The suspected complicity of Mexico as a tool of Germany, however, faded before the inconceivable folly of the latter in gravely proposing that Mexico should attempt to regain the "lost territories" of New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The American press was almost united in declaring that Germany had committed an act of war against the United States. Certainly her exposed machinations brought hostilities perceptibly nearer.



CHAPTER LXV

A STATE OF WAR

Armed neutrality proved to be a passing phase in a rapidly developing situation. When the President on March 9, 1917, called on the new Congress to assemble on April 16, his course was solely dictated by existing conditions, which required legislative support, by the passage of adequate appropriations, for carrying out the defensive measures decided upon. But armed neutrality never became a reality. As a certain foretoken of war it could not be sustained. Not a naval gun had found its way on to the bow or stern of a merchant ship before the depredations of Germany forced the United States to reconsider its predetermined course of defensive armament.

"We make absolutely no distinction in sinking neutral ships within the war zone," Herr Zimmermann had warned. "Our determination is unshakable since that is the only way to end the war."

This was an intimation that American vessels, like those of other neutrals, must comply with the U-boat rulings or take the consequences. Hence more American vessels were sunk, Germany pursuing her evil way regardless of the American attitude.

On March 12, 1917, the unarmed steamer Algonquin, with a crew of twenty-seven, of whom ten were Americans, was shelled and sunk without warning by a German submarine. The crew succeeded in escaping.

A few days later the sinking of three unarmed American vessels, the City of Memphis, Illinois, and Vigilancia, was announced. The first and second named ships were returning to the United States in ballast; hence their destruction could not be justified on the ground that they were carrying freight for the Allies. The City of Memphis was first shelled and then torpedoed off the Irish coast on March 17, 1917. Her crew of fifty-seven escaped in five boats and were picked up by a steamer. The Illinois was torpedoed the next day. The Vigilancia was similarly sunk on March 16, 1917, by a submarine which did not appear on the surface. Fifteen of the crew, including five Americans, were lost.

These sinkings occasioned gratification in Germany. Count Reventlow, a notable German publicist, thus welcomed them in the "Deutsche Tageszeitung":

"It is good that American ships have been obliged to learn that the German prohibition is effective, and that there is no question of distinctive treatment for the United States. In view of such losses, there is only one policy for the United States, as for the small European maritime powers, namely, to retain their ships in their own ports as long as the war lasts."

Another German press comment was that the sinkings were certain to produce special satisfaction throughout the empire.

German contempt for American feeling could no further go. A cabinet meeting held on March 20, 1917, disclosed that the President's colleagues, even reputed pacifists like Secretaries Daniels and Baker, were a unit in regarding a state of armed neutrality as inadequate to meet the serious situation. The President was confronted with the necessity of immediately taking more drastic action rather than continuing to pursue measures of passive defense against the submarine peril represented by arming ships. The cabinet's demand was for an earlier convocation of Congress and a declaration that a state of war existed between the United States and Germany. The President listened, and that evening attended a theater supposedly to divert and prepare his mind for coping with the gravest of problems. Events proved that he had already determined his course.

Armed neutrality was a delusive phrase and misrepresented actual conditions; it merely glozed over a state of undeclared hostility and deceived no one. Yet it had its adherents; they wanted to give it a fair trial before discarding the pretense that it existed. The Government, they said, should wait and see how armed ships fared at the hands of German submarines. If they proved equal to encounters with U-boats, or, better still, if the U-boats did not dare to attack them, there would be no occasion for further action. The proposal would not bear scrutiny since it was now known that Germany regarded armed merchantmen as ships of war and their crews as combatants.

The next day, March 21, 1917, the President issued a proclamation calling upon Congress to assemble on April 2, instead of April 16, "to receive a communication concerning grave matters of national policy." The national emergency which had been in existence since Germany began sinking American ships in pursuance of her unrestricted submarine policy was now acknowledged. It would be the function of Congress, if the President so advised, to declare that a state of war existed between the Government of the United States and that of the German Empire. And a waiting and willing nation was left in no doubt that war there would be. The cabinet had become a war cabinet and the country warlike, goaded to retaliatory action by the wanton deeds of the most cruel government of this or any other age.

As the spokesman of an imperialistic regime preserving its accustomed role of a wolf in sheep's clothing, the German Chancellor addressed the Reichstag on March 29, 1917, and took cognizance of the critical situation in the United States in these terms:

"Within the next few days the directors of the American nation will be convened by President Wilson for an extraordinary session of Congress in order to decide the question of war or peace between the American and German nations.

"Germany never had the slightest intention of attacking the United States of America, and does not have such intention now. It never desired war against the United States of America, and does not desire it to-day. How did these things develop?

"Why, England declined to raise her blockade, which had been called illegal and indefensible even by President Wilson and Secretary Lansing," said the Chancellor. "Worse than that, she had intensified it. Worse than all, she had rejected Germany's 'peace' offers and proclaimed her war objects, which aimed at the annihilation of the Teutonic Powers. Hence unrestricted sea warfare followed.

"If the American nation considers this," concluded the Chancellor, "a cause for which to declare war against the German nation, with which it has lived in peace for more than one hundred years, if this action warrants an increase of bloodshed, we shall not have to bear the responsibility for it. The German nation, which feels neither hatred nor hostility against the United States of America, shall also bear and overcome this."

The march of events went on irresistibly. At 8.35 o'clock on the evening of Monday, April 2, 1917, President Wilson appeared before a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives. He had addressed the Congress in person several times during his terms of office, but never under circumstances or in a setting more dramatic. The streets leading to the Capitol were packed with vast throngs. White searchlights etched the dome and the pillars against the sky, revealing the Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze on the flagstaff above the dome. Two troops of United States cavalry in dress uniform, with sabers drawn, formed a guard round the House approaches. Hundreds of police, in uniform and in plain clothes, were scattered along the route followed by the President's automobile from the White House. Inside the House, which had been in almost continuous session all day, the members assembled to receive the President. The senators appeared carrying little American flags. The Diplomatic Corps, the whole Supreme Court—in fact, the entire personnel of the Government, legislative, judicial, and executive—gathered to hear the head of the American nation present its indictment against the Imperial Government of Germany.

The President was visibly nervous. He was pale. His voice was neither strong nor clear. He appeared to be deeply affected by the epochal and awesome character of his task. His distinguished audience listened in profound silence as he stated America's case without bluster and without rancor. The burden of his address was a request that the House and Senate recognize that Germany had been making war on the United States and that they agree to his recommendations, which included a declaration that a state of war existed, that universal military service be instituted, that a preliminary army of 500,000 be raised, and that the United States at once cooperate with the Allied Powers as a belligerent in every way that would operate to effect the defeat of Germany as a disturber of the world's peace.

In adopting ruthless submarine warfare, the President told Congress, Germany had swept every restriction aside:

"Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.

"It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination.

"The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it."

Here the President referred to the short-lived expedient of armed neutrality adopted to meet the challenge:

"When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.

"The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making; we will not choose the path of submission—"

The President's audience had listened in silence up to this point. There was more of the sentence; but Congress did not wait to hear it. At the word "submission," Chief Justice White of the Supreme Court raised his hands in a resounding clap, which was the signal for a deafening roar of approval alike from congressmen, senators, and the occupants of the crowded galleries.

"We will not choose the path of submission," repeated the President, "and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life."

Then came the presentation of the only alternate course the United States could take:

"With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States, that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense, but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war."

Now what did this involve? The President thus answered the question:

"It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs.

"It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible.

"It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines.

"It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States, already provided for by law in case of war, of at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training.

"It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well-conceived taxation."

The President asked his countrymen to undertake a herculean task. But it was a necessary task—he deemed it an imperative one, and he knew it would be borne by willing shoulders. Without any object of gain, it was to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world as against selfish and autocratic power.

Neutrality was no longer feasible when the menace to the world's peace and freedom lay in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force and controlled solely by their own will, not by the will of their peoples. The United States had seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. The age demanded that the standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done which were respected by individual citizens of civilized states should also be observed among nations and their governments.

He acquitted the German people of blame. The United States had no quarrel with them. They were the pawns and tools of their autocratic rulers.

"Self-governed nations," said the President, "do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions."

What hope was there of a steadfast concert of peace with an autocratic government which could not be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants? The President pointed out the futility of looking for any enduring concord with Germany as she was now governed:

"One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities, and even our offices of government, with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country, have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States.

"The selfish designs of a government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing," continued the President, "have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that government entertains no real friendship for us, and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence."

The President then delivered the most striking passage of an oration that will rank as one of the greatest ever addressed to a listening world:

"We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a Government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included; for the rights of nations, great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience.

"The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them."

The following morning, April 3, 1917, the Foreign Affairs Committees of both houses met at 10 o'clock to consider war resolutions introduced the previous evening in the House and Senate immediately after the President's address. They were identical in form and were submitted to textual alterations by the committees. That adopted by the Senate committee, and accepted by the House leaders, read as follows:

"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."

Senator Stone, chairman of the Senate committee, alone opposed its adoption. It was at once reported to the Senate, only to meet objection from Senator La Follette, who demanded the "regular order," that is, that the resolution, under the rule any member could invoke in order to postpone the consideration of important legislation, be withheld for one day. His objection came when Senator Hitchcock, who was in charge of the resolution, asked for unanimous consent to a suspension of the rules for its immediate consideration. The Senate was obliged to submit to the Wisconsin senator's obstructive tactics; but Senator Martin, the Senate Democratic leader, rather than permit any other business to be transacted, promptly obtained an adjournment till the next day. It was determined that the Senate, on reassembling, should sit without rest, recess or intermission, and without considering any other matter until the war resolution was passed. Senator La Follette and other pro-German pacifists in the chamber were barred from interposing further obstacles, especially as the new cloture rule was now operative.

The Senate assembled on April 4, 1917, in serious mien to carry out its task of passing the resolution before it could adjourn. It was a day of speechmaking and of historic utterances characterized by a moving earnestness of conviction. Orators of patriotic fervor came from senators who had before condemned any declaration of war as the greatest blunder the United States could commit. Others recounted the crimes of Germany against civilization, and, in face of these deeds, condemned any national unwillingness and cowardice to retaliate as showing a national degeneracy that was much worse than war.

The debate ended shortly after 11 o'clock that night, having lasted thirteen hours. The resolution was thereupon put to the vote and passed by 82 to 6. The actual alignment was 90 to 6, as eight absent senators favored the resolution. The six opponents were Senators La Follette of Wisconsin, Gronna of North Dakota, Norris of Nebraska, Stone of Missouri, Lane of Oregon, and Vardaman of Mississippi. They all belonged to the group of twelve who had prevented a vote on the Armed-Ship Bill. Three of this group, Senators O'Gorman, Clapp, and Works, had already retired into private life. The remaining three, chastened by the contumely their attitude had occasioned, deserted the pacifists and voted for the resolution.

The House had been waiting for the Senate's action and immediately proceeded to debate the resolution when it came before it on April 5, 1917, at 10 o'clock a. m. Following the Senate's example, it resolved to remain in session without any interval until a vote was taken. There was a strong band of pacifists in the House, some with pronounced pro-German sympathies, and they occupied much of the day with their outgivings. The House floor leader, Representative Kitchin of North Carolina, was one of their number. The debate extended through the night without cessation until 3.15 the next morning, April 6, 1917, when, after a wearisome discussion exceeding seventeen hours, the resolution passed amid resounding cheers by the overwhelming vote of 373 to 50.

The President signed the resolution in the afternoon of the same day, at the same time issuing a proclamation notifying the world that a state of war existed between the United States and the Imperial Government of Germany, and outlining regulations for the conduct of "alien enemies" resident within American jurisdiction.

American relations with Germany's allies—Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria—remained to be determined. In his war address to Congress the President made this allusion to them:

"I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany, because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare, adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it, because there are no other means of defending our right."

Under German dictation, however, Austria-Hungary and Turkey broke relations with the United States on April 9 and April 21, 1917, respectively. Bulgaria took no action. The American war declaration thus solely applied to Germany.



CHAPTER LXVI

BUILDING THE WAR MACHINE

The United States entered the war as a member of the Allied belligerents in their fight for civilization against Germany at 1.18 on the afternoon of April 8, 1917, at which time President Wilson signed the resolution empowering him to declare war as passed by Congress.

The nation set about girding on its armor. A message was flashed to the great naval radio station at Arlington, Va., which repeated it to the extent of its carrying radius of 3,000 miles, notifying all American ships at foreign stations and the governors and military posts of American insular possessions in the Pacific and in the Antilles.

Orders were issued by the Navy Department for the mobilization of the fleet, and the Naval Reserve was called to the colors. The navy also proceeded to seize all radio stations in the country.

An emergency war fund of $100,000,000 was voted by Congress for the use of the President at his discretion.

The Allied warships which had been patrolling the Atlantic coast outside American territorial waters since the war began, to prevent the German ships in American ports from escaping, were withdrawn. There was no need of further vigilance, as one of the first acts of the Government was to seize every German and Austrian vessel which had lain safe under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. There were ninety-one German ships, several of them interned men-o'-war, aggregating 629,000 gross tonnage. The largest group were moored in New York Harbor, numbering 27, and included leviathans like the Vaterland, (54,282 gross tons), George Washington (25,570 tons), and Kaiser Wilhelm II (19,361 tons). Six were in Boston Harbor, among them the Amerika (22,622 tons), and the Kronprinzessin Cecile (19,503 tons). Others were held in the Philippines and Hawaii. Seven Austrian vessels were seized, but subject to payment, the United States not being at war with the Dual Monarchy.

All the German officers and crews were taken in charge by the immigration authorities and held in the status of intending immigrants whose eligibility for entering the country was in question until the end of the war. This decision meant internment.

The machinery of most of the German ships was found to be damaged to prevent the Government making immediate use of them as transports, for which the larger ones were admirably fitted. The damage dated from the severance of relations on February 3, 1917, and was a preconcerted movement undertaken by the various captains and officers upon instructions from Berlin to cripple the machinery when war seemed imminent. Captain Polack of the North German Lloyd liner Kronprinzessin Cecile, held in Boston, admitted that he had received orders to make his vessel unseaworthy from the German Embassy at Washington three days before the rupture with Germany took place.

Congress later authorized the President to take title to the German ships for the United States and to put them into service in the conduct of the war. Payment or any other method of return for their seizure was to wait until the war ended. In a short time more than half of the seized vessels had been repaired and put upon the seas under the American flag with new names. Fifteen were fitted for transports. The Stars and Stripes was duly hoisted on the great German liner Vaterland.

Simultaneous with the seizure of these vessels came wholesale arrests of Germans suspected of being spies. Federal officers swooped down on them in various parts of the country as soon as war was declared. They could not now safely be at large. Several had already been convicted of violating American neutrality by hatching German plots and were at liberty under bond pending the result of court appeals; others were under indictment for similar offenses and waiting trial; the remainder were suspects who had long been under Federal surveillance. It was a war measure taken without regard to the civil law to circumvent further machinations of German conspirators, who had now become alien enemies.

Bearing upon these precautions was a proclamation issued by the President warning citizens and aliens against the commission of treason, which was punishable by death or by a heavy fine and imprisonment. The acts defined as treasonable were: The use of force or violence against the American army and navy establishment; the acquisition, use, or disposal of property with the knowledge that it was to be utilized for the service of the nation's enemies; and the performance of any act and the publication of statements or information that would give aid and comfort to the enemy.

The Government had previously assured Germans and German reservists domiciled on American soil that they would be free from official molestation so long as they conducted themselves in accordance with American law. A general internment of German aliens was deemed to be both impracticable and impolitic.

Precautions taken against internal uprisings by Teutonic sympathizers proved to be sufficient without corralling the great number of German citizens established among the populace—a step which would not only be costly but inflict great hardships on many unoffending and orderly aliens. The Administration held by its previous determination not to resort to reprisals in its treatment of Germans nor to lose its head in the periodic waves of spy fever which spread throughout the country.

The President and his advisers, while taking all these preliminary measures of war, were deeply conscious of the enormous field of other activities, calling for leadership and statesmanship of a high order, which the war situation had opened out. Without being daunted by the prospect, the President took the step of appealing to the people at large for cooperation. There were so many things to be done besides fighting—things without which mere fighting would be fruitless. The President thus stated them:

"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 and 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 cooperating in Europe, and to keep the looms and manufactories there in raw material; 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."

The President's specific appeal was to the agricultural and industrial workers of the country to put their shoulder to the wheel to help provision and equip the armies in Europe. On the farmers and their laborers, he said, in large measure rested the issue of the war and the fate of the nations. To the middlemen of every sort the President was bluntly candid: "The eyes of the country are especially upon you," he said. "The country expects you, as it expects all others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food," in a disinterested spirit. He asked railroad men of all ranks not to permit the nation's arteries to suffer any obstruction, inefficiency, or slackened power in carrying war supplies. To the merchant he suggested the motto: "small profits and quick service" to the shipbuilder the thought that the war depended on him. "The food and the war supplies must be carried across the seas, no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom." The miner he ranked with the farmer—the work of the world waited upon him. Finally, every one who created or cultivated a garden helped to solve the problem of feeding the nation; and every housewife who practiced economy placed herself in the ranks of those who served.

Legislative tasks which confronted Congress were overwhelming and not a little confusing. They embraced measures for authorizing huge issues of bonds to finance the Allies and provide funds for the American campaign; new taxation; food control; the provision of an enormous fleet of airships; forbidding trading with the enemy; an embargo on exports to neutral countries to prevent their shipment to Germany; an espionage bill; and chiefly, a measure of compulsory military service by selective draft to raise a preliminary army of 500,000 men, to be followed by a second draft of the same number, to enable 1,000,000 Americans to help the Allies defeat Germany.

The Bond Bill passed both houses of Congress without a dissentient vote within eleven days of the war declaration and five days of the bill's submission. The Administration sought authority for an issue of $5,000,000,000 bonds, to be raised by public subscription, and $2,000,000,000 bonds in Treasury certificates of indebtedness, the latter to be redeemed in a year by the aid of new war taxation then expected to be available. Both bonds and certificates bore 3-1/2 per cent interest. The main portion of the five-billion issue, or three billions, was apportioned as a loan to the Allies, in the disposition of which the President was to be wholly unhampered. Securities at par to that amount were to be acquired from the various foreign governments to cover the loan. Representative Kitchin, in presenting the bill to the House, described it as representing "the most momentous project ever undertaken by our Government and carried the greatest authorization of bonds ever contained in a bill submitted to any legislative body in the world." The only material amendments made limited the loans and the acquisition of foreign securities as collateral to the period of the war. The House passed the measure after two days' debate on April 14, 1917, by a vote of 889 to 0. The Senate vote, three days later, after a day's debate, was 84 to 0. The various factions in both Houses, which were hostile to the Administration's policy before war was declared, dropped all partisanship in their eagerness to support measures for prosecuting the war now that the die had been cast.

The War Revenue Bill was less easily disposed of. It bristled with contentious points bearing upon the most equitable ways and means of raising supplementary imposts to meet the first year's war outlays. As submitted to the House it was designed to raise a revenue of $1,800,000,000; but the barometer of the Treasury's needs kept rising and presently stood at $2,250,000,000 as the amount needed to be raised by the bill. The House hurriedly passed a loosely constructed measure, taxing practically every industry and individual, especially the incomes of corporations and men of wealth. It raised all tariff duties and abolished the free list by making the exempted articles subject to a duty of 10 per cent. The House accepted it as a war measure, full of inequalities that would never be tolerated in times of peace. It threw upon the Senate the onus of repairing the defects of the bill. It passed it largely as it stood, a hasty piece of patchwork, in order to get some kind of legislation before Congress to meet the Treasury's requirements. The measure was discussed in a cloud of confusion, and so perplexed the members that, in disposing of it, they relied upon the Senate to return it in better shape for adjustment in conference. The Senate was inclined to confine the measure's revenue scope to $1,250,000,000, leaving the balance needed by the Government to be raised by authorized bond issues. But in redrafting the bill the Senate committee, after vainly succeeding in paring the imposts below $1,670,000,000, was eventually obliged to raise them $500,000,000. The conferees' report further enhanced them to yield approximately $2,500,000,000. In this shape the bill finally passed the Senate October 2, 1917.

A simple named bill "to increase temporarily the military establishment of the United States," which was early presented to Congress after the declaration of April 6, 1917, stood out as the Administration's chief war measure. It became known as the Selective Draft Bill because of its chief provisions, which authorized the President to institute a modified form of conscription for raising a new army. It also authorized him to raise the regular army and the National Guard to their maximum strength and officer and equip them. These latter enlistments were to be voluntary, under existing laws, unless the required number was not forthcoming by that means, in which case the regular military establishment was to be replenished from recruits obtained by the selective draft. This latter method the President was empowered to use for creating two forces of 500,000 men each, one immediately, the other later, as deemed expedient. All men, citizens and intended citizens, between the ages of 21 and 30, were subject to call under the selective draft and were required to register their names for possible enrollment. The census showed that some 10,000,000 men between the ages named could be located by registration, from which number the Government could select the million of men required in two divisions. The House and Senate adopted the measure on April 28, 1917, by substantial majorities, the voting being respectively 397 to 24 and 81 to 8. A vain attempt was made in both Houses to raise the new army by voluntary enlistments.

There was a popular demand for sending former President Roosevelt to France as head of a volunteer force of four infantry divisions, and the Senate adopted an amendment authorizing the project. The House had rejected the proposal. When the bill reached the Conference Committee, the Senate amendment authorizing the Roosevelt expedition was deleted. But upon the bill's return the House reversed itself by refusing to accept it, and sent it back to the Conference Committee with the instruction to restore the section permitting Colonel Roosevelt to organize a volunteer force for service in Europe. The bill went to the President for signature with this provision restored; but the President declined, in his discretion, to avail himself of the authority to permit the dispatch of the Roosevelt division, and it never went.

The Food Control Bill which conferred large powers on the Government for safeguarding the food supplies of the country for war purposes proved as difficult to pass as the War Revenue Bill, but succeeded in reaching the President. Its presentation to Congress was heralded by a public statement from the President, who sought to impress upon the country the immediate need of legislation to conserve and stimulate the country's food production. He sought authority to appoint a food administrator, and named Herbert C. Hoover, who had creditably directed the feeding of the Belgians as head of the Relief Committee, for the post. The President drew a sharp line of distinction between the work of the Government as conducted by the Department of Agriculture in its ordinary supervision of food production and the emergencies produced by the war.

"All measures intended directly to extend the normal activities of the Department of Agriculture," he said, "in reference to the production, conservation, and the marketing of farm crops will be administered, as in normal times, through that department, and the powers asked for over distribution and consumption, over exports, imports, prices, purchase, and requisition of commodities, storing, and the like which may require regulation during the war, will be placed in the hands of a commissioner of food administration, appointed by the President and directly responsible to him.

"The objects sought to be served by the legislation asked for are: Full inquiry into the existing available stocks of foodstuffs and into the costs and practices of the various food producing and distributing trades; the prevention of all unwarranted hoarding of every kind and of the control of foodstuffs by persons who are not in any legitimate sense producers, dealers, or traders; the requisitioning when necessary for the public use of food supplies and of the equipment necessary for handling them properly; the licensing of wholesome and legitimate mixtures and milling percentages, and the prohibition of the unnecessary or wasteful use of foods.

"Authority is asked also to establish prices, but not in order to limit the profits of the farmers, but only to guarantee to them when necessary a minimum price which will insure them a profit where they are asked to attempt new crops and to secure the consumer against extortion by breaking up corners and attempts at speculation, when they occur, by fixing temporarily a reasonable price at which middlemen must sell.

"Although it is absolutely necessary that unquestionable powers shall be placed in my hands, in order to insure the success of this administration of the food supplies of the country, I am confident that the exercise of those powers will be necessary only in the few cases where some small and selfish minority proves unwilling to put the nation's interests above personal advantage."

A sweeping bill was thereupon presented to the House empowering the President, under the war clause of the Constitution, to take the measures he named whenever, in his opinion, the national emergency called for their exercise.

The mere conferring of such extreme powers on the President, it was hoped, would suffice. The Government view was that armed with the effective weapons the bill provided, no difficulty would be encountered in enlisting on the side of the public interest all recalcitrant private agencies without legal action.

The House, in passing the measure, made it more drastic by inserting an amendment prohibiting the further manufacturing of alcoholic liquors during the war, and authorizing the President, in his discretion, to commandeer existing stocks of distilled spirits. The President was unwilling to countenance such a drastic curb on the liquor industry, and the Senate Agriculture Committee, on his recommendation, restricted the veto on the manufacture of liquor to whisky, rum, gin, and brandy, removing the ban on light wines and beer, but retained the clause empowering him to acquire all distilled spirits in bond, as above named, should the national exigency call for such action. The Senate approved the bill as thus amended.

The antiwhisky provisions, which were due to the Prohibitionists, were denounced as unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the House vote on the bill was 365 to 5. The Senate vote was as emphatic, being 81 to 6.

A more direct contest with the President over his war powers was waged around the Espionage Bill. Though primarily framed to make spying and its attendant acts treasonable offenses punishable by death or heavy fines and imprisonment, it was projected more as a measure aimed at news censorship, on account of a section forbidding the pursuit and publication of information on the war. A violent and persistent agitation by the press of the country against such a restriction, echoed in both Houses in the course of lengthy debates, finally won the day. All control of the publication of war news was denied the Administration, despite the President's appeals to Congress for the provision of a press censorship. The newspapers demanded to be placed on their good behavior and scouted the idea that any law was needed to restrain them from publishing information likely to give aid and comfort to the enemy. Thwarted by Congress, the President had to be content to forego the authority he sought for placing a veto on war news except such as the Government permitted to be disclosed. He was reminded that when relations were broken with Germany and war neared, the press readily responded to the Administration's request—made in the absence of legal authority to establish a press censorship—to suppress the publication and transmission of information concerning the movements of American merchant craft, then about to be armed against German submarines. Since then announcements of arrivals at and sailings from American ports of all vessels were excluded from the newspapers.

The Espionage Bill had an inherent importance of its own, but its purposes had been so overshadowed by the prominence given to the censorship provision that they were lost sight of. It empowered the President to place an embargo on exports when public safety and welfare so required; provided for the censoring of mails and the exclusion of matter therefrom deemed to be seditious and anarchistic, and making its transmission punishable by heavy fines; the punishment of espionage; the wrongful use of military information; circulation of false reports designed to interfere with military operations; attempts to cause disaffection in the army and navy, or obstruction of recruiting; the control of merchant vessels on American waters; the seizure of arms and ammunition and prohibition of their exportation under certain conditions; the penalizing of conspiracies designed to harm American foreign relations; punishment for the destruction of property arising from a state of war; and increased restrictions on the issue of passports.

The measure acquired a conspicuous place in the war legislation by reason of the embargo provision. It appeared an inconsequential clause, judging from the little public attention paid to it; but the President saw a weapon in it that might have more effect in bringing Germany to her knees than Great Britain's blockade of her coasts, stringent as the latter had proved. It developed into a measure for instituting a blockade of Germany from American ports. It had long been known that the maritime European neutrals—Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—had flourished enormously by supplying Germany with various necessities—mainly obtained from the United States on the pretense that the huge increase of their American trade was due to enlarged domestic consumption, the same being due, in its turn, to the cutting off of needed supplies from other countries by the British blockade and the war situation on land. The design of the embargo provision was to stop these neutrals from receiving any American goods until it was clearly established, before leaving an American port, that they would not be transhipped to Germany. With this object the President was authorized to stop any or all exports to any or all countries in his discretion. This was a sweeping blanket instruction from Congress aimed at placing a barrier on transhipment trade with Germany from the port of departure. "Satisfy us that your goods are not going to Germany via neutral countries," the Government told exporters, "and your ships can get clearance. Otherwise they cannot." The embargo was even aimed at neutral countries that permitted their own goods to cross the German frontier by threatening to cut those countries off from any trade with the United States. But it was not clear how it could be made effective in this respect. Its chief aim was rather to make it impossible for the neutrals to replenish with American goods such of their domestic stocks which had been depleted by exports to German customers.

The subject raised a stormy debate during a secret session of the Senate. Senator Townsend, in an assault upon the embargo proposal, took the view that the Administration wished to use the embargo to force small neutral nations into the war as American allies.

"I am not willing," he said, "to vote for the very German methods we have condemned. I understand that this provision is not to be used for the protection of American produce or to protect the American supply, but to coerce neutral countries. We stood for neutrality, and urged the nations of the world to support neutrality. Now that we are engaged in war we ought not to coerce other nations and force them to enter the struggle."

The Administration found a supporter from an unexpected quarter—from Senator Stone, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who opposed the war and all its works. He thus defended the embargo:

"If we were still neutral I should join readily in opposing such legislation. But we are now belligerent. If it is true that any neutral country, contiguous to Germany, which is now our enemy, is supplying Germany with food, munitions, and other materials out of its own productions, and then comes to the United States to purchase here and transport there a sufficient quantity to replenish its supply, doesn't the senator think the United States is within its belligerent rights to say that the United States doesn't consent?"

"It is true we are no longer neutral," insisted Mr. Townsend, "and we don't intend that any other country shall remain neutral. We are in trouble and want everybody else to be in trouble if we are strong enough to put them in."

The admitted purpose of the embargo was to force neutral countries contiguous to Germany to suspend trade with her as an enemy of the United States. The sentiment of the Senate, barring the objections of a few members like Senator Townsend, who protested against the embargo's "injustice," was that the United States had full control over its own trade, and, especially in time of war, could restrict it as its foreign interests required. No international law was involved in American legislation which determined the disposition of American exports, even if that legislation had a direct bearing on the prosecution of the war. The Administration refused to see any analogy between this embargo policy and the questions raised by the blockade controversy between the United States and Great Britain when the former was a neutral. American belligerency had necessitated a change of basis in the Government's attitude.

The President went to some pains to explain to the country what the export embargo meant. He created a Board of Exports Control, or Exports Council, composed of Herbert C. Hoover, the selected head of the food administration body, and a number of leading Government officials. This board's duty was to prevent a single bushel of wheat or the smallest quantity of any other commodity from leaving an American port without the board's license and approval. This check on exports, the President pointed out, regulated and supervised their disposition, and was not really an embargo, except on consignments to Germany.

"There will, of course, be no prohibition of exports," he said. "The normal course of trade will be interfered with as little as possible, and, so far as possible, only its abnormal course directed. The whole object will be to direct exports in such a way that they will go first and by preference where they are most needed and most immediately needed, and temporarily to withhold them, if necessary, where they can best be spared.

"Our primary duty in the matter of foodstuffs and like necessaries is to see to it that the peoples associated with us in the war get as generous a proportion as possible of our surplus, but it will also be our wish and purpose to supply the neutral nations whose peoples depend upon us for such supplies as nearly in proportion to their need as the amount to be divided permits."

Nevertheless the proclamation that came from the White House on July 9, 1917, disclosed an exercise of presidential authority without precedent in American history in that it contemplated, with British cooperation, the virtual domination of the country's trade with the whole world. It provided for the absolute governmental control, by license, of the exports of essential war commodities to fifty-six nations and their possessions, including all the Allied belligerents, all the neutrals, as well as the enemy countries. These commodities embraced coal, coke, fuel, oils, kerosene and gasoline, including bunkers, food grains, flour and meal, fodder and feeds, meats and fats, pig iron, steel billets, ship plates and structural shapes, scrap iron and scrap steel, ferromanganese, fertilizers, arms, ammunition and explosives. By the control of coal and other fuels the Government was bent on obtaining a firm grasp on shipping. And the point was, as stated in the preamble of the proclamation, "the public safety requires that succor shall be prevented from reaching the enemy."

Europe hailed the establishment of the American embargo as signalizing a "real blockade" against Germany. The Paris "Temps" succinctly expressed the prevailing view in the Allied countries:

"The Allies, despite the patience of their diplomats and the vigilance of their navies, have failed to make the blockade sufficiently tight. A new measure was needed; the United States has now supplied it. By forbidding indirect assistance the United States has introduced a new and efficient condition. If the Allies firmly apply the principle, as public opinion strongly demands, President Wilson's proclamation will have been one of the decisive acts of the war."

The need for sending foodstuffs and like necessaries to the Allies, as pointed out by the President in explaining the embargo, called for shipping facilities of a magnitude that demanded the immediate attention of Congress. Exports there would be in unexampled quantities, but their destination must largely be to the Entente countries, consigned in armed ships. Coastwise craft were drafted for transatlantic trade; ships under construction for private concerns were subject to acquisition by the Government; every craft afloat adaptable to war service—ferryboats, private yachts, motor boats and the like—were listed for contingent use; and the thousand or more merchant ships of American registry demanded an equipment of guns and ammunition to enable them to run the submarine blockade.

The seized German and Austrian ships helped to supply the needed tonnage, but they did not go far. War conditions, created by the recognition that the United States would practically win the war for the Allies by keeping their countries generously supplied with all necessities required the construction of a huge trade fleet of steel or wooden ships at a cost of a billion dollars. The Government, through the Shipping Board, reserved the right of preempting the products of every steel mill in the country and of canceling all their existing contracts with private consumers, so as to divert the use of steel products for the trade fleet. The acquisition of every shipyard in the country was also contemplated as a contingency. Tentative estimates provided for the construction of thousands of steel and wooden cargo ships aggregating between five and six million tonnage within the coming two years.

The shipbuilding program was undertaken by General Goethals, builder of the Panama Canal, as general manager of a new Government body called the Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, and William Denman, its president. Conflict immediately arose between them regarding the expediency of building steel or wooden ships to meet the emergency, and the whole project was imperiled by their personal differences. General Goethals favored a steel fleet and planned to apply the available balance of an appropriation of $550,000,000 to the construction of fabricated steel ships of standard pattern. Early in July contracts for 348 wooden ships, aggregating 1,218,000 tons, and costing some $174,000,000, had been made or agreed upon and contracts for a further 100 were under negotiation. Of steel ships seventy-seven had been contracted for or agreed upon, amounting to 642,800 tons, at a cost of $101,660,356. This was a good beginning, as it represented a program under way for providing 525 ships of all sorts. The remainder of the Goethals program called for steel ships, of which he promised 3,000,000 tons in eighteen months. Another feature of the Goethals policy was the immediate commandeering of private ships in the stocks, whether owned by Americans, Allies, or neutrals. Acute friction arose between General Goethals and Mr. Denman, mainly over the question of the former's negotiations and plans with the steel interests. In the end President Wilson intervened by accepting the invited resignations of both, and placing the shipbuilding in the hands of Admiral Washington L. Capps, a naval ship constructor of renown, and Edward N. Hurley, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

By now the foundations of a huge war machine had been laid by legislative and executive action; but it was discovered that a vital factor in modern wars had been overlooked. An enormous air fleet was necessary to provide further eyes for the Allies. Congress repaired this omission by voting $640,000,000 for building 22,000 airships and for raising and equipping an American corps of 100,000 aviators.



CHAPTER LXVII

MEN AND MONEY IN MILLIONS

The country early realized the practical effect of the legislation passed by Congress enabling the President to call on the national resources in men, money, and material for conducting the war with Germany.

The Administration's first nation-wide appeal was for money. Under the Bond Bill it was empowered to raise war funds, and proceeded to do so by floating the first issue of the "Liberty loan of 1917," this being a demand for $2,000,000,000 from the popular purse. The money raised was to provide credits to the Allied governments to meet the enormous war purchases they were making in the United States, and, like previous accommodations to them, this provision of funds was not so much a loan as a transfer or exchange of credits. American money was lent to the Allies, deposited in American banks, to enable them to buy American products. Not a cent of the Liberty loan went out of the country.

It was the largest single financial transaction ever undertaken by the United States Government. It greatly exceeded all previous bond issues and squarely brought the country to face the necessities of war finance on a huge scale. But the prewar period, which produced a high tide of prosperity, due to the unexampled calls on American industries by the Allied Powers, had revealed the enormous wealth and economic strength of the American investing community, as well as a flourishing condition of the working population. The Government entered upon the financial operation with no misgivings and the result proved its confidence in the success of the loan. Bank subscriptions were discouraged. National loans hitherto issued in war time were floated as a basis of national currency and were taken up by the banks in large amounts. But the Liberty loan was an appeal to the million—to several millions; to the man in the street, the small tradesman, the salaried class. Workers realized that in subscribing to the loan they were not only securing an absolutely safe investment, but were providing funds for wages and profits. The money they invested as a loan to the Allies was applied by them to buying American goods.

The Liberty loan was floated on May 14, 1917, in denominations as low as $50, rising to $100,000, at 3-1/2 per cent. interest, redeemable in fifteen or thirty years. The banks of the country, national and State, the trust companies, newspapers, department stores, express companies, and numerous corporations and firms placed their establishments and staffs at the national service for receiving applications, which came from all classes. The response flagged as the date for closing the subscription lists neared (June 15, 1917), but there was a rally at the last moment by small investors, and the lists closed with the loan greatly oversubscribed.

Germany had been watching its progress. There were lulls during the month in which the loan was under issue and Germany was eager to see in a passing slowness of response a popular unwillingness to shoulder the burden of war and an apathy that she welcomed. The people had no spirit for the war and it was largely a bankers' loan, said her spokesmen. Anticipating this criticism the Government, aided by the press, publicists, and bankers, conducted a propaganda which successfully impressed the country that a large popular oversubscription could not be misconstrued by Germany, as it would convince her that there would be no stinting of national resources by the United States to aid the Allies in encompassing her defeat. The result showed that a request for $2,000,000,000 had been met by a response of $3,035,226,850 from over 4,000,000 investors, mainly for small amounts. The success of the loan, especially in its appeal to modest purses, was imposing. Secretary McAdoo of the Treasury thus expressed the Government's gratification:

"The widespread distribution of the bonds and the great amount of the oversubscription constitute an eloquent and conclusive reply to the enemies of the country who claimed that the heart of America was not in this war. The result, of which every citizen may well be proud, reflects the patriotism and the determination of the American people to fight for the vindication of outraged American rights, the speedy restoration of peace, and the establishment of liberty throughout the world.

"The Congress pledged all the resources of America to bring the war to a successful determination. The issue just closed will serve as an indication of the temper and purpose of the American people and of the manner in which they may be expected to respond to future calls of their country for the necessary credits to carry on the war."

The operation of the Selective Draft law provided a simultaneous opportunity for a display of patriotism. Acting under its provisions, the President in a stirring proclamation issued on May 18, 1917, called upon every man in the country between the age of 21 and 30 to register his readiness to be called upon for army service at the designated registration place within the precinct where he permanently resided. It was a call to the nation to arm.

"The power against which we are arrayed," the President said, "has sought to impose its will upon the world. To this end it has increased armament until it has changed the face of war. In the sense in which we have been wont to think of armies, there are no armies in this struggle, there are entire nations armed. Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army that is in France than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation.

"To this end our people must draw close in one compact front against a common foe. But this cannot be if each man pursues a private purpose. All must pursue one purpose. The nation needs all men; but it needs each man, not in the field that will most pleasure him, but in the endeavor that will best serve the common good. Thus, though a sharpshooter pleases to operate a trip hammer for the forging of great guns and an expert machinist desires to march with the flag, the nation is being served only when the sharpshooter marches and the machinist remains at his levers.

"The whole nation must be a team, in which each man shall play the part for which he is best fitted. To this end, Congress has provided that the nation shall be organized for war by selection; that each man shall be classified for service in the place to which it shall best serve the general good to call him.

"The significance of this cannot be overstated. It is a new thing in our history and a landmark in our progress. It is a new manner of accepting and vitalizing our duty to give ourselves with thoughtful devotion to the common purpose of us all. It is in no sense a conscription of the unwilling; it is, rather, selection from a nation which has volunteered in mass. It is no more a choosing of those who shall march with the colors than it is a selection of those who shall serve an equally necessary and devoted purpose in the industries that lie behind the battle line."

The President had strongly espoused the selective draft in preference to the voluntary system of raising an army organization. He had pointed out that many forms of patriotic service were open to the people, and emphasized that the military part of the service, important though it was, was not, under modern war conditions, the most vital part. The selective draft enabled the selection for service in the army of those who could be most readily spared from the pursuit of other industries and occupations. There being a universal obligation to serve in time of war, the Administration felt the need of being empowered to select men for military service and select others to do the rest of the nation's work, either by keeping them in their existing employment, if that employment was useful for war purposes, or utilizing their services in a like field.

"The volunteer system does not do this," he said. "When men choose themselves they sometimes choose without due regard to their other responsibilities. Men may come from the farms or from the mines or from the factories or centers of business who ought not to come but ought to stand back of the armies in the field and see that they get everything that they need and that the people of the country are sustained in the meantime."

Registration day, which was fixed for June 5, 1917, partook of the character of an election day. The young manhood of the country of the prescribed ages trooped to the registration places of their districts like voters depositing ballots at polling booths. It was a national roll call of the pick of civilian manhood available for military duty, and yielded an enrollment of 9,649,938 from which the first army was to be drafted.

"The registration," reported the Government, "was accomplished in a fashion measuring up to the highest standards of Americanism. The young men came to the registration places enthusiastic; there was no hint of a slacking spirit anywhere, except in a few cases where misguided persons had been prevailed upon to attempt to avoid their national obligation."

The machinery for the selective draft had merely been started. Only the groundwork had been laid. The principal operation—the draft itself—had to be undertaken, and the process was a slow one. Half the men who registered claimed exemption from military service for a multitude of reasons, but as not more than 6 per cent were to be chosen to compose the first citizen army, this was not important even if most of the exemption claims were justified and allowed.

The outstanding fact was that the registrants were all on an equal footing and that their mustering brought nearer the realization of the President's dream of a "citizenry trained" without favoritism or discrimination. The son of the millionaire and of the laborer, the college-bred man and the worker forced to earn his living from early youth, were to march side by side in the ranks and practice marksmanship and trench digging together. Great Britain and France had democratized their armies; the United States did the same.

The President increased the number of men to be drafted for the first army from 500,000 to 687,000 in order to use drafted men to bring the regular army and the National Guard to their full strength. Thus there were 687,000 men to be selected from a registration of 9,649,938. The quota required from each State, based upon each State's number of registrants, was determined in that proportion.

The draft, which was practically a great lottery to establish the order in which the registrants were to be called into war service, took place on July 20, 1917, in Washington. As it was anticipated that fully half of the men called would either be exempted or rejected after medical examination, the exemption boards appointed throughout the country, located in 4,557 districts, were required to call double the number of their quota for examination in the order in which the men's numbers appeared on the district list after the drawing. This meant a call of 1,374,000 men.

The drawing itself was based on a system of master-key numbers in two groups, written on slips of paper. These slips were rolled and placed in a bowl, from which they were drawn one at a time by blindfolded men. The picking of a single number out of one set of a thousand numerals, or out of another set of eleven numerals, drafted each man in the 4,557 districts whose registration card bore the serial number picked. The method fixed with absolute equality of chance the order in which all registrants—if called upon—were to report to their local boards for examination and subsequent exemption, discharge, or acceptance for military service. The local boards at once organized for the examination and enrollment of the men called.

The new citizen force became known as the National Army, in contradistinction to the regular army and the National Guard, and was organized into sixteen divisions, grouped by States as under:

First—Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

Second—Lower New York State and Long Island.

Third—Upper New York State and northern Pennsylvania.

Fourth—Southern Pennsylvania.

Fifth—Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and District of Columbia.

Sixth—Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

Seventh—Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

Eighth—Ohio and West Virginia.

Ninth—Indiana and Kentucky.

Tenth—Wisconsin and Michigan.

Eleventh—Illinois.

Twelfth—Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Thirteenth—North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa.

Fourteenth—Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri.

Fifteenth—Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma.

Sixteenth—Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada, and Utah.

Huge cantonments, or concentration camps—army cities—were put under construction in the various sections of the country where the drafted men could be expeditiously massed for mobilization and training before proceeding to the European battle ground. In all, thirty-two of these camp cities were required, the regular army and National Guard providing another sixteen divisions for which such training grounds were needed. The camp sites were chosen for spaciousness, absence of marshes, natural drainage situations, and proximity to lines of transport and a good water supply. Each army camp called for vast building supplies, as each was designed to constitute a complete town, with sewerage, water works, lighting system, and streets.



The volunteer system was largely depended upon to recruit the regular army and the National Guard to their required strength; but in the draft call a provision of 187,000 men had been made for service in these two branches to fill up gaps caused by failure of volunteer enlistments or by the detailing of regulars or guardsmen to aid in training the draft recruits. The President pointed out that there was ample scope for the volunteer system in augmenting the two established services, which needed as many men as the draft army. On April 1, 1917, before war was declared, the regular army and National Guard numbered about 225,000 men. These branches needed augmenting to a strength of 293,000 and 400,000 respectively, making a combined force of 693,000. There was thus a call for 468,000 men, which was mainly responded to by volunteers. The draft citizen army of 500,000 and this force of 693,000 made an army approaching 1,200,000 men which the Government organized for field service in Europe in the first year of America's participation in the war. Adding to this an augmented naval force of 150,000, and the Marine Corps, numbering 30,000, a grand total approximating 1,400,000 men appears as the first American contribution to the forces fighting Germany.



CHAPTER LXVIII

ENVOYS FROM AMERICA'S ALLIES

What perhaps most vividly brought home to the nation that it was now one of the belligerents of the Allied Powers was the visit of a number of special commissioners from the governments of the latter countries, following the American declaration of war. The presence of the British and French missions in particular made a deep impression, not only because of the importance and magnitude of their errand, but because of their personnel. The British mission was headed by Arthur James Balfour, a former Conservative premier, and now Foreign Secretary in the Lloyd-George cabinet. The French mission included Rene Viviani, a predecessor of Premier Ribot and a member of his cabinet, and Marshal Joffre, the victor of the Battle of the Marne and an idol of France. The commanding personalities of Mr. Balfour and Marshal Joffre caught the American imagination and the visits they paid to several cities during their brief stay partook of the character of state events, marked by an imposing welcome and sumptuous hospitality.

A reception no less generous was accorded the members of the other missions—the Italian, headed by the Prince of Udine, son of the Duke of Genoa and nephew of King Victor Emmanuel, and including Signor Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy; the Russian, headed by Boris Bakhmetieff, the new Russian Ambassador; and the Belgian, headed by Baron Moncheur. Other missions came from Ireland, Rumania, and Japan.

The reception of these various missions formed the occasion for a number of state functions which placed the Administration in the role of a national host to many distinguished guests from foreign countries with which the United States was now allied for the first time in a devastating war. The honors paid to them produced remarkable proceedings in Congress without parallel in that body's deliberations; but then the great world war had shattered precedents wherever it touched. The spectacle was witnessed of a British statesman, in the person of Mr. Balfour, addressing the House and Senate, an event which became an enduring memory. Congress also heard addresses from M. Viviani, Baron Moncheur, and the Prince of Udine. They told why their countries were in the war—a familiar story whose repetition within the halls of Congress had considerable point in that the national legislature itself had sanctioned war on Germany for the same reasons. American and Allied statesmen thus met on common ground in a common cause. The numerous conferences between the various sections of the Allied missions and American officials—beginning with that between the President and Mr. Balfour—were councils of war. They symbolized the joining of hands across the sea in a literal sense—across a sea infested with German submarines, which the envoys, incidentally, escaped both in coming and returning.

In the public ceremonials that marked their visit the leading envoys freely and repeatedly expressed their grateful recognition to the United States for unselfishly entering the war at last on the side which was fighting for civilization—a disinterested action without parallel in the history of wars, as Mr. Asquith had called it. Their gratitude might well be taken for granted; but, like the Allies' aims in the war, it bore repetition, because American aid was sorely needed, and they had, in fact, come to accept as much assistance as the United States had to give.

The immediate need was money, food, ships—all the accessories of war outside the fighting zone. Funds for loans having become available, the American Treasury proceeded to distribute its largesse generously. Great Britain received $200,000,000 as the first installment of a number of loans; France and Italy received $100,000,000 each; Serbia got $3,000,000; Russia $175,000,000; France another $60,000,000; and Great Britain $300,000,000 more. Further credits to the various countries brought the amount loaned to $1,525,000,000 by the close of July, 1917, or more than half of the $3,000,000,000 sanctioned by Congress for financing the Allies.

By these transactions the United States Government displaced the banking firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., who had been acting as fiscal agent for the Allies since they began to purchase huge supplies in America on American credits.

Great Britain, as the bulwark of her allies, had many weighty matters to lay before the United States. Her mission sought an understanding regarding the conduct of the blockade, naval operations, munition supplies, military dispositions and resources, and the shipment of foodstuffs. There was no driving of bargains, since neither was a competitor of the other, and hence could have no radical difference of view on questions to the settlement of which they had been drawn in union against a common foe. The attitude of the British mission invited American cooperation, reciprocal service, and expressed gratitude for the American partnership. They had no policies to suggest to the Administration. They had much information on the conduct of the war to lay before the United States—specially blunders to be avoided; but they did not presume to teach Americans how to make war. The United States, on its part, eagerly wanted to know all that could be known, and to be guided accordingly.

A week of conferences clarified the situation. Both the British and French missions revealed with surprising frankness the status of the Allied resources and the military situation. Great Britain was especially candid in disclosing the extent of her losses by submarines. She needed ships, as many as America could build. France needed an American army at once to augment her man power. Italy wanted coal and grain. Most of all, the collapse of Russia's military organization had brought the Allies to the pass of relying on American aid as imperative if Germany was to be defeated.

The personal contact between American Government officials and the various missions, especially the British, produced a mutual confidence and sympathy not to be measured by words. Resources and needs were frankly stated. The United States disclosed what it could do and how. The way, in short, was cleared for the United States to enter the Grand Alliance on a basis making for efficient cooperation in the conduct of the war.

A gentleman's agreement was effected with neither side committed to any binding policy. The United States retained a free hand, and was not controlled, formally or informally, by any entangling undertaking as to any future course it might elect to take in its relations with Germany. But one enlightening point emerged. It was that while the United States was free to enter into any peace it chose, it would not enter into a separate peace. No action in that direction was imaginable in the circumstances without consulting the Entente Allies. This injection of peace considerations into the war situation, before the United States had really entered the lists with troops and guns, was taking time by the forelock. But it was needful to clear the air early, as one of the reasons ascribed to Germany's apparent complacence to the entrance of America as a belligerent was that she counted on the United States as a balance wheel that might restrain the Entente's war activities and hasten peace, or later operate to curtail the Entente's demands at the peace conference. On these assumptions America's participation was supposed to be not wholly unwelcome to Berlin.

American freedom of action was unlikely to confuse the war issues in the manner Germany looked for. Whatever hopes Germany built upon that freedom did not deter Secretary Lansing and Mr. Balfour from hastening to counteract misleading impressions current that America would be embarrassed in its postwar foreign policy by becoming involved in European territorial questions, from which, for more than a century, it had remained aloof.

The French mission also achieved an incontestable popular triumph, due to the presence of Marshal Joffre and to memories of French assistance in the Revolutionary War. France's heroic resistance to German invasion of her territory, specially in thwarting the advance on Paris, had also attached American sympathies to her cause. M. Viviani and Marshal Joffre did not hesitate to avail themselves of this feeling by plainly requesting the immediate dispatch of American troops to France. While this course conflicted with the early plans of the American General Staff, the latter had to recognize the immense moral effect which the flying of the Stars and Stripes would have on the Allied troops in the Franco-Belgian trenches, and the request did not go unheeded. The country realized that the French importunity for troops was born of an equally importunate need.

All the missions, except the British, were birds of passage, who departed upon fulfilling their errands of securing American aid in directions where it was most required. There was more permanency to the British mission, owing to Great Britain's role of general provider to her Allies, which called for the establishment of several British organizations in New York and Washington as clearing houses. Mr. Balfour and his suite left, to be succeeded by Lord Northcliffe, chief proprietor of the London "Times," London "Daily Mail," and many other British publications, who was commissioned by Lloyd-George to continue the work Mr. Balfour had begun and to coordinate the ramifications produced by extensive scope of the Allies' calls on American industries for war equipment.

In the same direction the American Government consolidated its energies in a War Industries Board, which it created to supervise the expenditure of millions of dollars on equipping the American armies.



CHAPTER LXIX

IN IT AT LAST

The Administration decided to send an American expeditionary force to France as an advance guard of the huge army in process of preparation. Major General John J. Pershing was placed in command of this expedition, which was believed to embrace an army division, a force of the Marine Corps, and nine regiments of engineers. A veil of official secrecy (religiously respected by the press in pursuance of the voluntary censorship it imposed upon itself) was thrown over the dispatch of the preliminary force, and nothing further was heard of it until tidings came of the unheralded arrival of General Pershing in England on June 8, 1917, and of the appearance of a number of American warships off the French coast about the same time.

This latter event proved to be the safe arrival of a convoyed naval collier, the Jupiter, which served as a harbinger of the fleet of transports conveying the American troops. It carried a cargo of army provisions, including over 10,000 tons of wheat.

The arrival of the first division of transports at an unnamed French seaport was reported on June 26, 1917. They were signaled from the deserted quays of the town at 6 o'clock in the morning, and as they steamed toward port in a long line, according to an eloquent eyewitness, they appeared a "veritable armada," whose black hulls showed clearly against the horizon, while the gray outlines of their escorting destroyers were almost blotted out in the lead-colored sea. Dominating all was an enormous American cruiser with its peculiar upper basket works. The warships went to their allotted moorings with clockwork precision, while tugs took charge of the transports and towed them to their berths. Resounding cheers were exchanged between the troops which lined the rails of the incoming ships and the populace which lined the quays.

The next day came a formal intimation from Paris that the first expeditionary unit of American troops, in command of Major General William L. Sibert, had safely reached their destination. Rear Admiral Gleaves, commanding the destroyer force which accompanied the transports, telegraphed the Navy Department to the same effect. But it subsequently transpired that all had not been plain sailing in passing through the submarine zone.

The expedition was divided into contingents, each contingent including troopships and a naval escort designed to hold off any German raiders that might be sighted. An ocean rendezvous had also been arranged with the American destroyer flotilla under Admiral Sims, which had been operating in European waters since May 4, 1917, in order that the passage of the danger zone might be attended by every possible protection. Frequent indications pointing to the presence of submarines in the expedition's course were observed as the transports neared European waters. The passage through the infested zone was therefore made at high speed; the men were prepared for any emergency; boats and life belts were at hand for instant use; and watches at every lookout were heavily reenforced.

These precautions were timely and more than warranted. The first contingent of transports was attacked twice by German U-boats. Admiral Gleaves, describing these incidents in reporting to Admiral Mayo, commander in chief of the Atlantic fleet, said the first attack was made at 10.15 p. m. on June 22. The location, formation, and names of the transports and the convoys, the speed they made, and the method of proceeding, were suppressed in the account made public by the Navy Department.

It appeared that the destroyers' flagship, which led the transport fleet, was the first to encounter the submarine. At least the officer on deck and others on the bridge saw a white streak about fifty yards ahead of the ship, crossing from starboard to port at right angles to the ship's course. The ship was sharply turned 90 degrees to starboard at high speed, a general alarm was sounded, and torpedo crews were ordered to their guns. One of the destroyers called A and one of the transports astern opened fire, the destroyer's shell being fitted with tracers. Other members of the convoying destroyers turned to the right and left. At first it was thought on board the flagship that the white streak was caused by a torpedo, but later reports from other ships warranted the conclusion that it was the wake of the submarine itself. At 10.25 the wake of a torpedo was sighted directly across the bow of the destroyer called A, about thirty yards ahead. The ship's course was swung to the left, and shots were fired from port batteries in alarm, accompanied by blasts from the siren. The destroyer then passed through a wake believed to be from the passing submarine. A second torpedo passed under the destroyer A's stern ten minutes later.

Another destroyer known as D was also the target of a torpedo which passed it from starboard to port across the bow about forty yards ahead of the ship, leaving a perceptible wake visible for about four or five hundred yards.

The submarine sighted by the flagship immediately engaged the attention of destroyer B. In fact it darted under the latter and passed the flagship's bows, disappearing close aboard on the flagship's port bow between the destroyer columns. The B followed the wake between the columns and reported strong indications of two submarines astern, which grew fainter. The B afterward guarded the rear of the convoy.

So much for the ghostly movements of the submarine or submarines which crossed the tracks of the first contingent of American transports on the night of June 22. In the absence of more tangible proof of their presence beyond that provided by white streaks and wakes on the sea surface, the incident might well have been a false alarm. It only occasioned much excitement and activity. But its interest lay in the alertness of the destroyers to danger. The officers on board the flotilla had no doubt at all that the danger was real. Admiral Gleaves, indeed, saw circumstantial evidence of the menace in alluding to a bulletin of the French General Staff which referred to the activities of a German submarine off the Azores. This U-boat, the bulletin said, was ordered to watch in the vicinity of those islands, "at such a distance as it was supposed the enemy American convoy would pass from the Azores."

The second contingent of transports, which arrived in France a week later, had a similar experience, with the important difference that their encounters with submarines took place in broad daylight, and that the firing at one of them produced material traces of the enemy's proximity. Two submarines were met on the morning of June 26, 1917, one at 11.30, when the ships were about a hundred miles off the coast of France, the other an hour later. The destroyer H, which was leading, sighted the first U-boat, and the I pursued the wake, but without making any further discovery. The second episode was more convincing of the actual presence of a submarine. The destroyer J saw the bow wave of one at a distance of 1,500 yards and headed for it at a rapid speed. The pointers at the destroyer's gun sighted its periscope several times for several seconds; but it disappeared each time before they could get their aim, which the zigzagging of the ship impeded. Presently the J passed about twenty-five yards ahead of a mass of bubbles which obviously came from the submarine's wake. A deep charge was fired just ahead of these bubbles. Several pieces of timber, quantities of oil and debris then came to the surface. Nothing more was seen of the submarine. There was plain evidence that it had been sunk.

Two days later—on the morning of June 28, 1917, at 10 o'clock—the destroyer K opened fire at an object, about three hundred yards ahead, which appeared to indicate a submarine. Admiral Gleaves described it as a small object rising a foot or two high out of the water, and leaving a small wake. Through binoculars he made out a shape under the water, too large to be a blackfish, lying diagonally across the K's course. The port bow gun fired at the spot, and the ship veered to leave the submarine's location astern. Then the port aft gun crew reported sighting a submarine on the port quarter, and opened fire. The lookouts also reported seeing the submarine under the water's surface. The ship zigzagged and the firing continued. Not only was the submarine seen but the lieutenant in charge of the firing on the K destroyer, as well as the gun crews and lookouts aft, testified that it fired two torpedoes in the direction of the convoy. The latter, however, had sheered off from its base course well to the right when the alarm was sounded. The K continued to zigzag until all danger had passed, and duly joined the other escorts. The convoy then formed into column astern.

No submarine ambuscades awaited the third group of transports. Their voyage was quite uneventful. Apart from the probability that much of the commotion marking the passage of the first and second contingents might well have been due to groundless fears, the success of the American expedition in safely landing in France registered Germany's first defeat at the hands of the United States. It was her boast that her submarines would never permit any American army to reach its destination.