lain's

attack

Congestion and despondency in the United States coincided with the rumors that Germany was preparing for a final drive upon the western front to force a Senator peace. In both parties there were critics of the Chamberwar measures that had been passed and the way they had been administered, who recited in Congress facts that they had gathered from the factories and the cantonments that seemed to show delay and failure. On January 19 Senator G. E. Chamberlain, Democratic chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, attended a luncheon of the National Security League in New York, and there “undertook to show that since the battle of Bunker Hill we had never had a proper military organization or policy." In conclusion, he said that "the military establishment of America has fallen down. There is no use to be optimistic about a thing that does not exist. It has almost stopped functioning . . . because of inefficiency in every bureau and in every department of the government of the United States."

The charge of Senator Chamberlain evoked an indignant and point-blank denial from the President, who asserted that it was "an astonishing and absolutely unjustifiable distortion of the truth. As a matter of fact, the War Department has performed a task of unparalleled magnitude and difficulty with extraordinary promptness and efficiency." A few days later Secretary Baker appeared before the Committee on Military Affairs with an impressive statement of the work done and doing. Senator Chamberlain introduced a bill for the creation of a Munitions Ministry, which received support in principle from Colonel Roosevelt, many of the preparedness organizations, and many members in both parties. An attempt was made by Senator Stone to show that the demand for a Munitions Ministry was in effect a censure of the President inspired by partisan politics. The President announced that he would veto any measure that attempted to take from him or lessen his responsibility for the conduct of the war.

When the advocates of a Munitions Ministry insisted

that the existing laws on military coördination were inadeThe Over- quate, he suggested that, if they desired to speed man Act up the war, they should give him power to rearrange the agencies of government as need should indicate. On February 6 a bill was introduced in the Senate by Overman, of North Carolina, giving the President power for the period of the war to create new agencies of government, and to alter existing ones and to transfer their powers and unexpended appropriations according to his judgment and the need. It was difficult for advocates of a Munitions Ministry to oppose the Overman Bill, that went so much further in the direction of the consolidation of sweeping powers in the hands of the President. Chamberlain's bill was dropped, and on May 20, 1918, the Overman Bill became a law, "to coördinate or consolidate executive bureaus, agencies, and offices."

For the remainder of the war President Wilson had dictatorial powers, limited only by the size of available appropriations and specific prohibitions fixed by law. He exercised his new powers immediately. An Air Service was created, taking powers away from the Signal Corps and granting them to a new Bureau of Aircraft Production, over which John D. Ryan became civilian chief. A Chemical Warfare Service was added to the army, and the War Industries Board, which had existed thus far as a sub-committee of the Council of National Defense, and which had wavered in the balance as Congress debated the Munitions Ministry that might supersede it, was made an independent agency of the Government. Other powers of less consequence were transferred from one department to another.

During the debate on the Overman Bill, the American equivalent of a Munitions Ministry came into existence. There had now been created six tremendous new

A "War

Cabinet" war agencies that were familiarly described as the "war boards," the Shipping Board under Hurley, the Food Administration under Hoover, the Fuel Administration under Garfield, the War Trade Board under McCormick, the Railroad Administration under McAdoo, and

finally the War Industries Board under Baruch, who took charge on March 4, 1918. Upon the afternoon of March 20 the President called into conference the Secretary of the Navy and Benedict Crowell from the War Department, for Secretary Baker was in France, and the six heads of the war boards. Popularly known as the "war cabinet," this body held weekly meetings until the end of the war, serving as a clearing-house for the conservation of American resources and the fulfillment of war demands.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

C. R. Van Hise, Conservation and Regulation in the United States during the World War (1917), was designed as a preliminary study to a larger work whose full execution was prevented by his untimely death. Two statements upon the status of war preparations were made by Secretary of War Baker in January, 1918, and may be found in the Official Bulletin, January 10, 29, 1918. Benedict Crowell, America's Munitions (1919), is a well-illustrated official report upon the mobilization of industry for procurement of supplies. The materials have not yet been assembled for a judicious decision upon the success or failure of war preparation after the date of the declaration.

Peace overtures of 1917

CHAPTER LII

WAR AIMS

THE Conduct of the war thus far was investigated by the Senate Committee on Military Affairs in December and January; and just as the interest in the war organization was approaching its height, President Wilson appeared unexpectedly before Congress, on January 8, 1918, and delivered an address upon the aims of the war. A year earlier, on January 22, 1917, he had discussed these aims in the last weeks of American neutrality, and had described the "peace without victory" that he believed the United States willing to endorse. In the ensuing twelve months the United States went to war convinced there could be no peace without the destruction of the German military power. At frequent intervals leaders of all countries reverted in general terms to their war aims, but until the Russian Revolutionary Government called for a formal statement of these in the interests of an early peace, no compulsion was felt to define the terms before the danger of defeat was averted. The overtures of Pope Benedict XV for peace and disarmament in August, 1917, kept the discussion alive, while President Wilson's reply to this on August 27 showed a faith in the German people as distinguished from their Government, and pointed out that a peace based upon reciprocal condonation, which the Pope requested, would contain no guarantee against another unprovoked attack by a nation with unfulfilled military ambitions. The overtures of the Pope were without avail, as were the demands of the Russian revolutionists, but the informal discussion of war aims did not subside. The only possible program that President Wilson could see he described as (1) "open covenants of peace openly arrived at"; (2) freedom of the seas; (3) equality of trade conditions; (4) reduction of armaments; (5) adjustment of colonial claims,

The

Fourteen Points"

giving equal weight to the interests of the populations concerned, and the equitable claims of their Governments; (6) evacuation of all Russian territory; (7) evacuation and restoration of free Belgium; (8) evacuation and restoration of invaded France and restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to right the wrong of 1871; (9) readjustment of Italian frontiers along lines of nationality; (10) autonomous development for Austro-Hungarian peoples; (11) Balkan reconstruction and restoration with a free and secure access to the sea for Serbia; (12) freedom of the Dardanelles and of foreign nationalities under Turkish rule; (13) independence for the indisputable Polish population, with access to the sea; and (14) an association of nations to afford "mutual guarantee of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike." Commenting upon these "fourteen points," the London Spectator remarked, "it may truly be said now that the minimum terms of the Allies have been stated."

The defection of Russia from the Allies because of her internal collapse and her Socialist revolution weakened the opposition to Germany. It removed one great set of armies from the field and aroused aspirations in the labor classes of all Allied countries. Unless these could be shown that the World War was essentially a struggle for democracy in the interests of the common people, there was danger that the ability to wage it would be sapped by the defection of the masses of the Allied peoples. The demand of the Russian leaders in May, 1917, for peace without annexation or indemnities was accepted in words by a resolution in the German Reichstag on June 19, and thereafter the utterances of the extreme Socialists of Germany were given wide publicity by the Imperial Government, and German funds were made available for the use of the revolutionary Socialists in Russia who spoke the same political language. The Russian Constitutionalists who had precipitated the revolution in March were forced out in July, when Kerensky came into power. He in turn was attacked by the Bolsheviki Party that admitted no national allegiance, accepted finan