mand"-Dr. Wilson was careful to add: "But the war must first be concluded." He showed marvellous insight into the many-sided Republic. No doubt he hoped to educate the masses in preparedness, with wasted Europe before them, and a growing power in Asia fast closing the once "Open Door" in China, and heaping up fighting forces by sea and land and air. But in the flush time of 1916 Wilson admitted frankly that America had no worldpolicy at all. "To carry out such a program we need unity of spirit and purpose." And the "unified strength" upon which the President harped was not as yet in sight.

The New World was wholly misunderstood in Europe. Why, it was asked, had not the Big Neutral given a moral lead to the rest? Why had she fussed over her cotton and grain; why had she taken up Prussia's catchword about "the freedom of the seas"? It was because (one heard) of that trade neutrality which made Sweden protest so sharply over her mail-bags, Holland over her herrings, Spain over her oranges and cork-bulky cargoes in a time of tight tonnage and ruthless submarines. If America had only thrown her ægis over Belgium when the scrap of paper was torn, and the German hordes began to martyr the most innocent of all nations! So ran the reproaches on this side, whether expressed or implied.

European poets and scholars scathed neutrality of every shade, from the Pope's to that of American people. "The world is watching," Maeterlinck called across the sea, "to judge if the strength of your fathers is also yours." But America was not aroused; she was not in fighting trim at all. She would feed the hungry and care for the fatherless and prisoners of war. Beyond this she was powerless. "What can America do?" asked the German papers, with an easy contempt that was almost incredible, addressed as it was to a continent of a hundred millions

the richest on earth and the most insistent upon moral claims and covenants. America must needs win her masses to whole-hearted preparation if she were to be among the guarantors of universal peace. "It is inconceivable," President Wilson told the Senate, "that we should play no part in that great enterprise." For if peace were to endure, it must be secured by "the organized major force of mankind." And in the same address Dr. Wilson dwelt upon the limitation of armaments by sea and land as "the most intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and mankind."

It is plain that America has strong views upon this subject. It was the piling up of weapons which menaced "the sense of equality among the nations." Therefore the President favoured a reduction, advising the world's rulers to "plan for peace and adjust their policy to it." But he could not be consistent in this matter. He was plainly in a strait between the ideal of disarmament and the defence of the United States, which was an urgent affair upon all grounds.

Wilson, indeed, went further than Roosevelt in his naval aims. He declared himself in favour of "incomparably the greatest Navy," since America's coast-line is so extensive. The Cabinet's new five-year program called for an outlay on ships of $661,000,000, with twenty per cent. above specified prices for speed in building and general efficiency of all craft. Professional advisers of the Government insisted upon these measures; the masses either resisted or were listless and unconcerned. It was the interplay of these active and passive forces which gave rise to so much confusion. Official Washington had to walk very warily, doling sympathy and blame to all belligerents with the apathy of the larger Americas ever in view.

Britain was aghast at the detachment shown in the President's early speeches. So was France, where Freedom

blazed in the very heart of desolation. And she signalled mute reproach to her sister Republic across the seas:

"I am she that was thy sign and standard-bearer,
Thy voice and cry;

She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer,

The same am I!"

Still there was no sign, and the amazement of Paris broke into open reproaches. "When England tried to oppress you with the help of hired Hessians, the peasants of France came to your aid. They fought by your side, they died for you. And yet, today in our agony. . . It roused nothing but vexation, as the memory of a debt so often does.

As a well-wisher, the New York Tribune was sorry to record this sentiment. However, there it was, faintly moving America in the mass. It would be well for the Allies, the Tribune said, "to renounce all thought that America is a sympathetic country, or one in which community of ideas exists with regard to the present clash." It was true that both France and Britain had warm friends in the United States. "But they are in the minority; they have not been able to mould American feeling." The old French alliance, ties of British race and of languagethese were but frail exhalations from history's page. "The sooner the Allies think of America as a foreign country— not necessarily friendly, and certainly not of their way of thought-the better for all concerned."

It was "reparation for the American lives lost," that Dr. Wilson demanded in his first Lusitania Note. And if in his next he warned the sea assassin "with solemn emphasis," it is well to remind British readers of hot American protest against the "vexatious and illegal practices" of our own blockade. All nations were foreign when viewed from neutral Washington, whose outlook may be expressed in the mild phrase of Lincoln, "With malice towards none, with charity for all."

CHAPTER II

REVELATION FROM THE HILL OF MARS

A QUAINT episode in American history is the offer of a crown to General Washington by the officers of the Revolutionary Army. It was almost a mutinous army, ill-clad and ill-fed; dismissed at last and scantily paid in paper worth two per cent. of its face value. Only Washington's influence prevented an open revolt. It is curious to survey America's dislike of the "standing army," and later on of a navy-that added evil due to crescent power and the new duties that came with it. It has always been a point of honour with Congress to lop and prune these noisome growths of the State; it was at one time a moot point whether they were necessary at all.

In 1810, when Europe flamed with the Napoleonic wars, John Randolph of Virginia rose in the Lower House with the familiar motion "to reduce our naval and military establishments." "With respect to war," cooed that Bryan of his day-poet, orator, and wit-"we have in the Atlantic a force wide and deep enough to ward off peril from the land." Two years later that moat was crossed by a hostile army; before the war was over the very chamber in which Randolph had spoken was burned by British soldiers. But nothing altered the traditional mistrust of Congress for an armed host; the consequence is seen in America's unreadiness for all her wars.

What alarmed her advisers in 1916 was that the first onset of a modern enemy might be a lightning stroke, like the German sweep towards Paris. Leisurely war was a thing of the past; so was the raising of levies by bounties or reluctant drafts, as in the long-drawn Civil War. "The

records show conclusively," says Major-General W. H. Carter, the military historian, "that the theory of citizen volunteers ready to march in our defence is wholly fallacious." When the nation's fate hung in the balance, only 46,626 men over twenty-four years of age could be found for the Union Army; the vast majority were boys of sixteen or less. It took two years to train these troops and develop a Gettysburg from the dangerous rout of Bull Run, where disaster was only averted by eight hundred regulars who fought a rearguard action. In the war with Spain the volunteers, with few exceptions, were unfit to embark. Their lack of discipline, the failure of supplies; the disease and chaos at Chickamauga and Key West Camps-these are today as ghastly as they are fresh in the memory of professional soldiers.

The Commander-in-Chief, General Leonard Leonard Wood, warned the House Committee on Military Affairs in the usual way. "To send our troops into war as they are, without guns or ammunition, would be absolute slaughter." It was the Federal Army to which the speaker referred. Of the National Guard, or forces of the several States, called out on the Mexican Border, General Wood reported to the War Department that "only 25 per cent. of these can be reckoned as reasonably instructed soldiers." The Kentucky and Georgia Guards showed 50 per cent. of physical rejections. Of the 8th Ohio Infantry, 500 men were unfit. It was no wonder, therefore, that on the march Virginia lay down in companies; New York shed 90 men in 6 miles of the open road. Thousands had no uniform; thousands more had never fired a service rifle in their lives.

But why were such troops employed in a national emergency? In order to give the Regular Army a chance to recruit and make ready; it was at that time 34,307 men below its peace strength under the new law. On the