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CONGRESS AND THE WAR

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The Navy and Marine Corps constitute a force of more than a quarter of a million men. On April 6 there were 64,680 enlisted men in the regular Navy; now there are 143,726, an increase of 79,046. There are about 12,000 officers in the Navy and 1,122 in the Marine Corps.

Hundreds of vessels of various types, yachts and fast motorboats, have been taken over and transformed into patrol boats, submarine chasers, mine sweepers and the various types needed for anti-submarine warfare, coast defense and other purposes.

The Atlantic Fleet comprises twice as many vessels as in peace times. Every battleship and cruiser that was in reserve has been fully manned and commissioned. Every warship is now a training school for the instruction of men in gunnery and engineering, and notable results have been achieved, especially in target practice with guns of the smaller calibres used in fighting submarines.

The largest ship construction program in history is being carried out by the Navy Department, comprising hundreds of vessels of various types from super-dreadnoughts to submarine-chasers. Twenty training camps have been erected, accommodating 85,000 men, for housing and training recruits.

Navy yards have been enlarged, immense foundries, machine shops and warehouses erected; work is being pushed on drydocks, shipways and piers. A big projectile plant is being erected at Charleston, W. Va., and a $1,000,000 aircraft factory at Philadelphia. Extensions of the naval gun factory will make that plant one of the largest of its kind. The entire “shore building" program embraces an expenditure of $100,000,000.

(d) [§267] War, the Constitution Moulder.

BY PROFESSOR EDWARD S. CORWIN (June 9, 1917.)

THE PRESIDENT'S POWER.

The concentration of power and responsibility demanded by war is apt to give a system grounded on the rigid maxims of republicanism a somewhat violent wrench. Fortunately the framers of the Constitution were not wholly unaware of the difficulty, which they proceeded to meet by conferring on the President as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy all the prerogatives of monarchy in connection with war-making except only the power to declare war and the power to create armed forces. The clause of the Constitution which makes the President Commander-in-Chief may accordingly be described as the elastic block in the closed circle of constitutionalism; in the heat of war the powers it confers are capable of expanding tremendously, but upon the restoration of normal conditions they shrink with equal rapidity. The true nature of the presidential prerogative in war time was comprehended by Lincoln perfectly, who, when he was confronted with the argument that some of his measures were likely to constitute precedents injurious to liberty, answered the objection in his characteristic strain: "Nor," said he, "am I able to appreciate the danger apprehended that the American people will, by means of mili

tary arrests during the rebellion lose the right of public discussion, the liberty of speech and the press, the laws of evidence, trial by jury, and habeas corpus, throughout the indefinite peaceful future which I trust lies before them, any more than I am able to believe that a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics during a temporary illness as to persist in feeding upon them during the remainder of his healthful life." History has amply vindicated Lincoln's judgment in this matter, for the direct effect of the Civil War in the way of enlarging national power or of altering the relations of the different branches of the national government to one another was comparatively slight.

REGULATION OF TRANSPORTATION AND PRICES.

The Civil War was war in the most elementary sense of the term; our assistance to the Allies, even though we eventually send a considerable army abroad, must still be primarily financial and industrial. And this means the regimentation of industry and commerce on a national scale. It means, if Congress follows the President in this matter, lodging in the hands of the national executive the power to direct transportation, to control exports, to prevent-in the President's own words-"all unwarranted hoarding of every kind and the control of food stuffs by persons who are not in any legitimate sense producers, dealers, or traders," the power to requisition food supplies to meet public need, and the equipment necessary to handle them, the power to prohibit unnecessary and wasteful use of foods, and finally the power to fix maximum and minimum prices. No doubt, many of the measures suggested in the President's statement of Saturday, May 19th, which I have just paraphrased, will be of a purely emergency character, and so will pass out of existence with the war. Yet it is clear that for some of them, and for others of a similar nature, the way has already been paved both by industrial development and political agitation long before our entrance into the war had been thought of. Measures of this description look toward the permanent reshaping of both our governmental and our industrial systems, and the power upon which they rest will be relaxed only in part, if at all, with the return of peace.

This, however, is but the beginning of the changes which the war promises to engraft upon our constitutional arrangements. For the new faculties with which the national government will find itself endowed new channels must be provided or else existing channels must be enlarged. The latter is the more economical course, and already it is being resorted to. Moreover, we again perceive the stress of the immediate exigency striking hands with developments which were originally launched much earlier.

USING THE STATES.

An even more striking possibility in the way of constitutional development than those just referred to is foreshadowed by Section 6 of the Conscription act. This section authorizes the President "to utilize the services" not only of all officers and agents of the United States and territories, but of the several

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states as well, and it further provides that any person “who in any manner shall fail or neglect fully to perform any duty required of him in the execution of this act, shall, if not subject to military law, be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction in the District Court of the United States, having jurisdiction thereof, be punished by imprisonment for not more than one year." . . . The Conscription Act is however vindicated to some decree by certain later utterances of the Court (see especially ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S.), and at any rate it is clearly harmonious with the original intention of the Constitution.

Pinckney, speaking in this reference on the floor of the Philadelphia Convention said: "They [the states] are the instruments upon which the Union must frequently depend for the support and execution of its powers." . . . An interesting possibility is thus suggested: that, as the states diminish in importance in the legislative field, through the extension of congressional power, they may be afforded an opportunity to justify their continued existence in the capacity of administrative agents of the national government, and so our dual system would be gradually replaced by a federal system approximating to the German and Swiss type.

ENLARGING THE CONSTITUTION.

For several years forces have been accumulating behind the barriers of the old Constitution, straining and weakening them at many points, yet without finding adequate enlargement. Where the stress of war falls coincident with such forces we may expect it to thrust aside accepted principles, not for the time only, but permanently. Certainly if the war is considerably prolonged, we may expect our system to emerge from it substantially altered in numerous ways, with the result, however, it may be, of postponing more radical alterations many years. (New Republic, XI, 153-155; June 9, 1917.)

(e) [$268] The Call to Service.

BY PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON (April 15, 1917).

My Fellow Countrymen:

The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible war for democracy and human rights which has shaken the world creates so many problems of national life and action which call for immediate consideration and settlement that I hope you will permit me to address to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to them.

UNSELFISH WAR.

We are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective war footing and are about to create and equip a great army, but these are the simplest parts of the great task to which we have addressed ourselves. There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting for. We are fighting for what

we believe and wish to be the rights of mankind and for the future peace and security of the world. To do this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves to the service without regaard to profit or material advantage and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to the full how great the task is and how many things, how many kinds and elements of capacity and service and self-sacrifice it involves.

INDUSTRIES.

These, then, are the things we must do and do well, besides fighting the things without which mere fighting would be fruitless.

We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and our seamen, not only, but also for a large part of the nations with whom we have now made common cause, in whose support and by whose sides we shall be fighting.

We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our shipyards to carry to the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will every day be needed there and abundant materials out of our fields tnd our mines and our factories with which not only to clothe and equip our own forces on land and sea, but also to clothe and support our people for whom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer work; to help clothe and equip the armies with which we are co-operating in Europe and to keep the looms and manufactories there in raw materials : coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both here and there; rails for worn out railways back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service; everything with which the people of England and France and Italy and Russia have usually supplied themselves but cannot now afford the men, the materials or the machinery to make.

It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms, in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more prolific and more efficient than ever, and that they must be more economically managed and better adapted to the particular requirements of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the men and the women who devote their thought and their energy to these things will be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace and freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the battlefield or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international service army-a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise liable to military service will of right and of necessity be excused from that service and assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work of the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire.

§§267-268] PRESIDENT'S CALL TO WAR

THE FARMERS.

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I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers of the country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The importance of an adequate food supply, especially for the present year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency, but for some time after peace shall have come, both our own people and a large proportion of the people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in America.

Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measure rests the fate of the war and the fate of the nations. May the nation not count upon them to omit no step that will increase the production of their land or that will bring about the most effectual co-operation in the sale and distribution of their products? The time is short. It is of the most imperative importance that everything possible be done, and done immediately, to make sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty to turn in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this great matter.

I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundant foodstuffs, as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in no better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation of the present price of cotton and helping upon a great scale, to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty.

The Government of the United States and the Governments of the several States stand ready to co-operate. They will do everything possible to assist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate force of laborers when they are most needed, at harvest time, and the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when harvested. The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is possible to make it, and there shall be no unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food supply by those who handle it on its way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a great democracy, and we shall not fall short of it!

MIDDLEMEN.

This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they are handling our foodstuffs or our raw materials of manufacture or the products of our mills and factories: The eyes of the country will be especially upon you. This is your opportunity for signal service, efficient and distinterested. The country expects you, as it expects all others, to forego unusual profits, to