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NY ONE attempting to estimate the influence of the United States upon the World War should first of all realize that America became a part of a military situation which differed from any that had gone before. In the history of the strategy of the war the United States will be given its place as providing a reinforcement against a contained enemy at a well-defined crisis. For this reason, in any true narrative of the war, the effort of America must be described as a separate strategic factor. That our nation's service should stand out in this way does not imply undue praise, nor any comparison with the continued efforts of the Entente Allies. It simply means that the function of the United States must be characterized as a thing apart, as will become evident in reviewing the strategy of the war.

In 1914 the supposedly infallible German superman was not long in showing ordinary human lack of understanding the initial strategic problem of Germany, and this soon neutralized the results of long years of German preparation. For Germany, at the outset, there existed an advantageous strategic situation that was thought to be a sure promise of The Teutonic allies posvictory. sessed a central and concentrated position against separated antagonists. This was the result of events in preceding years, as Russia had been shut off from Great Britain and France.

With this established condition

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that their enemies would be separated -the Germans were enabled to plan to attack the Entente Allies in detail -first France, then Russia. was the strategy of the German General Staff, and it was to be carried out by the Schlieffen plan of war "on two fronts." This plan had been determined years in advanace, and it had been elaborated with rigidly fixed details, to the exclusion of all other solutions. Its strategy obsessed the Germans. It was the product of the hierarchy of Clausewitz, Moltke, and Schlieffen-and that it would fail was thought impossible.

Of this German plan of war, it should be stated at once that it violated a fundamental of warfare, in that it was essentially a military plan and neglected to make full use of the navy arm. Admiral Tirpitz unqualifiedly says that the navy's plan of operations "had not been arranged in advance with the army." For the Germans to allow themselves to be absorbed in this military plan was an error, but at the outbreak of war German strategy must be studied as restricted to the Schlieffen military plan-to overwhelm France by "forcing a speedy decision," while Russia was to be contained.

The elaborate encircling movement through Belgium, to which the German General Staff had thus committed the powerful German armies, failed to produce the essential result of imposing these German armies in

*Bethmann Hollweg.

destructive contact upon the allied armies, until after the Allies had gathered sufficient force to fight an equal battle and, in the words of Falkenhayn, "the intention of forcing a speedy decision, which had hitherto been the foundation of the German plan of campaign, had failed." At the same time the Central Powers had failed to contain the Russians.

SITUATION AFTER THE MARNE

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Consequently the middle of September, 1914, saw the failure of German strategy to win decisive results with the great forces that had been prepared through so many years. Moltke regime was ended, though this fact was kept secret to prevent "further ostensible proof of the completeness of the victory obtained on the Marne."* Then and there the decision was forced that the World War was not to be a quick, overwhelming victory won by Germany's long-prepared military strength. Not only had the perfected strategy of the Schlieffen school failed to win the victory which had been thought certain, but also great harm had been done to the prospects of Germany by the moral effect of the invasion of Belgium. Moral forces are of actual strategic value in war-and there is no question of the fact that the violation of Belgium+ arrayed strong moral forces against Germany.

By this defeat of the German war plan of 1914 a complete change had been brought about in the strategic situation. The Central Powers had quickly lost the offensive, and military events had already shaped the war into a new form-a long, protracted struggle to gather strength enough for one side or the other to force a decision.

The initial blow of the carefully prepared strength of Germany had failed, but its great proportions had already fixed the scale of the war at

*Falkenhayn.

"Our greatest disaster: the German entry into Belgium "-Count Czernin, "In the World War."

a magnitude undreamed before. There were about two million and a quarter men engaged in the Battle of the Marne. At the Battle of Leipsic, the "Battle of the Nations," the culmination of the forces evoked by the Napoleonic wars, Napoleonic wars, the number of troops of all armies was 430,000. (Battle of Leipsic, Oct. 16-19, 1813.) It had taken many years devoted to the production of armies to furnish the numbers at Leipsic, and that was a decisive battle resulting in the overthrow of Napoleon. In 1914, a 1914, a few short weeks formed armies of many times this number, facing one another 'with no possibility of an immediate decision.

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From this time the war became an unending effort to maintain and strengthen these huge armies in the long struggle which followed, each side attempting to gain a superiority that would win a decision, and all the warring nations involved in expenditures that were unprecedented. soon as the war reached this stage the influence of sea power began to have an effect. Armies on the battlefields maintain their positions by being replenished with men and supplied with material. Even where recruits do not have to be transported by sea, the sea is the one greatest means of moving supplies, and the nation cut off from the sea has always sooner or later felt the results of this deprivation.

This was the case with Germany in the World War. The Germans had failed to win the quick decision which they had thought would surely be obtained by their armies alone. After this failure, throughout the war, the central allies were to feel more and more the ill effects of the control of the sea by their enemies. The strategic situation brought about thus early in the war by sea power should always remain in the mind of the student of the history of the World War-and the foundation of this power lay in the British Navy. It meant that the Entente Allies possessed the waterways of the world as secure means of transporting men

and supplies, to maintain their armies, their peoples and their industries. It also meant that the Central Powers were shut off from the use of these invaluable means of carrying on the war.

GERMAN MILITARY STRENGTH

Yet, in spite of the relentless pressure of sea power upon the Central Powers, the military preparations of Germany had developed so great a strength that for three years the war remained a desperate struggle, with each of the great nations of the Entente suffering the constant strain of maintaining the contest. The year 1917 ended with Russia in military collapse, and the Italian armies so shattered that they had become a drain upon Britain and France, at a time when the British and French armies had been woefully depleted by the losses in the battles of 1917 on the western front.

It was true that the Central Powers had failed to win their expected decision through unrestricted submarine warfare, but the beginning of 1918 found them enabled to concentrate the full German strength upon the western front, without any danger of a diversion elsewhere, as Russia had been put out of the war and the Italians could not undertake an early offensive. This ability to move troops from the east gave the Germans an actual superiority in numbers, as the British and French resources in man-power had been drained in the costly and unsuccessful battles of 1917 to such an extent that it had become a hard task to fill the ranks of the British and French armies. There was no hope of an increase to offset the German reinforcements from the east.

Holding this assured superiority,

the Germans were able to plan their great offensive in 1918 without any danger of counterattacks. Ludendorff had become the controlling power in the German General Staff. His strategy was a return to the direct methods of concentration of forces against a chosen point of attack, and new tactics had been devised by which many divisions were grouped against the chosen point, insuring successive streams of troops which infiltrated the enemy positions and dislocated the defenders.

These new tactics were surprisingly effective against the Allies, and at the beginning of July, 1918, this formidable German offensive, in a series of overwhelming attacks, had so smashed and dislocated the allied armies, even after they had at last been united under the command of Foch, that it is difficult to see how the situation could have been saved except by a strong reinforcement for the Allies, and this could be furnished only by the American troops. To define this critical military situation explicitly, it is only necessary to quote the following statement of the Versailles Conference, June 12, 1918:

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General Foch has presented to us a statement of the utmost gravity * * there is no possibility of the British and French increasing the numbers of their divisions * * ** there is a great danger of the war being lost unless the numerical inferiority of the Allies can be remedied as rapidly as possible by the advent of American troops. * * * We are satisfied that General Foch * * * is not overestimating the needs of the case. * * *

D. LLOYD GEORGE.
CLEMENCEAU.
ORLANDO.

It is not often in history that a crisis has been put on record in such unmistakable terms by the highest authority, and it is a matter for thanksgiving that the United States was able to provide the reinforcement needed at this time.

TASK OF UNITED STATES

There is no longer any question of the fact that the German Headquarters made their calculation that it was utterly out of the question for

the United States to exert any physical force upon the war.* The German leaders had on occasions yielded to keep us out of the war-to avoid having our resources at the service of the Allies but the Germans applied their own formulas to our nation, and, following these, it was held a military impossibility for an adequate American army to appear upon the fighting front. It must also be said that this was the prevailing opinion among European military experts of all countriest and from the European point of view a military impossibility was accomplished when our troops performed their part in the war.

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Our strategic problem was operation against a contained enemy with the great advantage for us of freedom from danger of being attacked. But it was complicated by the condition that transportation overseas, which would normally have been provided by allied shipping, had been impaired by the submarines to so great an extent that we were compelled to provide a large share of the transportation ourselves. The submarine menace, and its diversion of allied naval forces, also made it imperative for us to provide a great proportion of the necessary naval protection. There was the added urgent necessity of haste, or the war would be lost.t

This crisis demanded an effort on

"Would she appear in time to snatch the victor's laurels from our brows? That, and that only, was the decisive question! I believed I could answer it in the negative."-Hindenburg.

"Joffre, in an interview with the Secretary of War in May, 1917, said that 400,000 would be our limit, and that one French port would be sufficient to receive them."-Admiral Gleaves. History of the Cruiser and Transport Force. "The Allies are very weak and we must come to their aid this year, 1918. The year after may be too late."-General Pershing, 1917.

the part of the United States that would comprise: Raising and training an army; transporting a great part of that army overseas; providing supplies and transporting them overseas; giving naval protection; providing terminals and bases overseas to receive and handle the troops and supplies. All this must be done in haste, and at the outset on the vast scale set by the unprecedented demands of the World War. There was no time for the gradual development of forces.

This was the task which the United States must perform in a race with an emergency. It is needless to point out that this service of America necessarily implied intensive effort for a short time, and the function of the United States in the strategy of the war differed in this respect from that of any nation of the Entente. This service was accomplished by giving and taking material and munitions, but in a strategic sense the force exerted by America should be looked upon as a sudden definite element added to the strength of the Entente. Consequently the effort of the United States must be treated as an episode by itself in the strategy of the war.

As has been said, this condition implies that the account of the Amer ican effort must stand out, in a way, in any history of the strategy of the World War. On the other hand, the services of Great Britain and France comprise the history of the whole. war, as they are intertwined with its events from the beginning to the end.. The fact that America had its own important part, which must be told en bloc, does not mean any comparison with the long ordeals of effort which extended throughout the war.

Introductory Note by Carl W. Ackerman.

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Contrary to the accepted view, Germany did not discover poison gas or "invent chemical warfare. Although the German Army was the first to use poisonous and suffocating gases during the World War, history credits the Spartans with the discovery of this new agency of warfare." More than 2,300 years ago they saturated wood with pitch and sulphur, and burned it under the walls of Plataea and Belium. Furthermore, in 1855, a British Admiral, Lord Dundonald, suggested to Lord Palmerston that the British use the fumes of sulphur from Sicily in attacking Sebastopol. The publication of Lord Dundonald's reports in 1908 is said to have given the German military leaders the idea of utilizing poisonous gases in a European war.

From the time of the first gas attack upon the Canadians until the close of the war, chemical warfare had progressed so rapidly that in the American Army alone 4,066 commissioned officers and 44.615 enlisted men were assigned to this branch of the service. Military experts state today that when the armistice was signed the war was 55 per cent. chemical. Twentyeight different chemicals were being used by the belligerents and sixteen combinations of poisons, making a total of fortyfour varieties of poisonous and suffocating gases. Of this number the Germans used seventeen, the French thirteen, the British six and our own army five different kinds of gases, not to mention TNT and " common smoke" used in smoke screens.

When it is recalled that in one night alone, late in the war, 50,000 gas shells were fired into Nieuport, some containing as much as three gallons of mustard gas, it is possible to realize the extent to which poisonous gases will be used in a future war. During the brief period we were in the war the United States manufactured 22,257,070 pounds of poison gas, including over 5,000,000 pounds of liquid chlorine and another 5,000,000 of chloropicrin. Of this amount we shipped in bulk 8,556,000 pounds to France, and among the 400,000 gas shells received by the Chemical Warfare Service in France from this country "not a single leaky shell was found.

Brig. Gen. Fries is the leading authority in the United States on poison gas. In August, 1917, he was made chief of the Chemical Warfare Service of the United States Army in France. He made our chemical warfare service what it is today, and he is still directing this branch of the service for the War Department in Washington. He is the co-author with Major Clarence J. West of "Chemical Warfare," the first authoritative book on the subject of poison gas to be published in the United States.

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AR is today at the beginning of a complete change in armament. New forces discovered in coal-tar products and the application of these to military and naval strategy have produced new agencies of warfare which are causing a revolution in armaments.

Greater progress has been made since the close of the war in perfecting and devoloping poison gas bombs than any nation foresaw three years ago. Poison gas, in this very brief period of time, has become the biggest potential military and naval problem of the world, and some of its future possibilities were indicated by the recent bombing tests off the Atlantic coast. These tests demonstrated that our coasts are almost impregnable against a foreign enemy who has to cross the ocean. If bombs containing poison gases can be dropped from airplanes upon

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