tional Army. "In no camp," declared Senator Wadsworth, "are there small-arms for half the men, so they are drilling with broomsticks! At Camps Meade, Fulton, and Spartanburg, I talked with machine-gunners who had never laid eyes upon a machine-gun. Many of our boys have no overcoats; thousands wore light summer underwear in the bitterest of weather." The Governor of Oregon complained that his guardsmen were housed in floorless tents, and there was an alarming shortage of blankets. Three years ago General Leonard Wood attacked the War Department for its inertia in such matters, and became a target of persecution for his pains.

The Committee of Inquiry called before them General Crozier, the Chief of Ordnance, and Quartermaster-General Sharpe, whose evidence showed the American war-machine overtaxed and borne down. General Crozier confessed that no American artillery could appear in the European field before the summer of 1918, and even then only 6inch guns, "middle-heavies" and lesser pieces. There was vacillation and delay over rifle manufacture; details of rechambering and interchangeability of parts were badly confused.

But when all is said, these are familiar stories in the militarization of democracy. In America, as with us, there was drastic house-cleaning in bureaucratic circles. President Wilson is perhaps over-loyal to his Cabinet staff; he selected them in 1912-1913, when America never dreamed of the cataclysm at hand, with all it involved of politico-social revolution. His War Minister was once the Pacifist Mayor of Cleveland, O.-a civic reformer concerned with three-cent tram-fares, and to "safe" the dancehalls for exuberant youth. The First Lord of Wilson's Admiralty was the editor of a country paper; and Mr. Daniels' ideals of discipline in a democratic Navy were too genial to last. The Presidential Council of Ten was

chosen on strict party lines. All regions were represented with due bias towards the South, to which Dr. Wilson owed his victory. So far as Congress is concerned, Cabinet appointments are purely personal to the President, and therefore apart from the Legislature, in which the Ministers have no seats.

This curious aloofness has been debated for fifty years, and is now known for a flaw in the Constitution. Jefferson never spoke face to face with Congress as Wilson does today; written Messages were sent by a White House clerk to give the lawmakers "information of the state of the Union." The Ten Executive Departments, though within a stone's throw of the Capitol dome, might as well be in Paris or London so far as Congress is concerned. The result is a diffusion of energy which makes for delay and muddle to a lamentable degree. Of course it cannot last. President Wilson himself is in favour of seating Cabinet officers in Congress for the better expedition of affairs, particularly at a time like this.

It is at least possible that the present Watchman of the White House will see the passing of the Prussian Sword, and some attempt to establish that League of Nations which is the prior and fundamental feature of his enduring peace, and not-as the German Chancellor would have it a matter to be considered "after all the other questions in suspense have been settled." Wilson's second term expires in 1920. Already America is scanning the political horizon with no great hope of finding a successor to the ablest Executive who ever led her to the vindication of her ideals. At this writing the United States is still in "her honeymoon of the war," but her Allies need have no fear of her fortitude in the hap ahead, with its seesaw of calamity and triumph, its test and trial of endurance on the part of civilians as well as soldiers. "We are out to win," is the Wilson note. And if I know anything of

America, each set-back will only burn her purpose deeper to make an end of that German curse which the President has branded as "the enemy of mankind."

CHAPTER XVII

GERMANY AND AMERICA IN THE "EMPTY CONTINENT"

"So soon as we communicate and are upon a familiar footing of intercourse, we shall understand one another. And the bonds between the Two Americas will be such that no influence the world may produce in future will ever break them." (President Wilson to Delegates of the Pan-American Financial Conference at Washington.)

The United States has three foreign problems which are peculiarly her own:-(1) The integrity and stability of Mexico, (2) the inviolability of the Latin Republics in Central and South America, and (3) the policy of the "Open Door" in China, which involves the question of relations with Japan. The matter of Mexico is of the first importance. So far back as 1826 Daniel Webster laid stress upon this fact in the Lower House of Congress, pointing out that whilst a foreign landing, say in the River Plate, might be only a matter for diplomatic protest, a similar attempt in the Mexican Gulf would call for drastic action on the part of the United States.

But the factor of distance has shrunk since those days; the hidden hand of Germany has raised afresh the spectre of foreign aggression which alarmed Jefferson, Monroe, and Calhoun. Germany's expansive policy, coupled with pacific penetration in Central and South America (especially Brazil), has of late years roused the Washington Government to a decisive course. The German aims were

plainly stated to the Imperial Reichstag by Bethmann

Hollweg on March 30, 1911-the year of the Agadir coup and imminent world-war.

"The condition of peaceableness is strength," the Chancellor laid down. "And the old saying still holds good that the weak shall be the prey of the strong. . . . We Germans, in our exposed position, are above all bound to look this rough reality in the face. . . . Therefore the world, and especially the weaker countries, should take this warning to heart. For it implies more than passive recognition of a fact; it is the declaration of a policythe policy of expansion which we consider indispensable to the cause of world-peace and the existence of the German Empire."

Here was the brigand code set forth in the twentieth century. "Gentlemen," said the same high spokesman to the same assembly three and a half years later, "we are now in a state of necessity (Notwehr). And necessity knows no law." Such was the Chancellor's apologia for the martyrdom of Belgium which Germany was sworn to protect. What wonder, then, that the Monroe doctrine of "Hands off the New World" became an urgent concern of President Wilson in his second term? America had had her own Agadir alarms due to the dira necessitas of expansive Deutschtum. There was the Samoan dispute in 1889; the menace of Von Diederich to Admiral Dewey at Manila in 1898; Roosevelt's ultimatum to Von Holleben in the Venezuelan affair of 1902. And there were German efforts to get a foothold in Haiti, and to acquire the Danish islands in the Caribbean with a view to establishing a naval base on St. Thomas or St. John, and with it a great entrepôt for Central and South American trade. which should command the eastern entrance of the Panama Canal.

Already the harbour of Charlotte Amalie was an appanage of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. In 1902 Roose