LAND & WATER 
Juno 7, T.)T7 
The First Days of War 
By An Onlooker in America 
A RE all democracies congenitally incapable of going 
/% to war eliectively ? For nearly two years war 
A — m clouds have been piling up over the Atlantic in full 
r^ -m.view of the United States. For nearly two years 
It has been patent to thoughtful people that "they would 
sooner or later reach the coast and burst. Vet, now they have 
burst, the American people and (iovernment appear outwardly 
less prepared for war than were the people and Government of 
Great Britain when the bolt landed upon them. 
Superficially the parallel between England in 1914 and 
conditions in the United States to-day is as striking as it is 
depressing. There is the same amateurishness in Government 
circles ; the same " life as usual " atmosphere, somewhat 
disturbed by hysteria, throughout the country. There are 
the same patchworky attempts on the part of private and 
ofticial patriots to galvanise things. There are " Wake up 
America " days and parades. Newspapers and other 
organisations get up recruiting rallies. Suffragists and 
actresses support picturesquely the more silent api>cal of 
the recruiting sergeants. Kecriiiting posters, modest 
copies of our own early efforts, blossom on taxicabs and 
hoardings. Every other house, motor, cart and caniage is 
gay with the Stars and Stripes. Sometimes one comes on a 
galaxy of the Hags of all the Allies. Society and the social 
leaders who are as necessary to a well conducted American 
community as a town hall or a soda water fountain, wallow 
hectically in war work. Everybody has her committee to 
prepare for the nursing, feeding and general edification of a 
still mainly unformed soldiery. There are committees galore 
for the propagation of econopiy in clothes and food and for 
every sort of war activity, conceivable and inconceivable. 
Unconvincing Activity 
But, especially wlien one remembers how little similar 
manifestations really did in England to win tlie war, all this 
activity IS not particularly convincing. One looks in vain 
lor the sign of any great national impulse. One realises that 
the American public, like the British public before 
the war, has had its moral and physical energies dulled 
by a too steady peace and a too assiduous worship at 
the altars of a sheltered individualism. The United 
States^ in fact, is suffering from too much liberaUsm of 
the facihst domestic reform variety. One sees every- 
where the clfect of that liberalism with its attendant care- 
lessness of foreigi; afifairs.. It, was written large upon the 
1 resident s policy of- neutrality. It has still many exponents 
in Congress. It f^as been reinforced liyrnational traditions, by 
the tradition of self-centred isolation -created by Washington 
when he urged his people not to get entangled in Europe; 
officiaUv- established by P: " .Yonroe when he enun- 
ciated his doctrines of 1 :,.can etclusiveness, and 
lor generations sanctioned m a- pre.ctical way by the fact 
that with Its virgin continent still undeveloped the United 
states was m point of fact econon«<:ally as well as poUtically 
self-sufficing. Let us remain alof,f, let us be neutral in 
thought as well as action, and in tWe end we shall be powerful 
enough and independent enough id play the " honest broker " 
yi the restoration of peace. .rSuch was the President's 
VUtial interpretation of the duty of America towards herself 
and towards the belligerents. 
By her lawless brutality, Germany forced the United 
States into war. But the ways of a nation's thought are 
wot changed overnight. The o auntry has gone into war 
because It has been told to, not because it was impelled to 
by the promptujgs of conscie nee or even self-interest. 
*.erman atrocities have been too Q<>mmon for another batch 
ot them to make a deep impres) ;iori. The President's noble 
message about service to human," ity and about the oneness of 
America s ideals with those of the Allies have clashed too 
obviously with his earlier decb rations, that the causes and 
ongins of the war were too n, ^mote and too, muddled to 
concern the United States save, indirectly. 
Hostilities, moreover, have , begun in an unimpressive 
w-ay. There is none of the p< ,mp and panoply <}f martial 
adventure, no hosts of marcl ling soldiers to awaken en- 
thusiasm no returning woundec ! to^stir the spirit of avenging 
self-.sacnfice. The militia, it if , true, Iwve been called out ; 
the regulars are mobilized ; tt .e fleet is getting ready but 
the same things happened o- ,;er Mexico, and Mexico has ■ 
come to nothing. 
All this hampers preparatios t i n two ways. The regular 
army, at present not much lai gc r than the original British 
lixpeditionary Force, is still be^ nv tlie l-'gal peace footing niul 
needs over 150,000 men to be on a war footing. The Navy 
is so shorthanded that a considerable fraction of the fleet can- 
not be mobilized. All this is public property. Yet recruiting, 
except for the aviation curps, the glamour of which appeals to 
the adventurous spirits among the ui)per and ujiper middle 
classes, is distinctly bad. True, a con.scription law has 
been passed which will remedy this situation after the 
lengthy process of registration has been completed. But 
even conscription without the right kind of administration 
behind it does not automatically solve all war problems. 
And, as I indicated above, the United States has not yet 
got a war Government, any more than Great Britain had one 
at the start and long after the start. There is much 
confusion in the Washington Department. The spirit is 
willing but the organisation weak. Professional poli- 
ticiarus and bureaucrats jostle each other hopelessly. 
The War Departnu-nt, with its pacifist Secretary and its 
sometimes rather superannuated soldier chiefs of "divisions, 
has yet to get down to business. The Navy Department', 
with a politician of the Bryan type as its head, while it has a 
better instrument to work with, has not yet laid its jiJans 
for co-operation with the Allies as they would have been 
laid in Utopia. It may be doubted, in fact, whether outside 
finance, the immediate result of the Balfour and Viviani 
missions, \viU be quite what an enthusiastic press expects. 
Is the American democracy even slower at going to war 
than the British democracy ? Is it worse than the British 
democracy inasmuch as it failed to profit from the lessons of 
the initial mistakes of the other ? The answer is neither 
in the negative nor in the affirmative : but it is a hopeful 
answer both for the. United States and for the Allies. 
There are to-day two ■ Americas. There is the America 
that IS producing the state of affairs described above. It 
is an America powerful in peace because it has the vote : 
but in war time it cannot and does not control. 
The entry of the United States into the war has Ix^n 
brought about by the other America, the comparatively 
small America of earnest journalists and college professors, 
of a group of powerful bankers, far-seeing statesmen and 
cosmopolitanly educated thinkers, mainly of the East, 
who have realised from the beginning where the interests and 
duties of the United States lay. They are the people who 
will more and more run it. Having converted the President, 
they are proceeding to insinuate themselves into his Goverment 
and organise things. At present they are working at a 
disadvan^ge. As shown above, the " hang-over " of 
Liberalism and peace politics i5 strong. Were the United 
States called upon to defend herself, the situation would 
indeed be grave. But, luckily, it is an economic war which 
she has, at first at any rate,-to fight.^ Tonnage, food, 
munitions of war from cannon to railw^ equipment and 
money to buy them with is what the Allie want more 
than military or even naval assistance. And these they are 
in a fair way to get. . ( 
A wonderful, if little advertised, work Is being done in 
Washington. While the politicians and minor officials 
muddle and worry in the approved Anglo-Saxon style, the 
business men and economists are pushing things forward 
with true American hustle. A body called the Council of 
National Defence has been called into being. It consists of 
half a dozen Cabinet Ministers, and as many first-class men 
of affairs who have thrown up their own work to be at the 
disposal of the Government. The, Council fs taking time by 
the forelock in a way which tho.se who went through the first 
two years of war organisation in London majf well envy. The 
question of food supply has lately been , insistent. Instead 
of wasting weeks in parliamentary and pubUc discussion the 
Secretary of Agriculture, a memlx-r of the Council of Defence, 
and one of the few, non-political Cabinet Ministers, has take^ 
hold. He has at his disposal one of- the best organised 
Government Departments in the world, a department ii^ 
which the scientist and not the politician rules the roost. 
He has intimate relations with the State and local Boards 
of Agnculturc. The farmers trust him. It has consequently 
been possible to .set in motion overnight a machinery for the 
ultimate, though not (as people in England . should realise) 
the immediate production of extra foodsupphes everywhere 
from the illimitable corn fields of the W'est'to the suburban 
back gardens of New York and Boston. Farmers are being ' 
instructed, distributors organised, labour mobilised, and prices 
may be fixed. 
The swift and economical disposal of food and raw materials 
hke cotton steel and copper, which the Allies need nearly 
as much as food, depends largely upon railway transportation. 
