WHAT GREAT BRITAIN IS DOING 



203 



But the answer is very simple. It is 

 because the British navy is preying upon 

 her vitals ; because the pressure of our 

 naval thumb upon her windpipe is never 

 relaxed for one moment ; because all tri- 

 umphs on land are illusory and untenable, 

 with privation and discontent mounting 

 up at home ; because by commanding the 

 seas we hold the master key to all eco- 

 nomic vitality and to all strategic mo- 

 bility. 



Germany has really had no option but 

 to use her submarines for all they are 

 worth. Her one chance of staving off 

 defeat is to raise the British blockade, to 

 break British sea-power, to starve Brit- 

 ain into surrender. It is a ten or a twenty 

 to one chance against success. But what 

 does that matter when it is her only 

 chance ? 



She sees and sees correctly that our con- 

 trol of the oceans is not a mere adjunct 

 to the strength of the Alliance. It is its 

 basis. It supports the whole edifice. 

 Without it all that the Allies have built 

 up would crumble to pieces. With it they 

 can erect, as on a rock, the instruments 

 of certain victory. 



But sea-power is not the only, though 

 it is by far the greatest, of the contribu- 

 tions that make Great Britain the main- 

 stay of the Alliance. W T e are its bankers, 

 as well as its guardians on the sea. By 

 now we must have advanced to our Allies 

 not less than $4,000,000,000. Virtually 

 we have taken on our shoulders the re- 

 sponsibility for the credit of the Alliance 

 abroad. 



Britain's war finances 



And at the same time that we are ren- 

 dering this service we are spending more 

 in a month than the United States Gov- 

 ernment, not by any means the most 

 economical in the world, has been com- 

 pelled to spend in the whole of the last 

 year ; our weekly outlay averages some 

 $200,000,000 ; we have raised on credit 

 over $25,000,000,000, or about five times 

 the generally accepted estimate of the 

 cost of the entire Civil War ; our yearly 

 revenue, about four-fifths of which is 

 raised by direct taxation — there are many 

 men in Great Britain at this moment who 

 are paying out to the State more than 



half their income — amounts to some $2,- 

 500,000,000. 



And as for the unstinted outpouring of 

 private generosity, let this one fact suf- 

 fice: that a single London newspaper, 

 acting on behalf of a single fund, has 

 raised nearly as much money as all the 

 American people, the whole hundred 

 millions of them — and they most cer- 

 tainly have not been behindhand in their 

 generosity — have given to all the war 

 charities combined. I should judge that 

 by now the British people must have sub- 

 scribed for their own sufferers by the 

 war and for their Allies at least $500,- 

 000,000. 



But besides placing our purse and our 

 fleets at the service of the Alliance we are 

 also its main arsenal and workshop. To 

 Great Britain all who are fighting with 

 her turn as to an inexhaustible treasure- 

 house and rarely turn in vain. Is it ships, 

 or provisions, or clothing, or raw ma- 

 terial, or coal, or guns, or shells, or any 

 other item in the endless catalogue of 

 war? At once and unhesitatingly, for 

 whatever they may happen to need, the 

 Allies with one accord come to us ; and 

 it is our proud privilege to satisfy, as far 

 as we can, every one of their demands. 



a nation rkwrougiit industrially 



I am not sure that in this country there 

 is much more than a very hazy concep- 

 tion of the industrial revolution that has 

 been wrought by the war in Great Britain. 

 It is not merely that we have scrapped 

 old machinery with a more than Amer- 

 ican ruthlessness. It is not merely that 

 some of the best and most scientific 

 brains in the Kingdom are now giving 

 their attention, and with astounding re- 

 sults, to the problems of manufacture, or 

 that capital and labor were never work- 

 ing more harmoniously together, or that 

 trade-union practices which interfered 

 with the maximum production have been 

 done away with. 



It is not merely that over 4,500 firms, 

 not one of which before the war even 

 dreamed of making munitions, are now 

 engaged on nothing else, or that we have 

 erected over 100 colossal government fac- 

 tories for turning out shells, guns, pow- 

 der, and the implements of trench war- 



