The army judged by European standards and by the tasks which it would presently have to discharge was a mere pigmy. The Germans, learning nothing from their experience with Sir John French's little army, did not hesitate to scoff at this one too as contemptible an opinion which they learned to revise.

The navy, though third and possibly even second at the outbreak of the war, was a peace navy requiring complete remodelling and the filling-in of many important vacancies in ships before it could be termed at all an adequate seafighting force.

We were most inadequately supplied with munitions of war. Even for the small army of peace the supply of field artillery and machine guns was ridiculously insufficient. For nearly three years our factories had been turning out cannon, shells, rifles, machine guns and high explosives on a scale never before attempted, but all of this supply went to purchasers abroad. Our military authorities looked on without effort to divert any share of it into our own arsenals. It was reported that within a few days of the declaration of war an agent of an arms house went to a War Department official with a proposition concerning a machine. gun only to be coldly repulsed with the re

mark that the Department was not interested in machine guns. In a few months our soldiers were falling before them in the hands of the enemy.

We had to grapple with financial problems on a scale hitherto undreamed of. But though the country suddenly substituted billions for millions in its vocabulary this has as yet been the least of our problems. The nation is rich. Its credit is the highest. Its people are prosperous. The financial obligations of the war we have met and shall continue to meet without undue apprehension.

But the obligation imposed upon us to meet the need of our allies for munitions and food has been thus far the most onerous of all. It has created a scarcity in our own land without fully allaying the distress in theirs. Early in 1918 we seemed to have failed utterly in this task, without the proper discharge of which the war can by no means be won. But the reserve forces of the nation. came to the rescue and the crisis was bravely met. We were late in exercising our fullest power, but the power was there and in time was fully employed.

It would be idle to recount here the disheartening details of the delays that attended our equipment for war. Curiously enough we were strongest where we had apprehended weakness, and weak where we had thought ourselves strong. We had feared trouble in raising an army, but volunteering and the absolutely orderly progress of the draft supplied the nation with troops faster than it could equip them. We had boasted of our industrial efficiency, and with apparent reason, for our whole great manufacturing and transportation systems had been the admiration of the world. But now, confronted with the exigencies of war, that whole system broke down.

At the outbreak of war it was conceded

on all sides that the greatest contribution the United States could make to the Allied cause was a monster fleet of merchant ships, wherewith to offset the depredations of of German submarines, carry foodstuffs to our allies and transport our troops to the European battlefields and maintain them there. Six million tons a year was estimated as the amount necessary, and enormous appropriations were made, and a Shipping Board created to rush the work. At the end of ten months of war not one ship of this new construction had been launched.

Again it was universally conceded that the United States could materially aid in winning the war by building aircraft in enormous numbers. Congressional debates and newspapers were full of assurances of the in way which we would "blind the Kaiser's armies" by such an overwhelming fleet of our own airplanes that no German machines would be able to keep the air or spy out our lines. There seemed every reason why_we should succeed in this purpose. The airplane was an American invention. A dozen factories were even then making them for foreign governments. Congress at once made a lump appropriation of $640,000,000 for aeronautical purposes, and the appropriations for air service in the Army and Navy supply bills raised the total to nearly a billion dollars. But the United States had been at war ten months before the first airplane of the promised fleet was completed.

people of our allies lay helpless in American ports with empty bunkers. Great factories engaged in manufacturing munitions and other supplies vital to our armies were shut down for lack of power.

Sixty-fifth Congress of the United States of America;

At the First Session,

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday, the second day of April, one thousand nine hundred and seventeen.

JOINT RESOLUTION

Declaring that a state of war exists between the Imperial German Government and the Government and the people of the United States and making provision to prosecute the same.

Whereas the Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America: Therefore be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.

Speaker of the House of Representatives,

Thos. R. Marshall

Vice President of the United States and

These were but samples of incidents in the long record of discouragements that seemed to culminate in the early months of 1918. To cap the climax the weather itself seemed to be operated in the interest of the Kaiser. A winter of almost unprecedented severity further blocked the roads, which were already congested by unexampled shipments of freight to the seaboard. The demand for coal was seemingly illimitable; the capacity of the railroads to deliver it was crippled as never in their history. In zero weather cities shivered, and the poor suffered cruelly for the lack of fuel. Hundreds of ships heavy laden with necessities for the hungry

President of the Senate,

Harris & Ewing

To meet this situation the government adopted heroic methods the measure of success of which cannot at this moment be esti

mated. The railroads, which had failed not only to distribute coal, but which were impotent to handle their other traffic-having for example in February lost in their crowded yards 9,000 cars of steel vitally needed in the ship yards were taken over by the government. It was a striking illustration of the calm determination of the Ameri

For the first time in the national experience of the United States its people were confronted with a scarcity of food in the early days of 1918. The shortage was, of course, not due to any failure of supplies for our own personal needs. But we were bound to supply the needs of our allies, most of which were food-importing countries in time of peace, and therefore doubly in need in time of war when much of their agricultural labor was diverted to their armies. In order that

enforceable against hotels, restaurants and other public eating places. These the officials could watch to see that the regulations were obeyed. Indeed no supervision was needed. The hotelkeeper very cheerfully gave his patrons the smaller portions, charged the same prices that he had for the larger ones, and pocketed his enchanced profits with a virtuous sense of patriotic duty done. But over the millions of private homes there could be no supervision maintained, and in