OFFICERS AND WAR COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 



Left to right, front row, Robert W. De Forest, vice-president; Woodrow Wilson, Presi- 

 dent of the Red Cross; former President William H. Taft, chairman of the executive com- 

 mittee ; Eliot Wadsworth, acting chairman. In the back row are Henry P. Davison, chair- 

 man of the War Council; Grayson P. Murphy, Charles D. Norton, and Edward N. Hurley, 

 all members of the War Council. Cornelius N. Bliss, Jr., the only other member of the 

 council, was not present. 



After two and a half years of struggle 

 that has tested the endurance nearly to 

 the breaking point of the great nations 

 engaged, Germany, in that confidence that 

 she has in the science of warfare, has 

 said : "We will starve England into sub- 

 mission and we will end the war," and 

 in the accomplishment of that she forced, 

 because she had to force, into the ranks 

 of her enemies, at a time when this war 

 is to be determined by money, by re- 

 sources, and by men, the nation that can 

 furnish more money, more resources, 

 more equipment, and more men than any 

 nation in the world ! 



And now, my friends, do not let us 

 minimize the task we have before us. 

 We Americans are a good people — we 

 admit it ; but one of our weaknesses is an 



assumption, justified by a good many 

 things that have saved us from egregious 

 mistakes in the past, that God looks after 

 children, drunken men, and the United 

 States ! 



We have got beyond that reliance — -I 

 do not know whether we have or not, but 

 we are going to get beyond that reliance. 

 Germany is not exhausted. She is, by 

 reason of this system of fifty years stand- 

 ing, the greatest military nation that ever 

 was organized, and she still has great 

 fighting power ; and she arrayed ourselves 

 as her enemies because, with that devo- 

 tion to system, with that failure to under- 

 stand the influence of moral force in a 

 people, she was contemptuous of what 

 we, who had ignored military prepara- 

 tion, could do in this war. 



461 



