WAR OF THE NATIONS 



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WAR OF THE NATIONS 



tered upon its last stage. The Americans main- 

 tained the best fighting tradition of the nation; 

 their exploits at Cantigny, Belleau Wood 

 (renamed "Wood of the American Marines"), 

 Chateau Thierry, Soissons, Saint Mihiel, the 

 Argonne Forest and other scarcely less memor- 

 able fields, as well as the sen-ice they rendered 

 of Albert and Amiens and farther north in 

 Flanders, will stand as an imperishable record 

 heir valor. Their participation in tho war 

 over 3,000 miles from home, and the cause they 

 championed made them as true crusaders as any 

 of the marching hosts of medieval days. 



The Peace Conference. The allied council de- 

 cided that Versailles and Paris should be the 

 locations of the conference which should im- 

 pose final peace terms. It was determined that 

 the treaty should be signed in the room in 

 Versailles in which Bismarck in 1871 forced tho 



humiliating Prussian peace upon France at the 

 close of the Franco-German war. 



From the United States there were five con- 

 ference delegates. President Wilson named 

 himself as the head of the American delega- 

 tion; the other members were Secretary of 

 State Lansing; Edward M. House, confidant of 

 President Wilson; Henry White, former am- 

 bassador to Italy and France; General Tasker 

 H. Bliss, American military adviser of the 

 supreme war council, who had been in Paris 

 for a year. President Wilson established a 

 precedent which aroused much comment when 

 he departed for Europe December 4; he was 

 absent for six months, except for a week at 

 home in March. The work of the conference 

 appears in descriptions which are parts of the 

 articles GERMANY, AUSTRIA, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, 

 TURKEY. FRANCE. BEIX;IUM, RUSSIA, etc. 



War on the Sea 



In July, 1914, just before the war began, the 

 English fleet was massed in a grand review in 

 the English Channel. A total of 215 ships was 

 in line the greatest number of fighting vessels 

 ever assembled. Fortunately, this fleet did not 

 at once break up and repair to various stations, 

 so when war was imminent it was ready for in- 

 stant and powerful action. It promptly occu- 

 pied stations which prevented Germany from 

 sending its fleet upon the seas, and almost in a 

 single day drove German commerce from the 

 earth. That an effort of this kind should have 

 succeeded and was accomplished so quickly 

 greatly alarmed the German nation, which had 

 t d strong hopes upon the work its navy 

 should perform. What that part would have 

 been can be guessed from the activity of its 

 few vessels on the ocean at the time war was 

 ired. On one supreme occasion, the Battle 

 of Jutland, there was an effort to release the 

 fleet from the encircling guns of Britain, but it 

 I. Therefore it may be said that from the 

 first day of the war the great C.-rman navy, on 

 which the kaiser had lavished millions of dollars 

 and which was hia especial pride, was virtually 

 led up within tho I >I and behind 



vast mine fields of IT* k'nlan.! -rest 



guns of Cuxhavcn and Willx M. as use- 



leas aa though it had never Hut Ger- 



many found another way to make ita power felt 

 upon the aeaa. 



A few German torpedo boat* an<l < 

 which wore at sea preyed upon North Sea a 



06 at oner after the declaration of war; 

 submarine boats torpedoed British cruiaera', 



sinking three in one day, with a loss of over 

 1,100 lives. Gradually these enemy vessels, in- 

 cluding some of the elusive submarines, were 

 captured or sunk. After a few months only the 

 submarines were feared in the waters near 

 Europe. 



Three German cruisers engaged a British 

 naval unit off the coast of Chile November 1, 

 1914, and sank two cruisers and disabl 

 others. The score was squared on December 8, 

 when another British squadron engaged those 

 German vessels off the Falkland Islands. The 

 Dresden alone escaped destruction. The Ger- 

 man cruiser Emdcn for a time roamed the 

 oceans without challenge. It destroyed ship- 

 ping valued close to $10.000,000 and sank a 

 French and a Russian cruiser. In the second 

 week in November an Australian war vessel 

 sank it. 



During 1916 several German commerce raid- 

 ers were successful on nil the sons. Th 

 tl'ti. Prmj / '</ Frirdrich. Karhhruc. /Cron- 

 prinz Wilhtlrn and Kotnigsburg deserve ape- 

 cial mention. Tho / aa destroyed by 



the British at Juan Fernandei Island on March 

 15, 1915; tho Karhhruc, in East African waters, 

 July 11. Tho rrin: Fitrl Frirdrich and the 

 Kronprinz Wilhclm took refuge at Newport 

 News, Virginia, in April, and were interned. 

 The Gorh.-n :ml tho Hrrtlau bombarded Afri- 

 can ports on the Mediterranean, then escaped 

 through tho r>:irl:mello* into Turkish waters. 



The trrrat naval engagement of tho war and 

 the MUM notable naval battl.- m tho hi>< 

 the world as regards number and weight of ves- 



