Land & Water 
May 2, 19 1 8 
The American Effort : By Hilaire Belloc 
MUCH the most • important aspect of the 
American effort for the Allies as a whole, 
and for the Americans themselves, is the 
contrast it presents with every other historical 
example of miUtary alliance during a great 
struggle. There are other :ispccts more immediately enter- 
taining or more encouraging. One may talk at large upon 
the national intention of the United States, upon the long 
forbearance of their Government, followed by its present 
clear resolve, and such disquisitions are of value in main- 
taining the spirit of the alliance and in expressing its soul. 
But by far the most practical issue is the purely military 
one, and in that issue the great outstanding feature, is the 
novelty of the position. 
It is the novelty of the position which gives the enemy 
his ground for hoping that the advent of the American forces 
will not turn the scale, and it is the novelty of the position 
which creates all the cTifficulties which we have to surmount ; 
difficulties consider- 
able in themselves and 
made greater from the 
very fact that they 
are new. 
When we say that 
the outstanding mili- 
tary feature of the 
situation is its novelty, 
that is a truth which 
may be masked Uke so 
many other truths in 
this great modem war 
by the use of general 
terms brought from the 
past. For instance, 
men talked for months 
about the exposed 
salient of St. Mihiel as 
though we were still 
during 1 915 in a war 
of movement, whereas 
we were, in point of 
fact, in a war of siege. 
In the same way, one 
can present the con- 
ditions of the American 
effort in the terms of 
former campaigns and 
make it seem other and ea!sier than it is. One may say that 
a nation living across the sea has promised to raise and send 
troops in aid of its Allies upon the further side, and that 
things of this sort have been done times out of number from 
the beginning of history. 
The novelty of the situation certainly does not consist in 
that. It consists — apart from the question of the blockade 
and of belligerent action by sea — in three great factors 
never before present. 
The first of these factors is the creation of a highly trained 
and what ma}' be called a technical force upon a very large 
scale out of a very small nucleus or germ within a very 
narrow limit of time. 
The second factor is the reconstruction of transport 
necessitated under these particular conditions. 
The third is the necessity of special intensive training of 
the units created after they have been transported oversea 
and put down upon Allied soil. 
None of these three factors ever appeared before in any 
transmarine expedition, and the combination of them it is 
which gives the enemy his hope that the difficulties created 
will be in practice insurmountable ; that is, will not be 
surmountable within the useful limits of time assigned to the 
effort. The surmounting of those difficulties, on the other 
hand, if it is accomplished, will make the issue of the war 
absolutely certain, in spite of the disappearance of the State 
that used to be called the Russian Empire and the consequent 
present preponderance of the Central Powers. If those 
difficulties are successfully surmounted within the limits 
of time that bound useful action we shall owe that success 
mainly to the energy of the Americans themselves, and they 
may well boast that this energy has decided the victory of 
civilisation. 
Let us examine these three novel points in their order. 
The creation of a large trained body, of a body so highly 
American Soldiers passing through London 
trained that it may properly be called expert or technical, 
compared with the levies of the older wars, has a parallel 
effort in the amazingly successful corresponding effort of 
this country. Great Britain in the first two years of the war 
expanded a small professional army into a force of many 
millions of men. I have often quoted one of the test points 
of this achi.vement, the creation of the heavy artillery. It 
had hitherto been taken for granted that the heavy gunner 
could not be properly trained under three years, while his 
officer required a far longer training, and the multiplicity of 
types developed in the present war as it became a war of 
positions enhanced the magnitude of the task. Nevertheless, 
we know that the task was accomplished with extraordinary 
success, and that by the late summer of 1916 the new force 
was in full being, and had reached a very high point of 
efficiency. Further, this force thus suddenly expanded had 
to cross the sea. 
But the American task differs in certain degrees so much 
from ours that it is a 
novel proposition, just 
as ours was a propo- 
sition completely novel 
compared with any- 
thing that had gone 
before. 
In the first place, 
the nucleus from which 
the expansion must 
take place is in propor- 
tion far smaller. In 
the second place, there 
was in existence hardly 
any machinery for such 
expansion. It had not 
been imagined possible 
or necessary at all. 
For, in the third place, 
all the history and tra- 
ditions of the country 
involved were conti- 
nental, and no raising 
of a very large force to 
meet an already highly 
trained and, at least, 
equal opponent far 
over the sea had en- 
tered into American 
experience. In the fourth place— and most important of all 
— the limits of time imposed upon the British effort were less 
severe. 
The new American Army must depend for its instruction 
upon a body of men less in proportion to its numbers than 
what we could call upon in this country between three and 
four years ago. We had, in proportion to our population, a 
larger professional Army than the Americans by far. We 
had particularly a larger number of officers, a very consider- 
able proportion of whom had seen active service in the 
numerous Colonial and Indian wars of the British, ;ind we 
had thus beginnings of cadres on what it is true was a small 
but what proved happily a sufficient scale. Further, thanks 
principally to the foresight and industry of Lord Haldane, 
machinery for expansion had long existed. A considerable 
Expeditionary Force was in being, so that the plan, though 
upon a small model, was already present ; one had but to 
enlarge its scale. A system for the elementary training of 
lads who might have to be given commissions was in full 
swing, and had already covered a considerable amount of 
ground ; and the Territorial Army, though, as we know, its 
use was restricted, and even delayed, had also provided a 
considerable mass of elementary training before the war 
broke out. 
The tliird element, though it is not a precise one, is also of 
importance : The tradition and habit of transmarine expedi- 
tion was not estabUshed in the United States as it is here. 
The whole of English history is full of such expeditions ; 
the numerous Britisli wars of the last 170 years consist of 
nothing else. The Seven Years' War, so far as England was 
concerned ; the American War of Secession, the Peninsular 
War, the Waterloo campaign, the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, 
the South African War, and innumerable intervening smaller 
operations, all of them of necessity meant the transport of a 
force oversea, usually to very great distances, and its niain- 
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