Woodrow Wilson and the World War Part 3

The President's attempt thus cleared the air. It made plain to the majority of Americans that in sympathy, at least, the United States must be definitely aligned with Great Britain and France. Furthermore the replies of the belligerents gave to Wilson an opportunity to inform the world more definitely of the aims of the United States, in case it should be drawn into the war. This he did in a speech delivered to the Senate on January 22, 1917. America would play her part in world affairs, he said, but the other nations must clearly understand the conditions of our partic.i.p.ation. The basis of peace must be the right of each individual nation to decide its destiny for itself without interference from a stronger alien power. "I am proposing as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful."

Instead of the old system of alliances there should be a general concert of powers: "There is no entangling alliance in a concert of powers. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection." As the result of such a concert no one power would dominate the sea or the land; armaments might safely be limited; peace would be organized by the major force of mankind. As a guarantee of future justice and tranquillity the terms that settled the present war must be based upon justice and not be of the sort ordinarily dictated by the victor to the vanquished. It must be a "peace without victory." Thus while Wilson warned Germany that her ambitions for continental domination would not be tolerated, he also warned the Allies that they could not count upon the United States to help them to crush Germany for their selfish individual purposes.

This speech, despite the unfortunate phrase, "peace without victory," was hailed in all liberal circles, amongst the Allies and in the United States, as a n.o.ble charter of the new international order. Wilson had expressed the hope that he was "speaking for the silent ma.s.s of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear." This hope was doubtless realized. The first reaction in France and England was one of rather puzzled contempt, if we may judge by the press. But the newspaper writers soon found that what Wilson said many people had been thinking, and waiting for some one to say. Hall Caine wrote to the _Public Ledger_, "Let President Wilson take heart from the first reception of his remarkable speech. The best opinion here is one of deep feeling and profound admiration." From that moment Wilson began to approach the position he was shortly to hold--that of moral leader of the world.

The President had been anxious to make plain his principles, before the United States became involved in the conflict through the withdrawal of German submarine pledges, as well as to convince the world that every honest effort possible had been made to preserve the peace. He was only just in time. Already the advocates of ruthlessness in Berlin had persuaded the Kaiser and Bethmann-Hollweg. They recognized that the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare meant, in all probability, the intervention of the United States, but they recked little of the consequences. On January 16, 1917, the Kaiser telegraphed: "If a break with America is unavoidable, it cannot be helped; we proceed." The same day the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Zimmermann, telegraphed to the German Minister in Mexico, instructing him to form an alliance with Mexico in the event of war between Germany and the United States, and to offer as bribe the States of New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas; he also suggested the possibility of winning j.a.pan from her allegiance to the Entente and persuading her to enter this prospective alliance.

On the 31st of January, von Bernstorff threw off the mask. The German Amba.s.sador informed our Government of the withdrawal of the _Suss.e.x_ pledge. On and after the 1st of February, German submarines would sink on sight all s.h.i.+ps met within a delimited zone around the British Isles and in the Mediterranean. They would permit the sailing of a few American steams.h.i.+ps, however, provided they followed a certain defined route to Falmouth and nowhere else, and provided there were marked "on s.h.i.+p's hull and superstructure three vertical stripes one meter wide, to be painted alternately white and red. Each mast should show a large flag checkered white and red, and the stern the American national flag. Care should be taken that during dark, national flag and painted marks are easily recognizable from a distance, and that the boats are well lighted throughout." Other conditions followed. There might sail one steams.h.i.+p a week "in each direction, with arrival at Falmouth on Sunday and departure from Falmouth on Wednesday." Furthermore the United States Government must guarantee "that no contraband (according to the German contraband list) is carried by those steams.h.i.+ps." Such were the orders issued to the United States. No native American could escape the humor of the stipulations, which for a moment prevented the national irritation from swelling into an outburst of deep-seated wrath.

There seems to have been little hesitation on the part of the President.

On April 19, 1916, he had warned Germany that unrestricted submarine warfare meant a severance of diplomatic relations. Now, on February 3, 1917, addressing both houses of Congress, he announced that those relations had been broken. Von Bernstorff was given his papers and the American Amba.s.sador, James W. Gerard, was recalled from Berlin. No other course of action could have been contemplated in view of the formality of the President's warning and the definiteness of Germany's defiance.

Despite the protests of scattered pacifists, the country was as nearly a unit in its approval of Wilson's action as its heterogeneous national character permitted. All the pent-up emotions of the past two years found expression in quiet but unmistakable applause at the departure of the German Amba.s.sador.

The prompt.i.tude of the President's dismissal of von Bernstorff did not conceal the disappointment which he experienced from Germany's revelation of her true purposes. He seems to have hoped to the end that the German liberals would succeed in bringing their Government to accept moderate terms of peace. Even now he expressed the hope that Germany's actions would not be such as to force the United States into the War: "I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do.... Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now." But "if American s.h.i.+ps and American lives should in fact be sacrificed by their naval commanders in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law and the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before the Congress to ask that authority be given me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral governments will take the same course." He was careful, moreover, to underline the fact that his action was dictated always by a consistent desire for peace: "We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the immemorial principles of our people.... These are the bases of peace, not war. G.o.d grant we may not be challenged to defend them by acts of willful injustice on the part of the Government of Germany!"

But Germany proceeded heedlessly. Warned that American intervention would result only from overt acts, the German Admiralty hastened to commit such acts. From the 3d of February to the 1st of April, eight American vessels were sunk by submarines and forty-eight American lives thus lost.

Because of the practical blockade of American ports which followed the hesitation of American s.h.i.+pping interests to send boats unarmed into the dangers of the "war zone," President Wilson came again to Congress on the 26th of February to ask authority to arm merchant vessels for purposes of defense. Again he stressed his unwillingness to enter upon formal warfare and emphasized the idealistic aspect of the issue: "It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. It is, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of life itself. I am thinking not only of the rights of Americans to go and come about their proper business by way of the sea, but also of something much deeper, much more fundamental than that. I am thinking of those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization.... I cannot imagine any man with American principles at his heart hesitating to defend these things."

Blinded by prejudice and tradition, a handful of Senators, twelve "willful men," as Wilson described them, blocked, through a filibuster, the resolution granting the power requested by the President. But the storm of popular obloquy which covered them proved that the nation as a whole was determined to support him in the defense of American rights.

The country was stirred to the depths. The publication of the plans of Germany for involving the United States in war with Mexico and j.a.pan came merely as added stimulus. So also of the story of the cruelties heaped by the Germans on the American prisoners of the _Yarrowdale_. There was so much of justice in the cause that pa.s.sion was notable by its absence.

When finally on the 17th of March news came of the torpedoing of the _Vigilancia_ without warning, America was prepared and calmly eager for the President's demand that Congress recognize the existence of a state of war.

The demand was made by Wilson in an extraordinary joint session of Congress, held on the 2d of April. In this, possibly his greatest speech, he was careful not to blur the idealistic principles which, since the spring of 1916, he had been formulating. War existed because Germany by its actions had thrust upon the United States the status of belligerent.

But the American people must meet the challenge with their purpose clearly before them. "We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious a.s.sertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.... The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life." He went on to define the objects of the war more specifically, referring to his earlier addresses: "Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles."

Democracy must be the soul of the new international order: "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partners.h.i.+p of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.... Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own." Because the existing German Government was clearly at odds with all such ideals, "We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty."

Wilson thus imagined the war as a crusade, the sort of crusade for American ideals which Clay and Webster once imagined. He was in truth originating nothing, but rather resuscitating the generous dreams which had once inspired those statesmen. In conclusion, he reiterated his love of peace. "But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,--for democracy, for the right of those who submit 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 peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free." At the moment of the declaration of war Wilson was still the man of peace, and the war upon which the nation was embarking was, in his mind, a war to ensure peace. To such a task of peace and liberation, he concluded in a peroration reminiscent of Lincoln and Luther, "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 happiness and the peace which she has treasured. G.o.d helping her, she can do no other."

How many Americans caught the real significance of Wilson's thought with all its consequences is doubtful. The country certainly looked upon the war as a crusade. But there was in the national emotion much that did not accord with the ideals of Wilson. The people hated Germany for the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and all the other submarine outrages, for her crimes in Belgium, for the plots and explosions in this country, for the Zimmermann note, and finally for her direct and insulting defiance of American rights. They recognized that the Allies were fighting for civilization; they sympathized with the democracies of Europe, of which, since the Russian revolution of March, the Allied camp was composed, and they wanted to help them. They feared for America's safety in the future, if Germany won the war. Most Americans entered the struggle, therefore, with a sober gladness, based partly on emotional, partly on quixotic, and partly on selfish grounds. But nearly all fought rather to beat Germany than to secure a new international order. Hence it was that after Germany was beaten, Wilson was destined to discover that his idealistic preaching had not fully penetrated, and that he had failed to educate his country, as completely as he believed, to the ideal of a partners.h.i.+p of democratic and peace-loving peoples as the essential condition of a new and safe world.

CHAPTER VI

THE NATION IN ARMS

When Congress declared that the United States was in a state of war with Germany, on April 6, 1917, the public opinion of the country was unified to a far greater extent than at the beginning of any previous war. The extreme patience displayed by President Wilson had its reward. When the year opened the majority of citizens doubtless still hoped that peace was possible. But German actions in February and March had gone far towards the education of the popular mind, and the final speeches of the President crystallized conviction. By April there were few Americans, except those in whom pacifism was a mania, who were not convinced that war with Germany was the only course consistent with either honor or safety. It is probable that many did not understand exactly the ideals that actuated Wilson, but nine persons out of ten believed it absolutely necessary to fight.

But, however firmly united, the country was completely unprepared for war in a military sense, and must now pay the penalty for President Wilson's opposition to adequate improvement of the military system in 1915 and for the half-hearted measures taken in 1916. Total military forces, including regular army, national guard, and reserves amounted to hardly three hundred thousand men and less than ten thousand officers. Even the regular army was by no means ready for immediate partic.i.p.ation in the sort of fighting demanded by the European war; and, even if adequate troops were raised, the lack of trained officers would create the most serious difficulties. No wonder that the German General Staff ranked the United States, from the military point of view, somewhere between Belgium and Portugal. Furthermore, military experts had been discouraged by the att.i.tude of the Administration. The Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, had failed, either through lack of administrative capacity or because of pacifistic tendencies, to prepare his department adequately. He had done nothing to rouse Congress or the nation from its att.i.tude of indifference towards preparation. By faith a pacifist, he had been opposed to universal military service. An extreme liberal, he distrusted the professional military type and was to find it difficult to cooperate with the captains of industry whose a.s.sistance was essential.

Thus with a President and War Secretary, both of whom had been instinctively opposed to a large army and who had expressed their fear of the development of a militaristic spirit, and with a majority in Congress favoring the traditional volunteer system, adherence to which had cost the British thousands of lives that might better have been used at home, the building of an effective army seemed a matter of extreme doubt. Great credit must go to both President Wilson and Secretary Baker for sinking their natural instincts and seeking, as well as following, the advice of the military experts, who alone were capable of meeting the problems that arose from a war for which the nation was not prepared.

The President must face not only the special problems caused by unreadiness, but also the general difficulties which confront every American war-President and which had tried nearly to the breaking-point even the capacity of Lincoln. The President of the United States in time of war is given the supreme unified command of the army and navy. But while the responsibility is his, actual control often rests in the hands of others. Members of Congress always take a keen interest in army matters; many of them have been or are militia-men. They have always opposed a single army which could be recruited, trained, and operated as a unit, and approved the system of State militia which makes for decentralization and gives to the separate States large influence in the formation of military policy. Even the President's control of the Federal army, regulars and volunteers, is limited by the decentralized organization of the different army bureaus, which depend upon Congress for their appropriations and which operate as almost independent and frequently competing units. The creation of a single programme for the army as a whole is thus a task of extreme difficulty.

President Wilson, as historian, was well aware of the tremendous price that had been paid in past wars for such decentralization, accompanied as it was, inevitably, by delays, misunderstandings, and mistakes. He was determined to create a single coordinating command, and his war policies were governed from beginning to end by this purpose. He set up no new machinery, but utilized as his main instrument the General Staff, which had been created in 1903 as a result of the blunders and confusion that had been so painfully manifest in the Spanish War. When the United States entered the World War the General Staff had by no means acquired the importance expected by those who had created it.[3] But to it the President turned, and it was this body enlarged in size and influence that ultimately put into operation Wilson's policy of centralization. It was in accordance with the advice of the men who composed the General Staff that the President elaborated the larger lines of the military programme, and they were the men who supervised the operation of details.

[Footnote 3: In April, 1917, the General Staff consisted of fifty-one officers, only nineteen of whom were on duty in Was.h.i.+ngton. Of these, eight were occupied with routine business, leaving but eleven free for the real purpose for which the staff had been created--"the study of military problems, the preparation of plans for national defense, and utilization of the military forces in time of war."]

None of the processes which marked the transition of the United States from a peace to a war basis are comprehensible unless we remember that the President was constantly working to overcome the forces of decentralization, and also that the military programme was always on an emergency basis, s.h.i.+fting almost from week to week in accordance with developments in Europe.

The original programme did not provide for an expeditionary force in France. During the early days of partic.i.p.ation in the war it was generally believed that the chief contributions of the United States to Allied victory would not be directly upon the fighting front. If the United States concentrated its efforts upon financing the Allies, furnis.h.i.+ng them with food, s.h.i.+pping, and the munitions which had been promised--so many persons argued--it would be doing far better than if it weakened a.s.sistance of that sort by attempting to set up and maintain a large fighting force of its own. The impression was unfortunately prevalent in civilian circles that Germany was on her last legs, and that the outcome of the war would be favorably settled before the United States could put an effective army in the field. Military experts, on the other hand, more thoroughly convinced of German strength, believed that the final campaigns could not come before the summer of 1919, and did not expect to provide a great expeditionary force previous to the spring of that year if indeed it were ever sent. Thus from opposite points of view the amateur and the professional deprecated haste in dispatching an army to France. From the moment the United States entered the war, President Wilson certainly seems to have resolved upon the preparation of an effective fighting force, if we may judge from his insistence upon the selective draft, although he did not expect that it would be used abroad. But it may be asked whether he did not hope for the arrangement of a negotiated peace, which if not "without victory" would at least leave Germany uncrushed. It is probable that he did not yet perceive that "force to the utmost" would be necessary before peace could be secured; that realization was to come only in the dark days of 1918.

A few weeks after America's declaration of war, however, France and Great Britain dispatched missions led by Balfour, Viviani, and Joffre, to request earnestly that at least a small American force be sent overseas at once for the moral effect upon dispirited France. The plea determined the President to send General Pers.h.i.+ng immediately with a force of about two thousand, who were followed in June and July, 1917, by sufficient additional forces to make up a division. Wilson had been authorized by Congress, under the Selective Service Act, to send four volunteer divisions abroad under the command of Roosevelt. But he refused to interfere with the plans of the military experts, who strongly objected to any volunteer forces whatever. Neither the valiant ex-President nor the prospective volunteers were trained for the warfare of the moment, and their presence in France would bring no practical good to the Allied cause; moreover the officers whom Roosevelt requested were sorely needed in American training camps.

General Pers.h.i.+ng, to whom was now entrusted the military fortunes of the American army abroad, was an officer fifty-seven years old, who had undergone wide military and administrative experience in Cuba and the Philippines; he had been given extraordinary promotion by President Roosevelt, who had jumped him from the rank of captain to that of Brigadier General; and he had been selected to lead the punitive force dispatched in pursuit of Villa in the spring of 1916. Distinguished in appearance, with superb carriage, thin lips, and squarely-chiselled chin, he possessed military gifts of a sound rather than brilliant character. A strict disciplinarian, he failed to win from his troops that affection which the _poilus_ gave to Petain, while he never displayed the genius that compelled universal admiration for Foch. Neither ultimate success nor the stories of his dramatic remarks (as at the grave of La Fayette: "La Fayette, we are here!") succeeded in investing him with the heroic halo that ought to come to a victorious commander. As time pa.s.ses, however, Pers.h.i.+ng takes higher rank. His insistence upon soldierly qualities, his unyielding determination to create American armies under an independent command, his skill in building up a great organization, his successful operations at St. Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne drive, despite faulty staff work--all these facts become more plain as we acquire perspective. If historians refuse to recognize him as a great general, they will surely describe his talents as more than adequate to the exigencies of the military situation.

The sending of the Pers.h.i.+ng expedition did not at once alter fundamentally the original programme for raising an army of about a million men to be kept in the United States, as a reserve in case of emergency. There was no intention of sending to France more troops than would be needed to keep filled the ranks of the small expeditionary force. But the urgent representations of the Allies and reports from American officers induced a radical change in policy. The latter emphasized the unsound military position of our Allies and insisted that the deadlock could be broken and the war won only by putting a really effective American army beside the French and British by the summer of 1918. A programme was drawn up in France and sent to the War Department, according to which an army of thirty divisions should be sent abroad before the end of that year. Throughout 1917 this plan remained rather a hope than a definite programme and it was not until early in 1918 that it was officially approved. It was thus of an emergency character and this fact combined with the indefiniteness prevalent during the autumn of 1917 to produce extreme confusion. In July, 1918, an eighty-division programme was adopted and more confusion resulted. Furthermore the entire problem was complicated by the question as to whether or not s.h.i.+ps could be found for transportation. It had been a.s.sumed that it would take six months to transport five hundred thousand troops. But in May, 1918, and thereafter nearly three hundred thousand troops a month were carried to France, largely through tonnage obtained from the British. Such a development of transportation facilities was not and could not be foreseen. It increased the confusion. In the face of such difficulties, the problems of man-power, training, and supplies had to be met and ultimately solved, largely through the centralization carried into effect by the General Staff.

The problem of man-power had been carefully considered during the weeks that preceded our entrance into the war and the declaration of war found the Government prepared with a plan for a selective draft. On the 7th of April, the day after the declaration of war, President Wilson insisted that "the safety of the nation depended upon the measure."

Congress, however, was slow to accept the principle of conscription, and the President encountered fierce opposition on the part of the advocates of the volunteer system, who were led by men of such influence as Speaker Champ Clark, House Leader Claude Kitchin, and the chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs, Stanley H. Dent. The President was inflexible, declaring that the Administration would not "yield an inch of any essential parts of the programme for raising an army by conscription,"

and exercised his personal influence to its fullest extent in order to secure a favorable vote. He was ably seconded by Julius Kahn, the ranking Republican member of the House Military Committee, who was himself born in Germany. The failure of House and Senate to agree on the matter of age liability delayed action for some weeks. Finally, on May 18, 1917, what is popularly known as the Selective Service Act became law.

This Act gave to the President power to raise the regular army by enlistment to 287,000 men, to take into the Federal service all members of the national guard, and to raise by selective draft, in two installments, a force of a million troops. All men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, both inclusive, were registered on the 5th of June; this with the subsequent registration of men coming of age later, produced an available body of more than ten millions. And when in the following year, the draft age was extended to include all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, both inclusive, thirteen millions more were added. From this body the names of those who were to serve were drawn by lot. All men registered were carefully cla.s.sified, in order that the first chosen might be those not merely best fitted for fighting, but those whose absence on the firing line would least disturb the essential economic life of the nation. Liberal exemptions were accorded, including artisans employed in industries necessary to war production and men upon whom others were dependent. On the 20th of July the first drawings were made, and by the end of the year about half a million of the drafted men, now called the National Army, were mustered in. In the meantime enlistments in the regular army and the national guard had raised the total number of troops to about a million and a quarter and of officers to more than one hundred thousand. Less than a year later, when the armistice was signed, the army included over three and a half millions, of whom nearly two millions were in France.

The real military contribution of the United States to allied victory lay in man-power. It could not of its own resources transport the troops nor equip them completely, but the raising of an enormous number of fresh forces, partially trained, it is true, but of excellent fighting caliber, made possible the maneuvers of Foch that brought disaster to German arms.

When once these armies arrived in numbers on the battle-line in France, the realization of the inexhaustible man-power of America did more than anything else to revive the spirit of the Allies and discourage the enemy.

Infinitely more difficult than the problem of man-power were those of training and supplies. As we have seen, these problems were complicated by the decision to send abroad an effective fighting force, a decision which completely changed the entire military situation. The original plan of maintaining an army only in the United States, as a reserve, permitted the questions of camps, supplies, equipment, munitions, and training to be undertaken at comparative leisure. But if a large army was to be placed in France by 1918, these problems must be solved immediately and upon an emergency basis. Hence resulted the confusion and expense which nearly led to the breakdown of the whole programme in the winter of 1917-18. The War Department faced a dilemma. If it waited until supplies were ready, the period of training would be too short. On the other hand, if it threw the new draft armies immediately into the camps, a.s.suming that the camps could be prepared, the troops would lack the wool uniforms and blankets necessary for protection, as well as the equipment with which to drill. The second alternative appeared the less dangerous, and in September the first draft calls were made and by December the camps were filled.[4]

[Footnote 4: The size of the army raised in 1917 demanded the building of enormous cantonments. Within three months of the first drawings sixteen complete cities of barracks had sprung up, each to accommodate 40,000 inhabitants. They had their officers' quarters, hospitals, sewage systems, filter plants, and garbage incinerators, electric lighting plants, libraries, theaters. By the 4th of September the National Army cantonments were ready for 430,000 men, two-thirds of the first draft. A single camp involved the expenditure of approximately $11,000,000. Camp Grant, at Rockford, Illinois, included 1600 buildings with s.p.a.ce for 45,000 men and 12,000 horses. The water, which before use was tested and filtered, was supplied from six huge wells drilled 175 feet deep, carried through 38 miles of water main, and stored in reservoir tanks holding 550,000 gallons. For lighting purposes there were 1450 miles of electric wire, 1200 poles, 35,000 incandescent lamps. During the period of construction, 50 carloads of building material were daily unloaded, and for several weeks an average of 500,000 board feet of lumber set up daily. The entire construction of the camp demanded 50,000,000 feet of lumber, 700 tons of nails, 4,000,000 feet of roofing, and 3,000,000 square feet of wall board.]

Many apprehensions were fulfilled in fact, when the terrible winter weather came, the worst in years. The northern camps faced it with insufficient clothing. Pneumonia made its invasion. Artillerymen were trained with wooden guns; infantrymen with wooden rifles or antiquated Krags. But all the time the essential training proceeded and the calls for replacements sent by General Pers.h.i.+ng in France were met.

The first and vital need was for officers to train the willing but inexperienced recruits. To meet this need a series of officers' training camps had been established in the spring of 1917 and continued for a year.

Each camp lasted for three months, where during twelve hours a day the candidates for commissions, chiefly college graduates and young business men, were put through the most intensive drill and withering study. All told, more than eighty thousand commissions were granted through the camps, and the story of the battlefields proved at once the caliber of these amateur officers and the effectiveness of their training. Special camps, such as the school of fire at Fort Sill, carried the officers a step further, and when they went overseas they received in schools in France instruction in the latest experience of the Allied armies. The colleges of the country were also formed into training schools and ultimately about 170,000 young men, under military age, in five hundred inst.i.tutions of learning, joined the Students' Army Training Corps.

In all the army schools French and British officers cooperated as instructors and gave the value of their three years' experience on the fighting front. But the traditions of the American regular army, formulated in the Indian and frontier fights, rather than the siege methods of the trenches, formed the basic principles of the instruction; General Pers.h.i.+ng was insistent that an offensive spirit must be instilled into the new troops, a policy which received the enthusiastic endors.e.m.e.nt of the President. The development of "a self-reliant infantry by thorough drill in the use of a rifle and in the tactics of open warfare" was always uppermost in the mind of the commander of the expeditionary force, who from first to last refused to approve the extreme specialization in trench warfare that was advised by the British and the French.

The emergency nature of the military programme, resulting from the sudden decision to send a large army to France, the decentralization of army affairs, and the failure to prepare adequately in the years preceding entrance into the war--all these factors made a shortage of supplies in the training camps inevitable.

The first appropriation bill which was to provide the funds to purchase clothing, blankets, and other necessities was not pa.s.sed until the 15th of June, leaving a pitifully brief s.p.a.ce of time for the placing of contracts and the manufacture and transport of supplies. Many factories had to be built, and many delays resulted from the expansion of the Quartermaster Department, which had not been manned or equipped for such an emergency.

The shortage of clothing was felt the more because of the extreme severity of the winter. After the initial difficulties had been pa.s.sed supplies of this kind were furnished in profusion; but lack of preparation on the part of the War Department and the slowness of Congress to appropriate promptly produced a temporary situation of extreme discomfort and worse.

The provision of food supplies was arranged more successfully. Soldiers would not be soldiers if they did not complain of their "chow." But the quality and variety of the food given to the new troops reached a higher degree than was reasonably to have been expected. The average soldier gained from ten to twelve pounds after entering the service. Provision was also made for his entertainment. Vaudeville, concerts, moving pictures formed an element of camp life, much to the surprise of the visiting French officers and Civil War veterans.

Americans naturally look back with pride to the making of their new army.

The draft was accomplished smoothly and rapidly. Demonstrations against conscription, which in view of the Civil War draft riots had caused some apprehension, were almost unheard of and never serious. Of the three million called for service on the first draft, all but 150,000 were accounted for, and of those missing most were aliens who had left to enlist in their own armies. The problem of the slacker and of the conscientious objector, although vexatious, was never serious. The educative effect of the training upon the country was very considerable.

All ranks and cla.s.ses were gathered in, representing at least fifty-six different nationalities; artisans, millionaires, and hoboes bunked side by side; the youthful plutocrat saw life from a new angle, the wild mountaineer learned to read, the alien immigrant to speak English. Finally the purpose of the training was achieved, for America sent over a force that could fight successfully at the moment of crisis.

Amateur critics had a.s.sumed that the problem of raising an effective number of troops would prove far more difficult than that of producing the necessary equipment and munitions. It was generally believed that the industrial genius of America was such that American factories could provide all the artillery, small-arms, and aircraft that the armies could use. The most fantastic prophecies were indulged in. Experience showed, however, that it is easier to raise, train, and organize troops of superior sort in a brief period than it is to arm them. It stands as a matter of record that foreign artillery and machine guns alone made possible the attack on the St. Mihiel salient and the advance in the Argonne. As for military airplanes, had the Government relied upon those of American manufacture there would have been no American squadrons flying over the German lines previous to August, 1918, and not many between then and the signing of the armistice.

Such a statement should not imply blanket criticism of the Ordnance Department. The Government was perhaps slow, even after the United States entered the war, to realize the serious character of the military situation abroad and to appreciate the extent to which American aid would be necessary to allied victory. Hence the changes in the military programme which inevitably created confusion. But the decision to ensure against unforeseen disaster by preparing heavily for 1919 and 1920 and partially disregarding 1918 was based upon sound strategical reasoning.

The war was brought to a close sooner than had been expected; hence the period of actual hostilities was devoted to laying down the foundations of a munitions industry, and the munitions actually produced, in the words of a.s.sistant Secretary Crowell, "might almost be termed casual to the main enterprise, pilots of the quant.i.ties to come." Such a policy was possible because of the surplus production of the Allies. The latter stated that their production of artillery was such that they could equip all American divisions as they arrived in France during the year 1918.[5] This gave time "to build manufacturing capacity on a grand scale without the necessity of immediate production, time to secure the best in design, time to attain quality in the enormous outputs to come later as opposed to early quant.i.ties of indifferent cla.s.s."

[Footnote 5: As a result of the agreement thus made the United States s.h.i.+pped overseas between the time of the declaration of war and the signing of the armistice only 815 complete pieces of mobile artillery, including all produced for France and Great Britain as well as for American troops. Of the 75's only 181 complete units were s.h.i.+pped abroad, the American Expeditionary Force securing 1828 from the French. Of the 155 millimeter howitzers none of American manufacture reached the front.

French deliveries amounted to 747.--_America's Munitions_, 1917-1918 (Report of Benedict Crowell, a.s.sistant Secretary of War), p. 90.]