The Dominion. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1918. THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 2, 27 September 1918, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1918. THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

Stories about what is going on in Germany have to be taken at times, with a grain of salt, but it is possible to repose unquestioning faith in the statement made the other day by an Amsterdam correspondent that the whole German population is. suffering from the American Nightmare. The knowledge that America is rapidly assembling an army of millions at their gates cannot but be a nightmare to the German people. "Two million Americans," they are being told in anonymous pamphlets, "are attacking us. Four millions will attack us to-morrow. Twenty millions are preparing to annihilate us." These statements contain .an element of exaggeration, but they cto not make the prospect much blacker for Germany than it is in fact. Any intelligent German is bound to recognise: that what America lias done and. is doing carries for Germany the certainty of defeat, • and such a one will take little comfort in the assurance of the Chancellor '■ that "the enemy will not break the Hindenburg line." The people of Germany nave been taught by_ bitter experience that the comforting assurances of their rulers are a delusion and a snare, and that they liavo nowhere wandered farther from the truth than in reference to America and the part she is destined to play in the war. Early in 1917 Bethmann-Holmveg, then Chancellor, said that Germany, had'so far increased her submarines that the arrival of an American army need not bo feared, but that in the previous spring the situation would' have been very different. At that time American intervention would have been "a grave'peril"; it would have meant a "\fast increase of men and munitions" for tho Allies, because America "can turn out an infinite amount of munitions and an indefinite number of soldiers." Tho peril of . defying America was thus rocogniscd and admitted by Beth-; .jiann-Holmveci, but he maintained that the U-boats would prevent the peril from developing—that Ihey would 'make it impossible for an American army to "land in France. Even in Germany the failure of the submarines to impede the conveyarfco of American troops across tho Atlantic is now a matter of common knowledge. Some months ago the Chief of the German Naval Staff was constrained to admit that owing to the fact that American troops could be disembarked at "dozens of landingplaces," from the north of Scotland to the Frcnch southern ports, tho employment of submarines against their transports offered "little prospect of success." The passage of jiiine has emphasised the failure of the U-boats, and American troops are continuously crossing the Atlantic in numbers which wonderfully exceed the expectations of friend and foe. It is therefore easy to understand why the thought of the gathering American host, although as yet only its first blows have been felt, to-day weighs like a nightmare on the spirits of the German people. The depression will not be relieved by such assertions as are credited to Hertlino and others in the cablegrams to-day. Most people, even in Germany, will be aware that their Chancellor is speaking falsely when ho says that the submarines "are slowly hut surely fulfilling their task of diminishing tonnage, but above all in restricting American reinforcements of men and material." Tho German people have only to hark* back to the past utterances of their own Ministers to get full confirmation of the fact that their one hope of averting the American peril centred in the submarine, and that the submarine has utterly failed- to fulfil its appointed task. Tho gloomy forebodings awakened in Germany in regard to tho American armies bear witness to an overshadowing _ peril which it is no longer possible to ignore. 'Yet it is safe to say that, even this state of mind in the German population is based upon a partial and imperfect appreciation of tho American menace, and that their terrors would bo vastly deepened if they were able to estimate the real nature and magnitude of the reinforcement America had brought into the Allied camp. The people of Germany will perhaps conio in time to realise as people in moro enliprhtened countries arc able to realise now tfrat tho American'fighting forces on land and sea are formidable not merely because they number millions, and are backed by almost inexhaustible material resouroes, but because of the spirit by which they aro animated—the unfettered spirit of. a free nation which has arisen spontancously_ to defend democracy and all that it stands for. As much because of her keenly aVakened democratic instincts as because she is still fresh and vigorous in the fight America to-day dominates all the nations in the Allied camp in her solid determination to mako war to the death on' Prussian militarism, and to stop in no degree short of a peace that will make the world safe for democracy. Ordinarily impatient of the slightest check upon their liberties, her people have readily and eagerly submitted themselves to a stringent and searching national discipline in order that their war effort may tell with maximum cffcct. On the occasion of tho recent Austrian overture no nation was promp-

tcr or more decidcd than America in repudiating tho_ cry for peace by negotiation which is boing raised by the enemy, and by traitors and fools within our own ranks.

The spirit of America is to-day our best guarantee that the fruits of more than four yeiirs of terrible war will not be sacrificed by such deplorably weakness and folly as that of the strikes which are reported to be spreading in England. At tho same time, it implies a deadlier menace to Germany than the people of that country are yet capable of understanding. Tho Germans are a nation drilled to war and habituated through generations to regard it as good and fruitful. Tho Americans are a nation aroused to war as a last and only means of preserving ' what they hold dear. In that fact appears the true nature of tho American menace which is already a nightmare to the Germans, (•hough their perception is rather of millions than of the. spirit that drives these millions on. The American Arrav is formidable in its mounting millions and in. the mighty material organisation it has created in France, from the seaboard to tho battlefront, but it is formidable above all as rcflcctinc tho spirit of a nation aroused to war only by a recognition of its dire necessity and determined to suppress the causes out of which the war arose. The numerical strength they have attained and are destined to attain, and the fact that they consist of the flower of the youthful manhood of their country, would in any case go far to make the American armies a decisive factor in the • war. But it is incomparably, their greatest asset and source of power that they reflect and represent the spirit of their country and its solid determination to make an end of Prussian militarism. Tho Americans have demonstrated on tho battlefield that they are apt pupils in the art of war, and that in regard alike to the simpler and more complex details of military organisation they have been quick to profit by the dear-bought experience of their French and British comrades. But it is the best justification of the- gloomy forebodings now in evidence in Germany that the American soldier, as a French soldier-journalist wrote not long ago, "has the deep feeling that with his brothers of France and England he is in the service of a_ great and good cause." _ If the driving force of that inspiration and its effect in excluding all thought of weakening and compromise were realised in Germany, "the American night-' mare" would be- even more a thing of terror than it is.