000,000,000. 
 
 How these appropriations have been appor- 
 tioned is shown in the following table: 
 
 War Department $14,073,671,181.88 
 
 Navy Department 1,616,550,360.77 
 
 Shipping Board 1,807,543,500.00 
 
 National defense 50,000,000.00 
 
 Federal control of transportation 
 
 systems 500,000,000.00 
 
 War Finance Corporation 500,000,000.00 
 
 Housing for war needs 100,000,000.00 
 
 Loans to Allies 3,000,000,000.00 
 
 Interest on public debt 588,049,168.00 
 
 Postal service 385,511,072.23 
 
 Deficiencies for prior years 727,567,797.35 
 
 For all other purposes 989,455,184.31 
 
 $24,338,348,264.54 
 
 The total represents one-half of the income of 
 the American people. It means that one-half 
 the productive energy of the people will go to 
 the prosecution of the war. It has been pointed 
 out by certain experts in finance that it may be 
 found impossible to spend so great a sum, as 
 what we can spend is limited by what we can 
 produce, and we are already feeling a scarcity 
 of both material and labor. It has been con-
 
 Selling Liberty Bonds in front of the Sub-Treasury, New York City. 
 
 'Of the $13,000,000,000 spent by our government in the past year of the war, more than\ 
 two-thirds was raised by the sale of Liberty Bonds."
 
 THE WAR BUDGET 177 
 
 tended that it will be easier for the American 
 people to raise these vast sums than to spend 
 them; that the great problem will not be to 
 find the money, but to produce the war material 
 for which it pays. 
 
 It has long been an axiom of government that 
 wars must be paid for largely out of the people's 
 future earnings; that the generation that fights 
 a war must in part be relieved of the financial 
 burden by the generations that will profit by 
 the victory. To raise a war's entire cost by 
 taxation would disrupt a country's business. 
 It has been considered sound policy to raise the 
 money needed by loans; to raise by increased 
 taxation the money to pay the interest on the 
 loans, and to constitute a fund with which to 
 pay them off when they fall due. Of the $13,- 
 000,000,000 spent by our government in the 
 past year of the war, more than two-thirds was 
 raised by the sale of Liberty Bonds. About 
 $4,000,000,000 was secured by income and ex- 
 cess profits taxes and the usual forms of rev- 
 enue. When for the second year of the war 
 Congress authorized the expenditure of almost 
 double the sum spent in the first year, it was
 
 178 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 deemed advisable to double the income received 
 by the government from taxation, and this was 
 done by greatly increasing the imposts on the 
 incomes of business enterprises and private per- 
 sons, and imposing special forms of taxation. 
 With $8,000,000,000 secured from taxation, there 
 remained to be obtained from the sale of bonds 
 about $16,000,000,000 in the present fiscal year. 
 This was a task to tax any people, however 
 rich they might be, but the record of Ameri- 
 cans in the previous Liberty Loan campaigns 
 left no doubt that they would meet the issue. 
 
 We are raising a larger proportion of our war 
 expenses by taxation than are our allies, and 
 we are spending much more money. The total 
 cost of the war to Great Britain from August, 
 1914, to January 1, 1918, was $20,465,000,000, 
 besides which she had lent to her allies some 
 $6,500,000,000. Of this she has raised 18.33 
 per cent by taxation. In the same period 
 France spent $20,637,800,000, of which she 
 raised 15,3 per cent by taxation. Italy, in the 
 war up to January 1, 1918, spent $6,077,378,000, 
 of which she raised 11.8 per cent by taxation. 
 Germany had spent, in the same time, $24,129,- 
 000,000, of which she raised less than 4 per cent
 
 THE WAR BUDGET 179 
 
 by added taxes on her people. As to whether or 
 not it is good policy for us to raise so large a 
 proportion of our war costs by taxation is a 
 question on which there are wide differences 
 of opinion. American business men and the 
 American people have more than met the gov- 
 ernment half-way in their willingness, both to 
 pay and to lend. It is vital to the success of 
 our army and navy that enterprise be encour- 
 aged and that we produce to the limit of our ca- 
 pacity. But too heavy imposts on business tend 
 to a discouragement of enterprise and a curtail- 
 ment of production. The policy of our govern- 
 ment has been to pay the cost of the war out 
 of our present income, as far as is possible, 
 without disrupting business. To secure such a 
 result requires exceedingly delicate adjustment. 
 Even the securing of one-third of the money 
 needed by taxation "still leaves a vast sum to 
 be raised by loans, sixteen times what was re- 
 quired for our government in normal years. 
 But the appeal to the people to show their 
 patriotism by lending then* money has in every 
 instance met with a hearty response. The 
 loans have all been oversubscribed. Before the 
 first Liberty Loan was put out there were in
 
 180 
 
 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 the country only 400,000 holders of bonds. 
 Our government securities were practically all 
 held by the banks. The vast number of our 
 people did not know what a bond was, and the 
 loan campaigns proved themselves of value in 
 the inculcation of lessons of thrift and of finance 
 as well as of patriotism. To the first issue there 
 were 4,500,000 subscribers; to the second, 
 double that number; to the third 17,000,000 
 Americans subscribed. This means that one 
 person in every six of our population is the 
 holder of a government obligation. An analy- 
 sis of the figures shows a progressive increase 
 in the number of small subscriptions. Of the 
 first loan 23 per cent was represented by pur- 
 chases of less than $10,000; of the second, 29 
 per cent; of the third 47 per cent. 
 
 The record of the people, in response to the 
 call of the government to lend it their money, 
 is shown in this table: 
 
 
 SUBSCRIBED 
 
 ALLOTTED 
 
 First Liberty Loan 
 
 $3,035,226,850 
 
 $2 000 000 000 
 
 Second Liberty Loan 
 
 4,617,532,300 
 
 3,808,766,150 
 
 Third Liberty Loan 
 
 4,170,019,650 
 
 4,170,019,650 
 
 

 
 THE WAR BUDGET 181 
 
 The fact that of the second loan, more than 
 12,000,000 bonds of the denomination of $100 
 and $50 were purchased gives evidence of the 
 degree to which persons with small incomes 
 participated. 
 
 With their men fighting so gallantly on the 
 fields of France and on the sea, Americans will 
 not stint to support them with their treasure. 
 They will ask, though, for the sake of those 
 very men, that the money be carefully and 
 wisely spent. In the main it has been. In the 
 expenditure of sums so vast there are likely to 
 be cases of recklessness and extravagance. Ac- 
 cording to the Senate Investigating Committee 
 millions were wasted on the aircraft programme, 
 many millions spent and few fighting planes 
 placed on the front. Before another year the 
 millions put into aircraft production will tell, 
 though it was unfortunate that, through lack of 
 foresight, they must tell so late. But it is well 
 to remember that, while the War Department 
 failed to do well with the money placed in its 
 hands for aerial warfare, with the money given 
 to it to raise, equip and transport armies to 
 the battle-front it has done much. It has seen
 
 182 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 to it that, as a whole, our fighting men are 
 well clothed, well fed, and well quartered. 
 
 Our soldiers and sailors are paid as are the 
 men of no other country, and the government 
 has arranged that proper provision is made for 
 them or their dependants in event of death or 
 disability. It is now conducting in the Treasury 
 Department the greatest insurance company in 
 the world. The department's Bureau of War 
 Risk Insurance, as now carried on, is the out- 
 growth of the need of protecting our merchant 
 marine at the outbreak of the European War. 
 The government had then to take cognizance of 
 the fact that the risks of war made it impos- 
 sible for our ship owners to secure proper in- 
 surance at anything but prohibitive rates. By 
 act of Congress, approved September 2, 1914, 
 the government undertook to insure these ves- 
 sels at reasonable rates. Then the dangers of 
 the sea made it difficult for the vessels to get 
 crews, and by an act of June 12, 1917, the op- 
 erations of the bureau were extended to insure 
 the crews of these ships. The price of insur- 
 ance for a man in our army or navy was pro- 
 hibitive in a private company. It was found
 
 THE WAR BUDGET 183 
 
 that these companies would charge $580 a year 
 for a $10,000 policy on the life of a soldier or 
 sailor, and a private serving in France receives 
 only $396 a year. Under a law passed on 
 October 6, 1917, the government will insure 
 any soldier or sailor against death or total dis- 
 ability up to the sum of $10,000, in multiples of 
 $500 at the same rate, practically, that they 
 would pay to an insurance company in peace 
 times. The charge for this insurance is de- 
 ducted from his monthly pay. The treasury 
 bears the cost of administration and the excess 
 mortality and disability cost resulting from the 
 hazards of war. A statement of the Treasury 
 Department shows that on August 1, 1918, 
 nearly 3,000,000 applications for insurance had 
 been received, representing a total of more than 
 $25,000,000,000, in average policies of $8,511. 
 
 Such a provision is certainly just to the men 
 who are fighting the country's battles. Further, 
 to insure their ease of mind regarding their de- 
 pendent families, the government makes what 
 are known as family allotments. The enlisted 
 man must allot $15 monthly to his wife and 
 children, which is withheld from his pay by the
 
 184 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 government. To this the government adds 
 $15 monthly to the wife; where there is a wife 
 and one child, $25; a wife and two children, 
 $32.50, and $5 for each additional child. Pro- 
 vision is made in this way for motherless 
 children and for dependent parents. Under 
 another section of the law the government pro- 
 tects itself against the evils that grew up un- 
 der the old pension system, and at the same 
 time makes clear to the fighting man just what 
 his dependants will receive in case of his death, 
 or what he will receive in event of disability 
 incurred in the service. Every contingency is 
 carefully provided for. The sums granted are 
 not large. A widow, for example, will receive 
 $25 monthly; if she has a child, $35; if two 
 children, $47.50, with $5 for each additional 
 child. But it is considered that such sums, 
 with the insurance added, should provide com- 
 fortably for the soldiers' families. 
 
 Besides its task of collecting and disbursing 
 vast sums of money, and of conducting an in- 
 surance business on a scale hitherto unheard of, 
 the work of the Treasury Department has been 
 greatly increased by new duties thrown on it
 
 THE WAR BUDGET 185 
 
 by various acts of Congress. Even before we 
 went to war, the Federal Farm Loan law was in 
 operation, with Federal Land Banks established 
 in twelve districts of the country. These banks, 
 through their agencies, have been lending money 
 on farm mortgages and have proved valuable 
 in stimulating food production since we went 
 to war. In 1917 more than $20,000,000 was 
 loaned by these banks for the furtherance of 
 agricultural projects, and in the present year 
 this sum will be exceeded. The War Finance 
 Board, of which the Secretary of the Treasury 
 is chairman, was created by an act of April 
 5, 1918. It has a capital stock of a $500,000,- 
 000, all owned by the government, and its 
 function is to aid by advances of money those 
 businesses whose operation is necessary to the 
 conduct of the war. The same act also estab- 
 lished the "Capital Issues Committee," which 
 acts to curb the expansion of unnecessary en- 
 terprises, by supervising the issue of new se- 
 curities of amounts greater than $100,000. The 
 government has held that unnecessary enter- 
 prises must be curbed, and that it will need 
 for its own uses every dollar that can be
 
 186 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 saved. It is easy to understand this view. Our 
 expenditures are now running at the rate of 
 $2,000,000,000 monthly. If the war lasts until 
 the end of 1919, we shall have to spend $50,- 
 000,000,000. To raise so great a sum all the 
 energies of the American people will be needed.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 LABOR 
 
 OBVIOUSLY we cannot keep our ships 
 afloat and our vast armies overseas unless 
 the industries of the country are organized on 
 a war basis and operated by an army of patriotic 
 men. It is estimated that it requires all the 
 labor of at least three men to keep one fighting 
 man at the front. This figure is small. But 
 accepting it, we see that to keep an army of 
 5,000,000 men fighting we must have 15,000,000 
 at home working solely for the soldiers. As a 
 matter of fact, we are expending half of our 
 national income on war work, and, therefore, 
 half of our working energy. The problem of 
 organizing the country's labor-power that it 
 might be used to the best advantage becomes 
 one of the most difficult of the intricate problems 
 faced by the government. 
 
 Before we entered the war the urgent needs 
 of the fighting nations brought them to our 
 markets for food and materials of all kinds,
 
 188 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 and the result of their competitive bidding for 
 these things was a rapid rise in prices at home 
 and a startling increase in the costs of living. 
 Large profits were to be made in these foreign 
 contracts and the manufacturers and pro- 
 ducers began bidding against one another for 
 labor, a process which resulted in greatly in- 
 creased wage scales. Factories not engaged 
 in highly profitable war work, and the farms, 
 found great difficulty in securing workers, and 
 to be able to pay the advanced rates had to 
 increase the prices of their products. And so 
 the withdrawal of millions of men and women 
 from productive occupations in Europe brought 
 to us a parallel rising of wages and prices. 
 Some employers made great profits and there 
 was a resulting spirit of unrest among em- 
 ployees, who felt that they were not getting 
 their full share of the results of their labor. 
 This feeling found expression in frequent strikes. 
 Industries which had no share in these great 
 profits felt this unrest severely. Of this situa- 
 tion the railroads afford the best example. In 
 1916 their employees demanded the establish- 
 ment of an eight-hour day and time and a half
 
 LABOR 189 
 
 pay for overtime. To avoid a nation-wide 
 strike, in September Congress passed the Adam- 
 son law, compelling the roads to make an eight- 
 hour day the standard of pay and to pay pro 
 rata for overtime. This greatly increased their 
 expenses although their earnings were at the 
 time steadily declining. The government did 
 grant them some relief by allowing an increase 
 in freight rates. This dispute between the 
 companies and their men threatened trouble 
 enough for the country in times of peace. It 
 continued up almost to the very moment of 
 our entry into the war. Similar controversies 
 were recurring from time to time in other 
 industries. 
 
 When we entered the war we had to produce 
 ships, munitions, and food in unprecedented 
 quantities, and the continuation of controversies 
 between employers and employees was a grave 
 threat to the success of our fighting men. The 
 control of the large employers was a compara- 
 tively easy matter. The great majority of 
 them placed their plants at the disposal of the 
 government and entered into voluntary agree- 
 ments as to the prices they should receive for
 
 190 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 their products. Any profiteering was prevented 
 by tax laws which took from them the largest 
 part of their earnings above what they had 
 made in normal times. The control of the great 
 army of labor, organized and unorganized, a 
 great deal of it floating, was another matter. 
 But steps had to be taken to prevent, as far as 
 possible, any halting in production. 
 
 When the war-cloud was hanging over us, 
 after the break in diplomatic relations with Ger- 
 many, the Advisory Commission of the Coun- 
 cil of National Defense was formed, and Samuel 
 Gompers, president of the American Federation 
 of Labor, took a place upon it as labor's repre- 
 sentative. On March 12 a meeting of the 
 representatives of all the unions was held in 
 Washington, and these leaders pledged their 
 loyalty to the country in event of war and 
 called on their fellow workers to follow their 
 example. The day after war was declared Mr. 
 Gompers pledged the support of the federation 
 to the government, and the federation, in its 
 annual convention on November 12, affirmed 
 its belief in the war as essential to the defense 
 of democracy. So the representatives of the
 
 LABOR 191 
 
 greatest body of organized laborers have from 
 the first proved themselves loyal and behind 
 the government in the prosecution of the war, 
 in recognition of which the administration has 
 placed a number of them in places of responsi- 
 bility. Mr. Gompers formed a labor committee 
 of some 350 persons to act with the Council 
 of National Defense. This committee included 
 representatives of the government, capital, and 
 labor, and it was divided into eight subcom- 
 mittees, having charge of the various phases 
 of the problem. The main work, however, 
 was done through an executive committee of 
 fourteen, acting as advisory to the council. 
 
 The American Federation, which thus came 
 so promptly to the support of the war, is the 
 largest organized labor body in the country, 
 comprising some 111 national unions, organized 
 in the crafts and industries. It has a mem- 
 bership of nearly 2,500,000. Other so-called 
 labor bodies, however, did not prove them- 
 selves so patriotic. One of these, the Indus- 
 trial Workers of the World, with headquarters in 
 Chicago, carried on a campaign to hamper in- 
 dustry and block the selective-service law. Its
 
 192 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 operations were largely in the lumber region? 
 and on the farms of the West, where there is 
 a large migratory working population. So dis- 
 loyal were its activities that the government 
 had finally to arrest more than 200 of its leaders 
 in various parts of the country, and in August 
 of this year the largest number of these were 
 convicted in the courts and sentenced to long 
 terms in prison. 
 
 The Socialist party of America is a political 
 organization whose membership comes largely 
 from the ranks of labor. Immediately after 
 the declaration of war, it held a convention in 
 St. Louis, went on record against the action of 
 the government, and called on "all workers to 
 refuse to support their governments in their 
 wars." It further demanded unyielding oppo- 
 sition to the proposed draft law. The action 
 was not unanimous. A considerable number of 
 members withdrew from the party, and at a 
 meeting later in Chicago formed the National 
 party, which, while its platform was socialis- 
 tic, declared its loyalty to the government in 
 the prosecution of the war. But the Socialist 
 party carried on a continuous campaign, ham-
 
 LABOR 193 
 
 pering the government in many ways, compel- 
 ling the authorities to take vigorous action to 
 suppress its activities. 
 
 We have seen the leaders of the greatest of 
 the labor organizations giving the government 
 their support from the beginning of the war. 
 They have given it loyally. They have frowned 
 down the German-made efforts to have con- 
 ferences at The Hague and Stockholm of inter- 
 national representatives of the world's workers 
 for the purpose of agitating a peace which would 
 be to the advantage of Germany. They have 
 declared steadily for the prosecution of the 
 war to a finish, to the end of German autocracy 
 and militarism. Their position has not been 
 an easy one. However good their intentions, 
 they have often had trouble with their locals, 
 which have used the necessities of the govern- 
 ment in the war as a club with which to enforce 
 their demands. 
 
 On the advice of Mr. Gompers the Council 
 of National Defense, on April 7, 1917, adopted 
 a report urging that no changes in existing 
 standards of labor be made either by employers 
 or employees during the war, without its ap-
 
 194 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 proval. A few days later this was modified 
 by an exception that no changes of wages should 
 be sought by either party through strikes or 
 lockouts without giving the government an 
 opportunity to settle the difficulties without a 
 stoppage of work. It was hoped that em- 
 ployers and employees would live up to these 
 arrangements, but the figures available show 
 that the first year of the war was marked by 
 a great number of strikes. The report of the 
 Department of Labor shows that between 
 April 6 and October 19, 1917, 211 strikes had 
 been called to its attention. An unofficial rec- 
 ord of strikes between April 6 and December 
 15 shows that 529 occurred, involving 126,400 
 employees to the loss of 3,234,446 man days of 
 work. In the shipyards alone, prior to Decem- 
 ber 26 there were strikes involving 596,992 lost 
 man days. In the first year of the war there 
 were referred to the Department of Labor for 
 adjudication 936 labor disputes, of which 440 
 had reached the strike stage. The conciliators 
 settled all of these but 73. But it is evident 
 that the government's no-strike programme 
 was a failure.
 
 LABOR 195 
 
 The situation in the labor world in the first 
 year of the war was chaotic, and between strikes 
 and a lack of co-ordination of the various govern- 
 ment departments, war work was greatly ham- 
 pered. There was no orderly system of appor- 
 tioning the available labor. The army had 
 taken millions of men and labor was scarce. 
 One shipyard with urgent contracts would bid 
 higher wages and take the men employed in 
 another near by. Munition works would draw 
 men from the shipyards, and shipyards from 
 the munition works. Government departments 
 were bidding against each other for men. 
 Skilled men were shifting about the country 
 in search of the highest pay, and much valuable 
 time was lost in this turnover. Where disputes 
 occurred with the men they were settled by the 
 individual department or munition plant, with- 
 out regard to the general needs of the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 It was evident that the government had to 
 take cognizance of these conditions, and late in 
 April, 1918, the National War Labor Board 
 was constituted. Two of its members, William 
 H. Taft and Frank P, Walsh, represent the
 
 196 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 public; the other ten represent equally em- 
 ployers and employees. Its functions are "to 
 bring about a settlement by mediation and 
 conciliation of every controversy between em- 
 ployers and employees in the field of produc- 
 tion necessary for the effective conduct of the 
 war." This board since its formation has been 
 kept busy settling disputes. It has no real 
 power to enforce decisions against labor, other 
 than that of patriotic appeal. In many cases 
 this has proved effective. There is always a ten- 
 dency where disputes over wages are involved 
 to grant a higher scale, and where shop regula- 
 tions are concerned to favor the demands of 
 the union. It is the easiest way to avoid dif- 
 ficulty, however hard it may be on the em- 
 ployer. Employees who are dissatisfied with the 
 decisions can strike and sometimes they have 
 done so. Five thousand machinists at Bridge- 
 port recently went out because they objected 
 to the board's award of an increase in wages 
 to all employees receiving under seventy-eight 
 cents an hour, but establishing no increase 
 above that rate. This strike ended only when 
 the President made a personal appeal to the
 
 LABOR 197 
 
 loyalty of the men and warned them that 
 those who persisted in striking would not be 
 employed in any other government work. This 
 strike delayed for two weeks work on thou- 
 sands of machine-guns so urgently needed by 
 the soldiers who are fighting our battles. Dis- 
 satisfied employers can do little. They cannot 
 strike and the government has power to take 
 over their plants. Recently a large munition 
 company asked the government to take over 
 its factories, maintaining that it could not 
 manage its business efficiently on the lines laid 
 down by the board for the dealings with the 
 employees. 
 
 As regards labor, the country is on the horns 
 of a dilemma. Every rise in the cost of living is 
 followed by a demand for in fact, a need of 
 higher wages. Every time wages rise the cost 
 of living goes up. 
 
 The railroads are a case in point. In the 
 years 1916 and 1917 the railroads increased 
 wages of their employees approximately $350,- 
 000,000 a year. In the same period their earn- 
 ings were strictly limited by the rate rulings 
 of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and
 
 198 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 they were hard put to it to find money for 
 needed improvements in lines and rolling-stock. 
 After we went to war, with the co-operation of 
 the government, their operation was unified 
 under the charge of a committee of executives 
 known as the Railroads War Board. This 
 board did much to increase the efficiency of 
 the roads, but the demands of the war greatly 
 increased the traffic and there was at times 
 great congestion. In November the trainmen 
 and conductors began to agitate for an increase 
 of forty per cent in pay, and a situation similar 
 to that at the time of the passage of the Adam- 
 son law might have been created, had not the 
 government stepped in, and acting under the 
 authority of Congress, taken control of the roads. 
 This was done to insure still more efficient opera- 
 tion, and to secure this the government had to 
 make large advances in money for the improve- 
 ment of the lines. The President by proclama- 
 tion took over the railroads on December 26, 
 and placed their operation in the hands of 
 William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury, 
 as director-general. The government was at 
 once met with the persistent wage problem,
 
 LABOR 199 
 
 and after an investigation of living costs granted 
 advances of wages to all employees receiving less 
 than $250 per month. This added $300,000,000 
 a year to the cost of operating the roads. The 
 increase in other expenses aggregated more than 
 $500,000,000 more. To meet these heavy new 
 charges the director-general had to order a 
 25-per-cent increase in all freight rates and an 
 advance in passenger rates from 2^ to 3 cents 
 per mile. Such increases added to the general 
 cost of living. 
 
 The government had to act to hold down the 
 cost of living, to stabilize wages, and to control 
 labor as far as possible that it might be used 
 to its greatest productive capacity. The first 
 it did through its system of price-fixing. For 
 the better control of labor it organized the War 
 Labor Policies Board in the Department of 
 Labor, which hr j the direction and distribu- 
 tion of the labor-supply during the war. An 
 important part of this administration's work is 
 done through the United States Employment 
 Service. This bureau has established branches 
 throughout the country and has formed the 
 United States Public Service Reserve in which
 
 200 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 are enlisted many thousands of workmen. 
 When the army, navy, or Shipping Board need 
 workmen they apply to the Employment Ser- 
 vice, and the men are supplied from the districts 
 nearest the plants where they are wanted, thus 
 avoiding the unnecessary movement of men for 
 long distances. The employment bureau has 
 lists of nearly every available man in the 
 country for war work, and is kept advised of 
 the needs of the yards and factories. It sees to 
 it that the vital industries get the men they need 
 and its operations have ended the old expensive 
 system of competitive bidding for labor. It 
 has organized so as to have its representatives 
 in every county of the country hunting up 
 available men. It has encroached heavily on 
 the unessential industries, but even the managers 
 of these have largely given it patriotic help, 
 as it is generally realized that the conduct of 
 the war industries is vital to the nation's safety. 
 The War Labor Policies Board decides directly 
 for war industries and indirectly for non-war 
 industries questions involving distribution of 
 labor, wages, hours, and working conditions. 
 Non-war industries can be prevented from using
 
 LABOR 201 
 
 labor unnecessarily through the pressure of the 
 War Industries Board and the Fuel Administra- 
 tion which control the supplies of raw materials 
 and coal. The government has established a 
 grip on industry that would not have been 
 thought possible a few years ago. 
 
 One of the necessities of the situation is that 
 wages be stabilized as far as possible. Higher 
 wages in one part of the country than another 
 means constant migration and a consequent loss 
 in production. To this end the Labor Policies 
 Board has been bending its energy. It has to 
 consider the living costs and conditions in any 
 particular locality and to fix standards of pay 
 that will as far as possible discourage migration. 
 It must strive, too, to create such conditions 
 of labor as will make for contentment and pre- 
 vent unrest. The function of the War Labor 
 Board is to mediate in disputes between em- 
 ployer and employees, when they occur. The 
 function of the Labor Policies Board is to try 
 to prevent the occurrence of such controversies. 
 
 By the end of the present year we shall 
 have withdrawn from our industries more than 
 5,000,000 of our best men to serve in our army
 
 202 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 and navy. Immigration has stopped and our 
 farms and factories are being called on to pro- 
 duce as never before. The work must be done 
 if our men at the front and our allies who are 
 fighting with them have what they need to crush 
 the German menace forever. To do it we have 
 only the man-power left within our own borders. 
 As the government has called on Americans 
 to save food for our soldiers and our allies and 
 to save money for our treasury, so it has called 
 on them to work. Soon there will be few families 
 in this country who have not some one dear to 
 them fighting on the fields of France. Ameri- 
 cans will as little brook the slackers in work 
 as they have those who have been slackers in 
 the fight. 
 
 The vast majority of the laborers of the 
 country have showed themselves loyal to the 
 core. This means the vast majority of Amer- 
 icans, for nearly every American is a worker, 
 no matter what his social status. From rail- 
 roads, farms, and shops, the stores and offices, 
 the men have gone willingly to fight in defense 
 of our freedom. But organized labor is a class 
 of labor by itself. It comprises but a com-
 
 LABOR 203 
 
 paratively small part of the community, and 
 yet it has always been the special pet of politi- 
 cians of all parties. They, in their appeals for 
 votes, usually speak of the class as though no 
 one else ever worked. They draw a line be- 
 tween employer and employee, which would 
 indicate that the employer was free from all 
 care and labor. When we went to war there 
 was much talk of profiteering by the makers 
 of munitions. Yet the treasury figures show 
 that at that time only one-half of the muni- 
 tion-makers had made enough profits to bring 
 them in the reach of the drastic excess profits 
 tax. The legislation that was passed to speed 
 up our war industries was aimed to give the 
 government power solely over the employers 
 and plants. Nothing was done to insure a 
 steady effort by labor, other than as it would 
 be obtained by raising wages and appeals to 
 patriotism. The principle has been, if a de- 
 mand for higher pay is made, to tell the em- 
 ployer he must pay more without telling him 
 where is he to get the money. In the case of 
 the railroads it was easy, because here the 
 government had simply to take control and
 
 204 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 tax the public to find the needed funds. When 
 a dispute arose between the telegraph com- 
 panies and their employees, and the companies' 
 officers felt the decision of the War Labor 
 Board to be unfair, the government again took 
 control. And again it can raise wages and tax 
 the public. The position of a munition-maker, 
 who is working for the government on a cost, 
 plus a commission, basis is safe. He can meet 
 all advances in wages ordered by the govern- 
 ment mediators, and the government will pay 
 the added cost. But the employer who has a 
 contract to deliver at a fixed price may at times 
 find himself in a way of losing money if he 
 agrees to an award of higher wages. Yet, if he 
 refuses, he is likely to have the government 
 take over his plant, and worse, to find himself 
 called unpatriotic. 
 
 The national leaders of organized labor have 
 patriotically done their best to prevent strikes 
 and the consequent interruption of vital pro- 
 duction. The principle of mediation by govern- 
 ment agencies was adopted, as we have seen; 
 but the War Labor Board has little power to 
 enforce its decrees, excent that tb government
 
 LABOR 205 
 
 can act directly against one party to the dis- 
 pute in question and only indirectly against the 
 other. The authority of the national labor 
 leaders cannot be extended to the non-union 
 labor, which is the largest element, and their 
 influence over organized labor has sometimes 
 proved not great. It is unfortunate that cer- 
 tain classes of organized and unorganized labor 
 should have seized upon the country's hour 
 of necessity to profiteer. Where the conditions 
 of labor are wrong, they should be righted, and 
 the government has made every effort to see 
 that this is done. But the day when every 
 ship that leaves the ways means a nearer end- 
 ing of the war, and every gun that goes over 
 the sea gives protection to our gallant fighting 
 men, is no time for strikes in industries essen- 
 tial to the prosecution of the war, or to allow 
 such strikes.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE 
 
 of the most important elements in 
 our mobilization has been the work of 
 the Council of National Defense. It is this 
 great body of volunteer workers that helped 
 to bring order out of chaos in the early days 
 of the war. Strictly speaking, the council is 
 a committee of six, the Secretaries of War, 
 Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and 
 Labor. Actually it is more than that. It is 
 a large body of men and women, every one 
 possessing special knowledge in some branch 
 of industry or war work which they have placed 
 at the service of the government. When our 
 relations with Germany were growing strained 
 in 1916, Congress passed an act forming the 
 council. This act, approved August 29, pro- 
 vided that the cabinet members named should 
 form a body to act for "the co-ordination of 
 industries and resources for national security 
 
 206
 
 COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE 207 
 
 and welfare." It provided that the council 
 should name an advisory committee of not 
 more than seven persons, each of whom had 
 some special knowledge that would be of ser- 
 vice to the country in event of war. These 
 persons were to serve without compensation. 
 The advisory committee was not organized 
 until the following March, when the war-cloud 
 was growing heavier. As formed, its members 
 were: Daniel Willard, transportation and com- 
 munication, chairman; Howard E. Coffin, air- 
 craft; Julius Rosen wald, supplies (including 
 clothing), etc.; Bernard M. Baruch, raw ma- 
 terials, minerals, and metals; Doctor Hollis 
 Godfrey, engineering and education; Samuel 
 Gompers, labor, including conservation of health 
 and welfare of workers; Doctor Franklin Mar- 
 tin, medicine and surgery, including general 
 sanitation. 
 
 Walter S. Gifford was made director and 
 Grosvenor B. Clarkson, secretary of the coun- 
 cil and advisory commission, and they act as 
 connecting-link between the two. 
 
 The principal duties of the council are: 
 To supervise and direct investigation, and
 
 208 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 make recommendations to the President and the 
 heads of executive departments as to: 
 
 The location of railroads with reference to 
 the frontier of the United States, so as to 
 render possible expeditious concentration of 
 troops and supplies. 
 
 The mobilization of military and naval re- 
 sources for defense. 
 
 The increase of domestic production of ar- 
 ticles and materials essential to the support 
 of armies and of the people during the inter- 
 ruption of foreign commerce. 
 
 The development of seagoing transportation. 
 
 Amounts, location, method, and means of 
 production and availability of military sup- 
 plies. 
 
 The giving of information to producers and 
 manufacturers as to the class of supplies needed 
 by the government, and the creation of rela- 
 tions which will render possible the immediate 
 concentration and utilization of the resources 
 of the nation. 
 
 Reports to the President or to the heads of 
 executive departments upon special inquiries or 
 subjects appropriate thereto.
 
 COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE 209 
 
 The outbreak of war brought to Washington 
 a great number of men and women, having 
 special knowledge in the various phases of in- 
 dustry and science, who volunteered to serve 
 the government without compensation. With 
 them, under the direction of the council, was 
 formed a great organization of several thou- 
 sand volunteers, which has been of the highest 
 service to the country. The leading railroad 
 men, manufacturers, scientists, and labor leaders 
 have been serving patriotically, and their ad- 
 vice has been of incalculable value. There 
 were formed committees on munitions, raw 
 materials, finished products, coal production, 
 women's defense work, labor, scientific research, 
 surgery, and numerous other subjects, with 
 under them subcommittees working with de- 
 tails. To give advice has been practically their 
 main function, but they have also generated 
 many new ideas which have been put into op- 
 eration with effect. The advisory commission 
 and its subordinate committees have no man- 
 datory powers. They merely study the prob- 
 lems presented to them and make their recom- 
 mendations to^ the council which acts upon
 
 210 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 them. When any problem requiring special 
 knowledge arises, it is submitted to the Advi- 
 sory Commission which gives it to the special 
 branch of the organization competent to study 
 the matter and make recommendations. The 
 construction of the cantonments is an example. 
 When the War Department was confronted 
 with that great work, it called on the council 
 for aid. A committee on emergency construc- 
 tion was formed, and a number of engineers 
 and builders served on it, working in conjunc- 
 tion with the department. On the committees, 
 to secure closer co-ordination, representatives of 
 the government departments concerned have 
 had representatives. Thus, for the first year of 
 the war an aircraft programme was in charge of 
 the Aircraft Production Board, acting through 
 the Signal Corps of the army and the Con- 
 struction Bureau of the navy. 
 
 Under the council's supervision subsidiary 
 bodies, Councils of National Defense, have 
 been organized in every State in the Union. 
 They collect information that is of service to 
 the government and carry on campaigns of 
 education and patriotism.
 
 One of the most important accomplishments 
 of the council was the organization of what is 
 now our great War Industries Board, which 
 has such wide powers affecting the mobilization 
 of our resources for war purposes. At first 
 the work now done by this board was in the 
 hands of the raw material and finished ma- 
 terial divisions and of the General Munitions 
 Board. The operations of these bodies were 
 found to be cumbersome, and in July, 1917, they 
 were merged into the War Industries Board, 
 with seven members, representing the army, 
 the navy, industry, and labor. Its duties were 
 to assign priorities among the government de- 
 partments and the allied governments in their 
 demands on our industries; to advise as to 
 supplies of materials and labor; to advise as 
 to prices; to secure the co-operation of in- 
 dustry and labor; to prevent the enhancement 
 of prices and confusion of industry. While 
 the change proved beneficial, neither the ad- 
 ministration nor Congress was satisfied with 
 the workings of the system. Congress pro- 
 posed a ministry of munitions. To this the 
 President objected, as he felt that the powers
 
 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 of the members would be too much limited. 
 He asked for authority to create bodies which 
 could act quickly and without red tape. At 
 his request, the Overman Bill was passed, giving 
 him authority to form boards to conduct the 
 war work in accordance with the needs of the 
 moment. He appointed Bernard M. Baruch 
 chairman of the War Industries Board with 
 large powers, and that board became at once 
 almost a separate department of the govern- 
 ment. Mr. Baruch had been head of the raw 
 material division of the Defense Council and 
 had had great success in the early part of the 
 war on securing much-needed supplies of 
 copper, steel, zinc, lead, platinum, and other 
 metals at prices far below the market levels. 
 In his capacity as adviser to the government 
 in the purchase of these supplies, he was met 
 half-way by the producers. The heads of all 
 the great producing companies placed their 
 plants at the government's service and agreed 
 to furnish their products to the government 
 at prices far less than they were commanding 
 in the open market. Nitrates for the making of 
 explosives, manganese and tungsten for our steel
 
 COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE 213 
 
 mills, many other metals and chemicals needed 
 for our war industries he, with foresight, secured 
 at reasonable cost. 
 
 What the President established in the War 
 Industries Board, with Mr. Baruch at its head, 
 was practically a clearing-house for all govern- 
 ment and Allied purchases. The chairman has 
 associated with him eight men, all experts in 
 their particular duties, and under the board 
 has been built up a great business organization, 
 with every branch in charge of a specialist. 
 The board keeps close watch on all industries 
 in the country, and knows where all supplies 
 are to be found and how great they are. The 
 departments no longer bid against each other. 
 They still make their own contracts but not 
 until they have consulted the board and had 
 the supplies allotted to them in accordance with 
 the priority of their needs. Working with the 
 Railroad Administration, the board decides 
 what commodities shall be moved over the 
 lines, for so great is the congestion of traffic 
 that it is essential that priority be given to 
 special supplies. It has to keep in touch with 
 th", War Trade Board, since the scarcity of
 
 214 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 shipping necessitates careful supervision over 
 our imports of raw materials. It has to work, 
 too, in close co-operation with the Fuel Ad- 
 ministration to see that industries vital to our 
 war programme receive coal. 
 
 The requirements division of the board 
 meets daily. These sessions are attended by 
 the heads of all the chief sections and repre- 
 sentatives of the various government depart- 
 ments and of the Allied Purchasing Commission. 
 Statements are laid before it outlining the needs 
 of every branch of the government and of our 
 allies in the way of raw and finished materials. 
 The available supply of every commodity 
 concerned can be quickly ascertained from the 
 section' in charge of it. The government, if 
 necessary, takes the entire supply and the board 
 allots it. In this manner co-ordination and 
 rapid action have been obtained. 
 
 The board has no specific power in law to 
 fix prices. The prices to be paid by the govern- 
 ment are agreed on between the Price Fixing 
 Committee of the board and representatives 
 of the producers. The government only inter- 
 venes to fix prices to the public where it has
 
 COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE 215 
 
 taken so large a part of any commodity as to 
 create a scarcity for the civil population. Here 
 the price is also fixed by agreement with the 
 producer and it must be the same for the gov- 
 ernment, the Allies, and the civilian. The com- 
 modity is apportioned among them according 
 to their needs. The wholesaler or retailer who 
 gets a share must sell it at the government's 
 figure. If he does not he goes on the black list 
 and receives nothing of the later distributions. 
 But in general there has been wide-spread co- 
 operation with the government by producers 
 and dealers. The government has the power to 
 commandeer and operate the industries essen- 
 tial to the war, but with hands full operating 
 its army and navy, it has chosen the wiser 
 method of trusting to the patriotism of the 
 business men and securing the benefit of their 
 energy and intelligence. They have responded 
 to this call in full measure. 
 
 As our industries have sent their represen- 
 tatives to Washington to help the government, 
 so have our sciences. Immediately on the out- 
 break of war, the National Research Council 
 affiliated itself with the Council of National
 
 216 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 Defense, as its agency in science and research. 
 This council is organized in a series of divisions, 
 which draw together into small groups the rep- 
 resentatives of the various special committees 
 dealing with different branches of the mathe- 
 matical, physical and biological sciences, en- 
 gineering, medicine, agriculture, and various 
 arts. For example, its engineering division 
 was organized with the co-operation of the 
 national engineering societies, who are rep- 
 resented on the executive board. Under this 
 division are sections on metallurgy, mechanical, 
 electrical, and other branches of engineering. 
 In order to avoid unnecessary duplication, the 
 National Advisory Committee for aeronautics 
 acts as a section on aeronautics in this divi- 
 sion. 
 
 The council has headquarters in Washing- 
 ton, which are in charge of Doctor George E. 
 Hale, a well-known astronomer. In this office 
 the work is centralized. Problems are brought 
 to it by the various depart rnents of the govern- 
 ment, and they are at once assigned for study 
 to the division of the council concerned As 
 nearly every scientist of note in the country is
 
 COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE 217 
 
 associated with the body, the government has 
 quickly at its service the highest of ability. 
 As in the case of the Naval Consulting Board, 
 the council has made public but little of the 
 results of its researches and inventions. A 
 full report will not be made until after the war. 
 It is permitted, however, to speak of a few of 
 these which give an idea of the nature of its 
 service. 
 
 The question of helmets and body armor 
 was one which arose at the beginning of the 
 war. At the request of the War Department 
 a special committee was appointed to study 
 this subject, with Doctor Bashford Dean, cura- 
 tor of armor in the Metropolitan Museum of 
 New York, at its head. Associated with him 
 were engineers and metallurgists. This com- 
 mittee worked out a new form of helmet, in 
 which work the experience of Doctor Dean 
 and his knowledge of old forms proved in- 
 valuable. Doctor Henry M. Howe studied 
 the metallurgical side of the problem, select- 
 ing the best steel for the head-piece, and making 
 tests with machine-guns on the steel in various 
 forms, both in sheets and in the shape which
 
 218 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 it has been given in the helmet. The helmet 
 thus devised is being made in large numbers 
 and is in use in our army. From this problem 
 the committee went on to the subject of body 
 armor. This seems like harking back to 
 mediaeval days and outworn devices. But 
 experience has shown that in modern fighting 
 a large percentage of the wounds are made by 
 low-velocity bullets and bits of shrapnel which 
 have nearly spent themselves. To devise a 
 steel protection for the breast and legs to resist 
 these is not difficult, but the breastplate and 
 leg guards must be so light as not to impede 
 the movements of the soldier. The committee 
 has devised such armor pieces as light as possi- 
 ble, and yet sufficiently resistant to low-velocity 
 bullets and shell fragments to be effective. It 
 is being tried on the fields of France by our 
 men. 
 
 The problems that have been submitted to 
 the council for solution have been almost in- 
 numerable. This war has been one of science, 
 and every branch of science has been engaged 
 in the combat. One of the most difficult of 
 these problems has been to find means of locat-
 
 ing submarines under water and destroying 
 them. The headway attained here has not 
 been made known, but it is known that there 
 has been headway. Another complex problem 
 was to devise an accurate method of dropping 
 bombs from airplanes. In the early stages of 
 the war, this was done in random fashion, and 
 it was difficult to sight and hit a target. The 
 question involves the trajectory of the bomb 
 as it falls from a fast-flying plane. The council 
 brought into co-operation with the Signal Corps 
 and the Ordnance Department, both of which 
 were engaged in this investigation, various 
 mathematical physicists whose previous ex- 
 perience adapted them for this work. Some 
 of the most interesting results were obtained by 
 a mathematical astronomer of Princeton, who 
 utilized, for calculating the trajectories of 
 bombs, certain new methods which were de- 
 veloped for the purpose of calculating plane- 
 tary orbits. This same astronomer derived the 
 quickest known method of reducing the ob- 
 servations made for the location of guns by 
 the method of sound ranging. 
 
 Doctor Hale has pointed out that there is
 
 220 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 great similarity between some of the problems 
 of aerial warfare and astronomy. An example 
 which he gives is the photographing of trenches 
 from an airplane. There is always more or 
 less dust or haze in the air which interferes with 
 photography. By using a color-screen in front 
 of the camera, and thus by cutting off the violet 
 and blue part of the light and letting through 
 the red, yellow, green and light-blue parts of 
 the spectrum, the operator is able to get in- 
 creased contrast and make the trenches show 
 better; the best photographs are made with 
 the aid of color-screens. In astronomy, when 
 you want to photograph the sun, if you photo- 
 graph it directly, you get just what you see 
 with your eye, but if you want to bring out 
 the invisible phenomena of the sun's atmos- 
 phere, you use simply a refinement of that 
 method. You photograph with a single line 
 of the spectrum, say a line of hydrogen, and 
 thus render visible the entire hydrogen atmos- 
 phere of the sun, otherwise wholly invisible. 
 This is the same principle that the man in the 
 airplane uses when he photographs the trenches. 
 Among the accomplishments of the Research
 
 COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE 
 
 Council has been a new range-finder developed 
 by a well-known physicist, and an ear-protec- 
 tor by the same scientist. The navy has 
 adopted a new method of selecting and train- 
 ing gunners which was developed by a psy- 
 chologist. It makes it possible to judge how 
 accurately a man may be expected to point 
 a gun and tests his ability as a marksman. 
 The army has adopted a system of psycholog- 
 ical tests to determine the mental ability of 
 the individual soldier, which was evolved 
 through the co-operation of the Research Coun- 
 cil and the American Psychological Associa- 
 tion. Another scientist has devised a method 
 of testing on the ground the ability of an aviator 
 to rise to very high altitudes, thus making it 
 possible to judge accurately just how high a 
 man can fly without being in danger of heart- 
 failure and fain ting-spells, hi which he would 
 plunge to his death. 
 
 The council has dealt with many questions 
 in chemistry, both in research on problems of 
 importance from a military or industrial point 
 of view and in furnishing information on chem- 
 ical subjects to the War Industries Board. Per-
 
 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 haps the most important single problem in 
 chemistry connected with the war is that of 
 the fixation of nitrogen from the air. Nitrates 
 are needed both for high explosives and for 
 fertilizers, so the problem has both military 
 and industrial aspects. Before the war all 
 nitrates used in this country were imported 
 from Chile, and that supply might be cut off 
 by the activities of German agents or in other 
 ways. Germany, foreseeing this long ago, de- 
 veloped methods for the fixation of nitrogen, 
 and utilizing the cheap water-power of Nor- 
 way for this purpose, established very extensive 
 plants under German control. Subsequently, 
 new methods for the fixation of nitrogen were 
 worked out by the German chemists, and since 
 the beginning of the war ample supplies of 
 nitrates have been produced in Germany by 
 these processes. In this country, at the re- 
 quest of the Secretary of War in May, 1916, 
 the council appointed a committee to report 
 on the best methods of nitrogen fixation with 
 a view to the best utilization of an appropria- 
 tion of twenty million dollars, which was made 
 that summer by Congress for the erection of
 
 COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE 223 
 
 plants for this purpose. Since that time much 
 larger appropriations for the same purpose 
 have been made, and several of these plants 
 are in operation. At present a committee of 
 the council is assisting the Ordnance Depart- 
 ment in the improvement of various processes 
 which are easily open to important develop- 
 ment through chemical experimentation. Here, 
 as in all other cases, the fundamental principle 
 of the council has been to recommend the im- 
 mediate adoption of the best available process, 
 and not to allow research development to re- 
 tard in the slightest degree the immediate util- 
 ization of the best available methods to meet 
 war necessities. At the same time research 
 follows the application of these methods, espe- 
 cially in such a case as that of nitrogen fixation, 
 where slight improvements might effect enor- 
 mous savings in the process of manufacture. 
 
 As the business men and scientists of the 
 country mobilized themselves for the service 
 of the country, so did the medical men. The 
 medical section of the Council of National De- 
 fense has done a notable work for the army 
 and navy. Through its medium it has been
 
 224 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 possible for the government to keep in touch 
 with the medical profession over the entire 
 country, and to secure the thousands of men 
 and women needed as surgeons and nurses. 
 The section, too, has performed a valuable 
 service in standardizing instruments and sup- 
 plies, and in securing a substitution of instru- 
 ments for those for which we formerly relied 
 on Germany. The war has made a heavy drain 
 on the medical and nursing professions, and 
 to enlist their members in sufficient numbers 
 in the national service, without unduly en- 
 dangering the public health, has not been one 
 of the least of the government's problems.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE RAILROADS 
 
 IT has happened that in its battle against 
 autocracy, our government has become an 
 autocracy. But it has become an autocracy 
 for the war only and by the wish of the people, 
 as expressed through their representatives. 
 This condition is true of every other nation 
 that is fighting the German horror. Unified 
 action was necessary, and unified action could 
 only be had through a centralization of con- 
 trol. As the Allies placed their armies under 
 the command of General Foch, so America 
 placed her industries under command of Presi- 
 dent Wilson, that their co-ordinated powers 
 might be used to the quick winning of the war. 
 We have seen how our government has taken 
 indirect control of our farms and their prod- 
 ucts through the activities of the Food Ad- 
 ministration; how it controls our manufac- 
 turing industries through the War Industries 
 Board and Fuel Administration. Although in all 
 
 225
 
 226 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 of these cases it has wide powers under the 
 law, instead of using the force of the law to 
 attain its ends it has relied more on suasion 
 and on the patriotism of the people; it has 
 endeavored to secure its desires by agreement 
 instead of compulsion. The real power that it 
 yields is in the fact that it is the largest buyer 
 of commodities in the world. In every activity 
 of our lives we see the hand of the government. 
 Economic changes have been wrought by the 
 war that a few years ago we should have deemed 
 impossible. Of these many will pass away with 
 the war. One change alone seems likely to 
 continue, if not in all, in at least some of its 
 phases. It is that in our transportation sys- 
 tem. As the government had to take virtual 
 control of our industries, so it had to take real 
 control of our railroads. To do so was a neces- 
 sity of war. Troops, food, material had to be 
 moved in orderly fashion. Before the govern- 
 ment took this control, the railroads could not 
 attain the high pitch of efficiency that was 
 needed, and the reasons were obvious. 
 
 We have the greatest transportation system 
 in the world, and some ten years ago James
 
 THE RAILROADS 227 
 
 J. Hill, the veteran railroad builder, said that 
 if our railroads were to be kept in condition 
 and to keep pace with the country's growth, 
 there would have to be expended on them one 
 billion dollars a year. They were never al- 
 lowed to make that billion. They were so reg- 
 ulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission 
 that their earnings were kept to the lowest 
 possible point, while taxes and the prices of 
 labor and material were steadily rising. They 
 were pinched between upper and nether mill- 
 stones. To make extensions or improvements 
 they had to borrow money. In 1914 and 1915 
 traffic on them fell to a point that brought 
 trouble to many of them to meet expenses. 
 They had no money with which to provide 
 for future needs. In the fall of 1915, their 
 business began to increase so rapidly that there 
 was a serious shortage of rolling-stock. While 
 their gross operating incomes increased largely, 
 the net revenue per mile for the whole country 
 decreased. In the fall of 1916, the employees 
 began to agitate for an eight-hour day, with 
 ten hours' pay, and time and one-half overtime. 
 The refusal of the railroads to meet this, brought,
 
 228 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 as we have seen, the passage of the Adamson 
 law giving the men an eight-hour day and pro 
 rata overtime, and caused a controversy which 
 continued almost to the day of our entering 
 the war. The railroads appealed to the courts 
 for relief. As late as March 17, the men were 
 threatening to strike, and were only withheld 
 by the efforts of the government and the na- 
 tional labor leaders who saw war ahead. When 
 the decision of the Supreme Court two days 
 later upheld the law, the dispute ended but 
 only for a time. The Interstate Commerce 
 Commission granted the railroads some relief 
 in the way of increases in rates on certain com- 
 modities in various sections, but this proved 
 inadequate. For several years there had been a 
 continued depreciation in road-beds and roll- 
 ing-stock, and no money to mend the trouble. 
 Many of the roads had failed to pay the interest 
 on money borrowed for improvements, and 
 railroad credit was generally bad. 
 
 The war greatly increased the strain of our 
 transportation systems. To secure co-ordina- 
 tion a Railroads War Board was formed, com- 
 posed of six leading railroad executives, and
 
 THE RAILROADS 229 
 
 they operated the roads for nine months as 
 one, as far as they could with the restrictions 
 placed on them by Federal and State laws. 
 Despite the fact that in this time they handled 
 a record-breaking traffic, the congestion became 
 steadily worse, and in the fall of 1917 it threat- 
 ened serious consequences. About this time 
 the employees were again agitating for more 
 wages. Some seventy thousand of them had 
 gone into the army and navy, further handi- 
 capping the roads. Labor was scarce and it 
 was hard to hold the men when high pay was 
 to be had in the shipyards and munition fac- 
 tories. To end all these difficulties the Presi- 
 dent acted under the powers given him by Con- 
 gress in the Adamson law, which allowed him 
 to take over and operate the roads in case of 
 military necessity. By proclamation, on De- 
 cember 26, 1917, he took control of the entire 
 transportation system of the country, both 
 by land and water. 
 
 The United States Railroad Administration 
 was then formed, with Secretary McAdoo at 
 its head. The administration is to operate 
 the roads only for the period of the war and
 
 230 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 twenty -one months thereafter. Under the law 
 passed on March 21, the roads must be main- 
 tained in as good repair and with as complete 
 equipment as when taken over; the roads must 
 receive in compensation a net income equal 
 in every case to the average net income in the 
 three years preceding June 30, 1917, which 
 happened to be lean years all excess going 
 to the government; regular dividends and in- 
 terest on bonds and other obligations may con- 
 tinue to be paid unless the director-general 
 otherwise directs. A contract was agreed to 
 between the government and the railroads in 
 the present summer covering the details of 
 these points. 
 
 To provide for the betterment in the rail- 
 roads' operating facilities so much needed for 
 the purposes of the war, the government estab- 
 lished a revolving fund of $500,000,000. This 
 fund is augmented by the earnings of the rail- 
 roads in excess of the rental paid for them by 
 the government. And in the first year of its 
 control the government arranged to loan to 
 the companies nearly $1,000,000,000, but a 
 small part of which was ordered spent on
 
 THE RAILROADS 231 
 
 new construction, while the rest was divided 
 between new equipment and betterment of 
 road-beds and terminals. The government 
 simply does for the roads what was formerly 
 done by private capital, makes them loans 
 for which it takes their bonds and notes as 
 security. Such an arrangement allows the 
 government to make the improvements that 
 are demanded by military necessity. To-day 
 the Railroad Administration is operating 188 
 large railroad systems and 800 short lines, with 
 a trackage of 260,000 miles. It was quickly 
 confronted by the same problems with which 
 the companies had been so long wrestling, rising 
 costs of operations against low earnings. But 
 it could do what the companies could not. It 
 at once ordered an increase of 25 per cent in 
 all freight rates, and raised passenger fares 
 from 2^ cents to 3 cents per mile. The em- 
 ployees were making heavy demands on the 
 companies, and the Railroad Wage Comin:?- 
 sion was ordered to investigate this question. 
 In its report the director-general in August 
 granted advances in wages aggregating more 
 than $300,000,000, and these advances were
 
 232 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 made retroactive to the beginning of the 
 year. 
 
 The operation of the roads has remained 
 practically in the hands of the former operat- 
 ing officers. The corporate interests of the 
 companies owning the railways are looked after 
 by corporations' executive officers, who have 
 no connection with the administration. They 
 have continued in their places to guard the 
 interests of stockholders and creditors. To 
 secure efficiency of operation, the railroad mile- 
 age of the country has been divided into seven 
 regional districts, each in charge of a regional 
 director, an experienced railway executive. 
 These districts are subdivided into smaller 
 districts under directors. Under them Federal 
 managers have charge of important single di- 
 visiors or groups of smaller divisions. General 
 managers direct the still smaller units. All of 
 these directors and managers have severed their 
 connections with the corporations, transferring 
 their allegiance to the administration. 
 
 The effect of this unified control has been 
 a more direct routing of traffic and a conse- 
 quent saving in time and money. Under the
 
 THE RAILROADS 233 
 
 old system there could be no competition in 
 freight or passenger rates; but there was com- 
 petition to get business by advertising and 
 the employment of solicitors. It is estimated 
 that by the consolidation of ticket offices and 
 the abandoning of advertising, many millions 
 will be saved. Inasmuch as the government 
 receives all the money paid in, there is no ob- 
 ject in any company carrying freight con- 
 signed to it over unnecessarily long lines. The 
 freight can be rerouted over lines that carry it 
 to its destination by the shortest way possible. 
 Under the old system two companies would have 
 competing passenger-trains leaving one point for 
 another point at the same time. Between large 
 centres there were many duplications of this 
 kind which it has been possible to eliminate, 
 with great saving of cost. The need of the 
 roads for freight movement, as well as for the 
 purpose of economy, has led to the cutting 
 down of unnecessary passenger traffic as far 
 as possible. East of the Mississippi passenger- 
 trains that travelled more than 25,000,000 
 miles per year have been cut off, while west of 
 the river there has been a saving of more than
 
 234 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 20,000,000 miles. Other economies have been 
 effected by providing for the common use of 
 terminals by railways that were formerly 
 competing. The standardization of locomo- 
 tives and freight-cars, will, it is expected, 
 make for increased efficiency and the saving of 
 money. 
 
 While the public has suffered inconvenience 
 by the curtailment of passenger service and 
 has had an added drain put on its pocket by 
 increases in rates, it has borne the change with 
 patriotic good nature, realizing that efficiency 
 in railroad operation was one of the factors in 
 the winning of the war. Vast quantities of 
 food and war materials and large numbers of 
 troops had to be moved to the Atlantic sea- 
 board, and this could only be done successfully 
 with unified control. Government operation 
 of the railroads was a war measure. Whether 
 or not it will continue as a peace measure re- 
 mains to be seen. If the roads are turned back 
 to their owners, as it is promised they will be, 
 some may find themselves to have suffered 
 great hardship, while others may have bene- 
 fitted greatly by the period of government
 
 THE RAILROADS 235 
 
 financing. The "unscrambling of the eggs," 
 will be a difficult problem. 
 
 The government had to take over the opera- 
 tion of the railroads as a war measure, because 
 the unscientific treatment of them for so many 
 years had enfeebled them for war-work. They 
 had been heckled by politicians of all parties. 
 They had been hampered in their growth by 
 Federal and State commissions. Radical 
 politicians always speak of them as though 
 they were run for the benefit of a few stock- 
 holders and bondholders, and are, therefore, 
 fair game for attack. As a matter of fact, the 
 number of those who have their money directly 
 invested in them runs into millions. More 
 than that, fully one-half of the people of the 
 country have an indirect financial interest in 
 them. There are over 10,000,000 savings-banks 
 depositors in the country, and more than 30,- 
 000,000 industrial workers who carry insurance 
 against death and casualty. Through these 
 banking and insurance institutions their money 
 has been invested in what should be a security 
 as safe as any in the world. When the war is 
 over these millions of investors will watch with
 
 236 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 concern the future of their properties, and it 
 is doubtful that the majority of Americans 
 would quietly acquiesce in the continuation in 
 times of peace of a policy of railroad control 
 which would leave the finest transportation 
 systems in the world mere shuttlecocks for the 
 battledores of politics. It is more probable 
 that from the present experiment there will 
 be worked out a system of control which will 
 deal fairly with the public, the investors, and 
 the employees. 
 
 This action of the government has been called 
 socialistic. It was, but for the time there was 
 no other way out of a dangerous situation. 
 The war must be won. Realizing this, Amer- 
 icans have faced trainless days and seatless 
 trains with the same cheerful willingness that 
 they have wheatless days and gasless Sundays.
 
 THE COLLEGE 
 
 A BOOK such as this, which seeks to de- 
 * * scribe briefly America's mobilization for 
 war, would not be complete without considera- 
 tion of the splendid part played by our uni- 
 versities and colleges in the great effort. It 
 was to them that the government had to look 
 for the large number of officers needed for the 
 formation of our armies. Modern warfare is 
 a technical science. The science of war in 
 Napoleon's day, and for many years after, was 
 largely a matter of strategy and manoeuvre. 
 The weapons used were few and comparatively 
 simple. To-day every science is called to the 
 aid of the armies. The knowledge of chemistry, 
 of mechanics, of mathematics, and electricity 
 all play a part in the construction and opera- 
 tion of engines of warfare. Officers who are 
 to lead men into battle must be experts in the 
 use of special arms and devices that were un- 
 known but a few years ago. Not so long since 
 
 237
 
 238 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 artillery fired almost pointblank at its target, 
 but to-day it fires at an unseen target miles 
 away, and must depend for accuracy on the 
 niceties of mathematical calculation and ob- 
 servation from airplanes and outlying posts. 
 Every branch of army service requires special- 
 ists of some kind, whether on the fighting-line 
 or far behind it. For the command of effective 
 fighting forces trained officers are essential. 
 Before the Great War we had only two schools, 
 West Point and Annapolis, whose sole purpose 
 it was to fit young men for command in event 
 of war, and they graduated yearly but a few 
 hundred. When we entered the conflict, one 
 of our crying needs was for competent junior 
 officers. 
 
 Fortunately, there had been held, in the 
 summer of 1915 and 1916, that series of camps 
 for voluntary training which were attended 
 by some thousands of young men. Of these 
 the great majority were graduates or under- 
 graduates of our universities and colleges whose 
 education and discipline made them readily 
 adaptable to the requirements of military life. 
 From the colleges, in fact, came the first ef-
 
 THE COLLEGE 239 
 
 fective movement for preparedness for war. 
 Men like Eliot and Lowell of Harvard, Hadley 
 of Yale, and Hibben of Princeton early saw 
 the danger of war, and in their writings and 
 speeches urged active preparation for it. Their 
 universities went further and to practical 
 things. They established courses of military 
 training to fit their young men for commis- 
 sions in the officers' reserve corps. Harvard 
 and Princeton formed infantry regiments, and 
 Yale a field-artillery battalion. Similar interest 
 in military training began to be taken in in- 
 stitutions of learning all over the country. The 
 State universities and colleges, receiving aid 
 from the government under the land -grant 
 act, had long had military tactics as a part of 
 their curricula, but these courses were only 
 rudimentary. Now they broadened their work 
 and sought to fit their training to modern needs. 
 The camps in the summers of 1915 and 1916, 
 were filled with hundreds of patriotic under- 
 graduates who gave up their vacations to pre- 
 pare themselves for the day when they be- 
 lieved their country would need them. When 
 the day did come many of them were ready
 
 240 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 for duty. Yale, alone, at once sent 250 men 
 into the artillery service. Thousands of under- 
 graduates abandoned their academic pursuits 
 and went to the flying-fields and training-camps. 
 Of the 40,000 men in the officers' camps of 1917, 
 fully 85 per cent were college graduates or 
 undergraduates. Now not a day passes but 
 we read of the death on the field of battle of 
 gallant young men who hardly more than a 
 year ago were wandering care-free over some 
 college campus. Day by day they are going 
 overseas in an ever-increasing flow, boys hardly 
 more than out of their teens, who seemed to 
 have before them all that was good in life, but 
 now stand ready to lay down their lives that 
 their fellows may live in freedom. 
 
 At this writing it is impossible to give ac- 
 curate figures as to the number of college men 
 in war service, but statistics compiled in mid- 
 summer by the Western Reserve University 
 indicate that they number more than 100,000. 
 Harvard had then sent more than 8,000 grad- 
 uates and undergraduates to war; the Univer- 
 sity of California 2,000 and Columbia 4,500. 
 Yale had sent 5,800 graduates and 927 under-
 
 THE COLLEGE 241 
 
 graduates; the Northwestern University respec- 
 tively 1,071 and 370; Purdue 1,462 and 494; 
 Johns Hopkins 500 and 235; Massachusetts 
 Institute of Technology 1,900 and 400; Wil- 
 liams 752 and 192; the University of Michigan 
 5,000 and 2,000; Princeton 2,423 and 532; 
 Brown 700 and 300; the University of Wash- 
 ington 1,587 and 1,325. In proportion to their 
 size the smaller colleges have done as well. The 
 record of all is one of honor. 
 
 The conduct of the war required the mobil- 
 ization of the intelligence of the country, and 
 when it accepted the German challenge, the 
 government instinctively turned to the colleges 
 as the source from which it could best obtain 
 the army of men of character and education 
 so urgently needed. In May, following the 
 declaration of war, a conference was held in 
 Washington between representatives of the 
 various associations of the institutions of 
 higher learning, the Bureau of Education and 
 the Council of National Defense. Here plans 
 were outlined for patriotic service. All the 
 facilities of the colleges were placed at the 
 government's disposal, and they arranged to
 
 242 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 organize themselves so as to be of the greatest 
 use in the crisis. Not only did they offer the 
 country its finest source of intelligent man- 
 power, but their laboratories were to prove 
 of value in research work, and their halls and 
 dormitories useful for military schools of all 
 kinds. While an effort has been made to halt 
 as little as possible the progress of higher edu- 
 cation, the demands of the war have been such 
 as to make it imperative that the young men 
 of the country train themselves in military 
 science or other sciences and technical work, 
 a knowledge of which is of so great importance 
 in these times. To-day nearly all of our col- 
 leges are organized on a war basis. 
 
 Before April 6, 1917, there were in many 
 of our colleges centres of pacifism and German 
 propaganda. Those involved were either con- 
 scientious pacifists, idealistic professors who 
 opposed war and held that the way to whip 
 Germany was to sit placidly by and let her 
 whip you, or they were Germans or German - 
 trained scholars avowedly partisans of Kultur. 
 Our neutrality made them difficult to deal with, 
 but when we went to war they were quickly
 
 THE COLLEGE 243 
 
 stilled or rendered harmless. How little their 
 influence, was shown by the answer of both 
 faculties and students to the call to arms. Hun- 
 dreds of teachers left their lecture-halls to don 
 the uniform or to take up research work for 
 the government; thousands of students of 
 military age and physical fitness hurried to 
 the ranks and the training-camps of the army 
 and navy. Seven hundred students of the 
 University of Michigan, and 800 of Yale left 
 their studies for the service before their school 
 year ended. This was true everywhere. The 
 institutions found their faculties and student 
 bodies depleted. In the beginning of the fol- 
 lowing collegiate year, 1917-18, the enrolments 
 of new and old students fell off startlingly. In 
 the higher classes, senior and junior, there was 
 an average decrease in attendance of fully 30 
 per cent. The attendance at Harvard, Yale, 
 and Princeton was cut almost one-third, and 
 a like condition existed in nearly all the other 
 universities. For those institutions, with small 
 endowments, which depend largely on student 
 fees for their support, there were threatened 
 financial difficulties, and it would have been
 
 244 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 easier for them to have closed for the period 
 of the war. But the government's theory was 
 that a steady supply of college-trained men 
 was necessary to the conduct of the war, and 
 all of them have patriotically faced their dif- 
 ficulties and continued their work. They have 
 even reached out with renewed energy to in- 
 duce young men to avail themselves of the 
 educational opportunities they give. The ac- 
 tion of the government in utilizing their facili- 
 ties for military-training purposes has helped 
 largely to relieve many of them of the financial 
 burdens imposed on them by the war. While 
 they have been able to continue their academic 
 courses, in most of them training for war has 
 become the major part of their business. 
 Nearly all of them have established courses 
 giving training in some phase of army or navy 
 work. In eight technical institutions there have 
 been founded schools where aspirants for avia- 
 tion commissions receive instruction in air- 
 plane mechanics before going to the flying-fields; 
 institutions especially equipped for the teach- 
 ing of chemistry are being used for courses in 
 chemical warfare; Yale has developed a fine
 
 THE COLLEGE 245 
 
 artillery school. The Reserve Officers' Training 
 Corps of Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, Cali- 
 fornia, and other universities are giving the 
 government splendid men for commissions. 
 
 But the government is looking to the col- 
 leges not only to develop officers but to train 
 enlisted men for special duty. Their labora- 
 tories and shops have proved of great value in 
 developing mechanics for work in the airplane 
 and motor-transport services, in training radio 
 operators, and in fitting men for special branches 
 of the naval service. Four hundred of them 
 were recently designated to give intensive 
 courses in military work to men of the draft 
 age. These colleges are practically army posts. 
 Every able-bodied undergraduate is a member 
 of the Student Army Training Corps, while 
 thousands of graduates, and non-college men 
 who have shown special intelligence, have in 
 them an opportunity to prepare themselves for 
 service. These students are fed and clothed 
 at the government's expense and receive the 
 pay of privates in the army. 
 
 The study of the liberal arts in our colleges 
 has been rudely interrupted by the war. The
 
 246 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 study of science has been greatly stimulated 
 by the need of meeting the Hun with his special 
 weapon. The pleasant, quiet course of college 
 life has been disjointed and turned awry for 
 a time. The broad spaces of the football and 
 baseball fields are crowded with figures in khaki. 
 The lecture-halls, which once resounded with 
 dissertations on history and psychology, are 
 used now for the expounding of the principles 
 of navigation and gun-fire. We seem to be 
 devoting all our knowledge to perfecting the 
 art of killing. It is only for a time. Our col- 
 leges will return again to those pleasant, quiet 
 ways. Their purpose is to teach the art of liv- 
 ing. But those whose fortune it has been to 
 acquire knowledge in their halls saw that there 
 could be no decent living while Germany raged 
 through the world. Reluctantly they turned 
 to the art of war. And they have been proving 
 themselves gallant soldiers in a righteous cause.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 writer has endeavored in this book 
 to picture clearly and briefly the vast 
 problem faced by America when she entered 
 the battle for liberty, and to show how that 
 problem has been solved. Great difficulties 
 have been met, and they have been overcome 
 by the united efforts of the people. To-day 
 the greatest army that ever followed our flag 
 is fighting in the distant fields of France, and 
 millions more of our men stand ready to take 
 their place on the battle-line. The mobilization 
 of our man-power has been one of the marvels 
 of our history. It has been accomplished with 
 a speed and a lack of friction that a few years 
 ago we should have thought impossible. From 
 the North, East, South, and West, the men have 
 poured into our armies, and those who but a 
 year ago were working quietly on our farms 
 and in our shops have proved themselves as 
 brave and resourceful soldiers as ever went 
 
 247
 
 248 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 into battle. The mobilization of our mechan- 
 ical power has not been effected so rapidly and 
 so well. Of the two tasks, that of finding 
 the fighting men, and that of arming them and 
 getting them overseas, the latter has proved 
 the more difficult. Both tasks are being ac- 
 complished. Each day that goes by and brings 
 its long toll of those who have given their 
 lives in our defense makes more determined 
 the will of the people that they shall be accom- 
 plished. There is no question as to the mind 
 of America in this war. The States that once 
 were most blind to the peril that lay in German 
 ambition are to-day retiring to private life the 
 men who in Congress obstructed the efforts 
 for our protection. 
 
 Few sane and patriotic men to-day doubt 
 the wisdom of our government in raising its 
 armies by imposing the obligation to fight on 
 every man capable of bearing arms. Twenty- 
 five million men are on the rolls; 3,000,000 are 
 under arms; more than a million and a half 
 are in France, and each month the numbers 
 increase. In no other way could such results 
 have been obtained. That they have been ob-
 
 CONCLUSION 249 
 
 tained through the operation of the selective- 
 service law is due to the wise way in which 
 those in charge of the working of the law have 
 carried out its provisions. They have not used 
 military force. They have trusted to the pa- 
 triotism of American men, and the vast mass 
 have shown that this trust was warranted. 
 There have been slackers, of course ; there have 
 been those who dodged the registration, and 
 those who registered but sought to avoid its 
 obligations by specious pleas. They have earned 
 the country's contempt. The country's pride 
 is in those long-limbed, brown men of ours who 
 are charging over the steel-riddled fields of 
 France. 
 
 It is planned next spring to have 5,000,000 
 men at the battle-front. Germany has de- 
 clared contemptuously that it cannot be done. 
 She declared as contemptuously that we could 
 not move a million there this year. It has been 
 done, as she has learned at Chateau-Thierry 
 and St.-Mihiel. But to move and keep 5,000,000 
 overseas will demand every ounce of energy 
 in the country. Fortunately one of the most 
 difficult of the problems involved is fast being
 
 250 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 solved. The submarine is being beaten. As 
 we have seen, it requires five dead-weight 
 tons of shipping moving on the sea to keep 
 one soldier in France. To carry out our mili- 
 tary programme we must have 25,000,000 dead- 
 weight tons available for our army by spring. 
 The energy of our ship-builders is solving this 
 problem for us. By August 30 of the present 
 year the world rate of building new vessels 
 had exceeded the rate of their destruction by 
 the Germans. The August production of our 
 shipyards was a world record, 390,980 dead- 
 weight tons leaving the ways. A statement 
 issued by the United States Shipping Board 
 on September 21 shows that from the begin- 
 ning of the world war until September 1, 1918, 
 the losses of Allied and neutral shipping by 
 German action were 21,404,913 dead-weight 
 tons. In the same period the total Allied and 
 neutral construction was 14,247,825 dead-weight 
 tons. There was added to the world's tonnage 
 from captured enemy vessels 3,795,000 dead- 
 weight tons. The excess of losses over gains 
 in the entire period was 3,362,088 dead-weight 
 or (dividing by 1.6) 2,101,305 gross tons, the
 
 CONCLUSION 251 
 
 terms of shipping used in the British table be- 
 fore given. In the thirteen months ending 
 September 1, 1918, the American shipyards had 
 produced 3,017,238 dead-weight tons, showing 
 how the construction was overtaking the de- 
 struction. It was unfortunate that we had 
 that early delay in our ship -building pro- 
 gramme, but in organizing a gigantic business 
 it takes time to get the right men hi the right 
 place. To-day we have them in charge of our 
 shipping, as the record shows. The vessels are 
 coming from the yards in ever-increasing num- 
 bers, and our navy and the navies of the Allies 
 are holding the undersea pirates in check. 
 
 For the mobilization of our man-power we 
 had a clean-cut law, ably executed by General 
 Crowder, provost marshal general, with the as- 
 sistance of a great number of volunteers and 
 the general co-operation of the people. In 
 the mobilization of our machine-power, to equip 
 and arm these newly gathered armies, we were 
 less fortunate. There was at first procrastina- 
 tion and confusion. Here, too, as in the ship- 
 ping matter, it took time to get the right men 
 in the right place. From the start the navy
 
 252 HOW WE WENT TO WAR 
 
 worked smoothly, because it had at its head, 
 in charge of its bureaus, able professional offi- 
 cers. They knew what they wanted and got 
 it. The problem of the Navy Department, 
 as has been pointed out, was not so difficult 
 as that of the War Department. That we did 
 have irritating delays in the War Department 
 is evident from the investigations of the Sen- 
 ate into the aircraft and ordnance programmes. 
 These troubles had been corrected by the end 
 of the first year and a half of war. Able men 
 were in charge and were seeing that we got 
 for our armies the much-needed airplanes and 
 guns of all calibers. While it is difficult to 
 understand the way in which these problems 
 were handled at first, we can find cheer to- 
 day in the fact that they are now being worked 
 out. 
 
 It has been argued in some quarters that 
 our war preparations would have proceeded 
 more rapidly and effectively had they been 
 in charge of a coalition cabinet. Certainly 
 the magnitude of the crisis called for the best 
 intelligences of the country without regard 
 to political parties. It has been contended
 
 CONCLUSION 253 
 
 that a wiser direction of the great departments 
 of the government might have been seen had 
 those in charge of them been appointed more 
 for their ability and experience than out of 
 consideration for their political affiliations. On 
 this question there are differences of opinion. 
 But there are no differences of opinion among 
 true Americans as to the need of pushing the 
 war to the utmost of our power and to victory. 
 The intelligence of the country has stood ready 
 at the government's call. Whatever the gov- 
 ernment has asked, the people have given 
 cheerfully. 
 
 We know that the President has promised 
 " force force to the utmost force without 
 stint or limit the righteous and triumphant 
 force which shall make right the law of the 
 world and cast every selfish dominion down 
 in the dust ! " 
 
 A people that has been pouring out its blood 
 will not rest content until the world is freed 
 from the horror of German rule.
 
 DATE DUE
 
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