Francis Whiting Halsey

“ Had Germany's conscious intentions been ever so kind, and her official morals never so exemplary, the mere fact of her tremendous expansion when bound in there by an outer world of Great Powers, loaded down with aggressive traditions, whose equilibrium depended on opposition instead of on collaboration, would sooner or later have caused a conflict which, in turn, would have expanded into a World War, because, in an age of universal independence, any serious shock to the larger part of the whole needs must have upset the entire whole. ”

“ Germany's conduct of the war was “the chief factor in creating the new war spirit of 1917.” It was that spirit which brought the United States into the war and which, by November, 1918, had landed nearly 2,000,000 American soldiers in France, with as many more preparing to sail. The idea of popular government—of government with the consent of the governed—was part and parcel of the political spirit of the age, and the German government, in opposing itself to that spirit, had become “an enemy of mankind.” ”

“ As a balance to successful and great expansion by other States, Germany could point only to her African possessions, walled in by British and French colonies, and her widely scattered territory in the Pacific, all at the mercy of the British fleet, which was a bare colonial outlook for a nation of 70,000,000 people, with an industrial organization which surpassed anything that the world had ever seen, not merely in actual efficiency but in the intelligence with which it cared for its workers. ”

“ What he wants most is not peace, but a chance to pit his force against the force of some one else, or against some new thing. Man was not originally a working animal; it was civilization that imposed work upon him. But when you work a man too hard he will quit work, and go to war or to a football game. Man emerged from his primeval state through work and pain; he struggled up, fought his way and went through a never-ceasing experience of pain and battle. He was still what he always had been, not so much a mere working animal as an animal given to fighting. ”

“ War had been conceived by her, not as a thing of swift inspiration, but as something prepared long before in the scientist's laboratory—the personal factor subordinated to the machine. Conquest of the air, the discovery of wireless telegraphy, the development of motor-traction, the achievements of chemistry in the matter of high explosives, all had worked to the advantage of the Power which had been most industrious in the practical applications of science and most concerned in making them subservient to war. ”

“ Since Napoleon's time the art of warfare had added to its equipment, instantaneous communications of intelligence, marvelously rapid transportation of troops, and ability to feed and supply unheard of numbers of men in the field; power to fly through the air and so from above to detect the enemy's movements, power to operate under the water and so to destroy an enemy's ships, power to hurl projectiles of unprecedented size great distances against forts, and facilities for caring for hundreds and thousands of wounded, who but for the motor-ambulance would have perished on the battlefield. ”

“ The idea that Great Britain would raise an army on the Continental scale had never been contemplated. Her task was to command the sea, and defend her own shores. Italy, so far from being involved in the general strategy of the Allies, was at that time nominally an ally of Germany. The relations between France and Russia had been more intimate, but, in so far as the two governments had discust a common strategy, it was the strategy of defense in unknown circumstances at an unknown time. The geographical position of Germany alone was a decisive factor in the dictation of the initiative. ”

“ Loop-the-loop, caper-cutting, all the acrobatic performances that at first attended exhibition flying, became in the war normal evolutions. Only excess power for sudden bursts of speed and climbing could now save one in a perilous moment. Daily encounters in the sky proved conclusively that flying had been as thoroughly mastered as horseback riding. Machines were made to respond to the subconscious action of the rider as obediently as a cavalry horse responds. ”

“ The Germans started with sounder theories as to methods of war, and their advantage in the master of strategy should have been even more decisive than it was. They alone had a strategy that was conceived on large and comprehensive lines. The Allies had never discust the strategy of a possible Continental war in a collective way. Beyond a secret understanding between Great Britain and France that, in the event of an invasion of Belgium, the British Army should go to the defense of that country, there was no strategic preparation on the part of the two countries. ”

“ The German government declared war on Russia before calling in the Reichstag; Germany invaded Belgium before she told the Reichstag she was going to do it, and she carried on war to the very end, with all its unspeakable barbarities, “with little regard to the national legislative body which merely passed credits.” The German government never had from the people a mandate for war, or for the crimes it committed in conducting the war. ”

“ If nations in war are to be judged as individuals are judged, war certainly could not be defended or understood, but the philosopher contended that war should not and could not be judged from that point of view, being, as it was, an expression of “super-individual necessity.” He believed that war should by all means be avoided, just as disease should be; but disease, as well as war, can not always be avoided, and once caught must follow its own particular course. ”

“ Thus militarism, in itself a costly instrument, was regarded as a necessity in the work of giving to national economic forces their full effects, since a pushing and grasping policy was likely to excite jealousy and provoke enmity, and if it should fail to succeed by intimidation, might produce actual war, in which case there would be need for a great military power. ”

“ An inevitable consequence was that the whole nation entered upon a policy of territorial and industrial expansion. Neglected and backward spaces of the earth became subjected to fruitful processes under which an imperial realm in Europe sought greater wealth and power, all of which made imperative to the German mind the maintenance of a great military force, in order to preserve the authority of a government completely dominating all national activities. ”

“ One fatal result among many was a narrowing of vision. A generation grew up under a kind of obsession that, whatever this dominating power sought or demanded must be entirely right, since it had divine sanction and was for the benefit of the whole world. ”

“ Wars such as this world-war, from this point of view, were constitutional diseases, evil in themselves, but inevitable in human society as phases of growth. But wars, whether inevitable or not, when once entered upon, had to be pursued to their ends, and no medicine could change the general character of their courses. ”

“ Men had been given overmuch to mere thought and effort, to efficiency and achievement as sole ends, and not enough to balance, not enough to bodily vitality. Efficiency demands great powers of attention, concentration, analysis, self-control, and sustained effort, all of which in time become extremely fatiguing, and call for relaxation, until society goes back to the prehistoric type, to the primitive mortal combat of man with man, in order to bring rest to tired brains, and obtain release from high tension. ”

“ Much had been expected of the motor-truck in time of war, but few anticipated such extraordinary results in the distribution of food and ammunition.
The vast numbers of men employed in the war, and the enormous quantities of ammunition consumed, made it necessary that almost the entire industrial development of each nation be devoted to military purposes. The effect of this was that resources in coal and iron—the bases of all industries—became distinct military factors. Germany had already become the first of European States in the production of iron and steel. ”

“ According to the popular view in Great Britain, it rose solely and exclusively from the ambition of Germany to seize territory and power and, according to the popular view in Germany, out of the ambition of Great Britain to attack and destroy the rising power and wealth of Germany. But in its remote causes the war proceeded rather from rivalry for territory in every part of the world between all the Great Powers. There was contention between France and Germany for control of Morocco; between Russia and Austria for control of the Balkans ”

“ By a centralized government, in the hands of a few strong men, under a leadership unrestrained by those who were subject to it, efficiency and economy had been carried to logical conclusions in Germany. Never, probably since the time of the Babylonian and Egyptian empires, had centralized government been carried so far. In those ancient empires the people became only instruments in the hands of powerful men under whose rule palaces, towers, and pyramids were built ”

“ As the war went on, especially on the Russian front, the fact that the modern gun would dominate the fort was established with terrible emphasis. It was only on the Verdun-Toul line that fortresses retained an appearance of supremacy, but there this supremacy was based on the fact that the land lent itself to such a wide defensive system as to reduce forts to the function of depots for field operations. Not less sound was the doctrine of the Germans as to the use of big guns in field warfare. ”

“ In a struggle to secure and control foreign markets, it had become necessary for German industrial leaders to save themselves by advancing prices on all commodities to the domestic consumer, until the breaking-point at home was reached, with enormous inflation and an over-extension of credit based on German prestige. This condition of over-expansion and borrowed capital had brought about a crisis in which a rapid and victorious war seemed to offer the only relief. ”

“ She had seen Great Britain fortify her position in Egypt and develop South African territory. At the same time the British domains in Australia and America grew in wealth and population. Germany concurrently had seen Russia expand in Asia and transform the wastes of Siberia into a second American Far West, while Japan more and more openly assumed supremacy in the Far East. Italy by taking Tripoli had seated herself on the other side of the Mediterranean and, in taking the Greek Isles, had seized a post lying at the gate of Smyrna. ”

“ Territory may sometimes be sought for its own sake, but in earlier times it was not commonly sought by States as a means to wealth. Now, however, rivalry in pursuit of markets, concessions and outlets for capital, as forces lying behind a colonial policy, had led to war. States competed for the right to exploit the weak and in the competition that ensued Governments were prompted or even controlled by financial interests. ”

“ In most Entente circles it became more and more a matter of conviction that the military masters of Germany had forced this war on a world wholly unprepared for it, in confident reliance upon a great national delusion, among Germans, due to a generation of systematic teaching in homes, schools and public life, that Germany out there alone in Central Europe, was surrounded by a world of enemies, and that, to save her national existence, she had reached a point where she had to fight. ”

“ Cantigny was our real beginning as combatants in the war. Our troops arrived there after the first flood of the German rush had been checked, and so we began in a small way the process of regaining lost ground. A little more than a month later Ludendorff had won his last victory when he burst across the Aisne and reached the Marne. It was in that critical time that two American divisions, including the Marines, gathered up from rest camps, seized upon a moment of supreme necessity, and appeared on the road to Paris and south of the bridge across the Marne at Chateau-Thierry. ”

“ Our Civil War had commonly been called the greatest conflict of modern times, but apparently it was only one-tenth the magnitude that this twentieth century war reached in the first year. At no time did the number of men under arms for both North and South exceed 1,300,000, while the total of those who were killed in battle or who died in four years of wounds on the Northern side was only 110,000, and on the Southern side probably not more than 80,000. ”