What Europe Expects From America.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 292, 13 July 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

What Europe Expects From America.

By FRANK (Mr. Symond.s is one of the greatest more than once to the

"ATOU will probably come into the •*- war too late to train large bodies of troop, for service in the trenches, but I leel sure that many volunteers could conic and will come over and pass through our training camps. Why, there are already 3U,OUU Americans at the front in our armies now." This comment, made to mo in the third week of February by the British Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, fairly expresses the viuw that prevailed in London at the moment of American military participation in the war. It is interesting to recall now that there was not the slightest doubt in Lloyd George's mind at that time as to the entrance of America into the war. He was not only confident of it, but he spoke to Senator Halo and myself about it as an assured thing. 1 do not understand how you could endure this German policy so long." he said ; " it is incredible —and now that tiiey have prescribed that you shall send only one ship a week, and that ship marked like a Dutch paddle steamer -no —you cannot endure it."

THE SOURCE OF OUR REVOLUTION.

Even more interesting was his comment about the feeling he had toward America as an Ally. We were sitting in the big Cabinet room at the Prime Minister's official residence in Downing Street, the room of which he remarked, rather .whimsically, "You Americans should be interested in this room, because here American Independence was made certain." He meant that the British policies here adopted provoked the Revolution. " When the time for peace comes," Lloyd George asserted, "1 believe that America will have a useful role to play about the council board. I have always looked forward to American participation, and I believe that American influence will be a good thing, which, for myself, I shall welcome."

The comment of Sir William Robertson, the British Chief-of-Staff, was also instructive. Welcoming me as an American, he said, with a twinkle in his eye : —" Well, are you still too proud to fight 'l It looks to me as if you weren't quite a.s proud now as you were a little while ago." Then, quite seriously, he discussed tho American entrance. "You will have to come in; you can't avoid it." ho said, expressing firm conviction; "and then your problem wiTl be just w hat our, was. You have the best material in the world to make soldiers."

Then, quite suddenly, ho said : —"Do you know Henderson's 'Life of Stonewall Jackson' ? Henderson discovered the Civil War for tho British Army. He was ;i teacher at the Staff College when Haig and I wore there together. I think he must have known that some time we wore to have the test that has come, and ho saw in tho Civil War the solution of our problem." GERMANS HAVE MEN AND MUNITIONS.

I asked the British Generiil if he thought the war would go another year. " I do not say it will; 1 do not say it won't: it may," he responded. But a moment later lie extended this Scotch answer, by conceding that "the German; have men enough. They have released enough by using enforced labour; as for munitions, they are piling them up, piling them up," and his hands went above his head. My impression was clear that Robertson believed the wair would go through 1918, in any event.

Then he asked me about the British Army, as I was just back from a week at the front in France. I told him my impression, saying that it seemed to mo like what I had heard of the army ol Grant.

"Not a bad army, not a bad spirit," he remarked with sober pride. " And your strategy, is it not on the Grant order, 'Pound, pound, pound'? ' I asked.

'• Something in that," he said, tersely. and then returned to the subject of Stonuwall Jackson and the Civil War.

"What do you think of the ,-pirit of our men? How did the feeling of the

H. SYMOXIXS. authorities on the war, having been actual tigiiting fronts.)

army impicss you?" 1 told liim, what was unmistakable, that it had a ol the approach ot victory. I told him that the same spirit wa., in the French Army, but the spirit of the army, was. on the whole, far better than the spirit of the people of Paris, meaning the politicians. "Oh, you'll find the .same tiling here," he replied, with a sudden burst of frankness.

1 recall these comments now, because it is interesting to show how men in high places regarded the American participation before it was a fact. I visited the British Army three days after the brack in relations with Germany, and everywhere I was greeted by tile same question.

"What is Ameri-a going to do?" Sir Douglas llajg asked, and from Coin-mander-in-Ciiief down to the last subaltern the query was on all li|)s. It was more interesting to the soldiers than the war before their eyes, and I confess their conviction that America would "come in'' was greater than mine.

OUR FLAG IX PARIS

As for France, the breaking off of relations with Germany was for Paris ultimate proof that the United States was to enter the war. On tfie day this happened all Paris rose to the event as it had not risen to any incident in the war. " Paris sees American troops already coming down the Champs Elysees," Joseph Reinach, the famous statesman-journalist, said to me, and it was the fact. American flag,' began to apj)ear beside these of the Allies in Paris, and France celebrated, soberly but quite unmistakably, "the greatest event," as Reinach said, "since the German defeat at Verdun."

In discussing this point I cannot help re-calling a personal experience on tin- Cth of April, just one year before America entered the w"ar. On that day J lunched with General Dubois ill the citadel at Verdun. Outside the German shells were falling, transforming tiie town into ruin. Beyond the river and north by Dead Man's Hill, musketry and machine-gun fire was rolling up with that crescendo which marked the greatest of the German attacks three days later, and in the citadel—the -ingle salvation of refuge in all this shell-cursed region—we sat in i', casemate, a few offbers, the staff of the General, and myself, and at the close of the luncheon General Dubois raised hu glass and drank to America and the hour when my country would stand with France in the battle for civilisation and democracy. I think anyone ,wiio could have seen the.faces of those officers and men would have, felt, as 1 felt then, that the entrance of Ameri a. will have a moral effect in France which goes beyond the value of army corps and dreadnoughts. And now that the United States L in the war. I confess that in the light of my own experiences of a few weeks ago J do not believe it is possible to exaggerate the moral effo"t. I remember that Jules Cambon, French Ambassador in Berlin at the moment wir began, and now in the French State Department, .said to me: —"All of Mr. Wil -oil's statements are splendid. save 'Peace without victory'; what can it mean'? Surely France cannot accept that." To-day all this has passed. The fear that Mr. Wilson would supply a rallying point for the pacifists of Franco and of Great Britain, a ahsis for the groups that desire peace at any pri v and at the cost of national safety, is gone. Even if the summer campaign does not bring decisive victory, it will be hard to start a new peace agitation like that of last autumn, because there will be no President Wilson to .serve as the mouthpiece of such proposals. MORAL EFFECT GREATEST. Going back to my own impressions of what Europe expected of a belligerent United States, 1 should say this: In France and in England there was the desire to see the United States in the war, first because it was believed that our entrance would l>e the greatest moral victory for the Allies, the greatest moral disaster for the Germans, that the war had seen since the M arne. With our entrance, French and British leaders agreed, all peace sentiment would be silenced in both countries, the hands of the Governments would be strengthnd, the people would be heartened, and corresponding depression would be created in Gormanv.

Quite as important to the Allied point of view was the conviction that America's entrance would be useful as putting an end to all German intrigue in America, the lingering fear that we might l>e led into a quarrel by the German agents, that we might l>e tricked into a dispute with Great Britain which would threaten Allied interests. This was just beginning to yield 'a., the break with Germany promised the later declaration of war.

As to the aid that the Allies' couiahope for, there was one idea in all minds. That we should send soni'' troops, some regular troops not merely volunteers —to lie trained, as the Prime Minister suggested. by British officers and serve under British commander!—thi? was the unmistakable desire of the French. For them the artival of even a few thousand American troops in France, a handful, measured by the European standard. would he a contribution that would have immeasurable value to France. ti) the France which has so long borne the brunt of the German attack in the West. T do not believe that anything that we can do for the Allies will lie comparable with the sending of a lew troops to Fiance as soon a, it n possible, not as a military but as a moral effect. ((I'll BCHDEX IN 191S AND IHI9.

Behind this there must be the preparation for larger expeditions, tor it does not seem possible to end the war this year, and my '-onviction. derived Irom talks with Bi*iti-n and French <_ r t nerals alike, is that those best iufm tiled ill KurojH' expect to see the war go into another year, and also to see German resistance and German attack reach a new liijj.li water mark in intcmitv. Quite frankly the French recognise that tneir own military effort is at it, maximum, an deven past it. In numbers the de-line ill French strength must hereafter be absolute. Britain will reu'li her crest this slimmer. If Russia succeed>4 in getting her army reorganised there mav be no need of a <Teat American expedition. but the Itussiaii situation must remain problematical for a long period, and it may be necessary for the United States to provide troops to share in the decisive campaign, whether it lie in I'.'H, as seems likely new, or 191!', which is far I rom imnrobable. .Meantime tlie British situation must coniinniil our immediate attention, Die present Gem rati submarine camiiaign. slu uhl it succeed, would < onipel Britain

to make peace, and thus remove tee British Fleet Ironi the count. It wrtiild end the war with Germany, so fajl »s Europe i> concerned, and it would leave Germany, possessing a huge fl• t and great military strength, irec to deal with its American foe.

It must lie the first •'■oncern of the I int< d States to contribute all that is possible toward breaking the German, submarine blow. All the •shipping that "e can muster will have to be employed to carry lood to Britain and steel to rrance. Jf <ither supply fails, th* disaster will be almost immediate and our disaster only slightly delayed. This aid is what Britain expects and hopes lor. J hi-; was the thing that everv Briton, high and low. talked to me ftbout. Soberly, solemnly, tliey discussed the submarine war aw a blow at their existence heavier than anv they hid known.

iJRITAIX S GRIM PERIL TO COME No one in authority believes that Britain can lie starved in six months or a year, but if the war goes two years more the present rate of destruction of shipping will bring Britnin face to face with grim peril, unless) the United States. by using interned German Fliips. by using and building American shi|n, contributes to the right side of tile shipping balance. Actually the British and the French believe the submarine attack is Germany's last bid for victory, and they Iwt'h look to the I nited States as the one nation in a fiosition to defeat this venture decisivey. by policing the seas and by mobilising its available tonnage. Tlie question of financial aid is more intricate, but not less pre fing. An extension of credit in the shape of loans to France and Belgium, r.s well as (>reat Britain, with possible loans to Jtaly a.s well, will ease the situation in /ill these countries-; it will have something of the effect of a transfusion of blood: it will place the vast credit of thu United States behind the Allies at the moment when all combatants are feeling the strain of the financial burden, and Germany most of all, for Germany is to-day bankrupt and facing ruin.

In Paris bankers talked with me and spoke in amazement of the German provocation of the Unitwl States, because they regarded the United States as the one jxissible lender to Germany after the war. That Germany should close this avenue for her restoration seemed to them an act of madness not to be explained save as one more proof that the (ierman rulers had taken leave of their senses. And it seemed to me that one of the most appealing (in umstances in American intervention, so far as tae Allies were concerned, was that it ensured to these countries financial relations with the United States after the war : it assured them American money with which to rebuild their ruins and resume the work of peace. Lookng forward, it seems that the moral effect of American entrance was what was most discussed wlierever I went. France and Britain never understood our neutrality; it was a puzzle and a problem : it was a darkness in which they groped hopelessly. President Wilson was inexplicable; American ignorance of the facts of the world war as Paris and Ix)ndo« saw them a mystery beyond salution. Particularly in France there was) a craving for the endorsement of French action by the other great Republic which would establish the last doubt, the last protest, of the pacfiist. AN" ALLY IX ALL BUT NAME. All this is passed now, and with it have gone the criticisms that were once rite in Ijondon, and even in Paris. I hesie criticisms, it should be said, were iar less bitter this year than I found them on my earlier visit. Already France and Britain had recognised that the United States had been in all but name an Ally ; that it had provided tae machinery without which the war might have been lost. For I think it common belief in England and France, quite as much as in Germany, that had the Allies not been able to employ our industrial plant they might have succumbed to Germany's superior preparation and more quickly organised wa: industries.

The future effects of American participation in the war cannot, I believe, he exaggerated; the relations between this country and France will hardly change, outwardly, but if so much as an American brigade goes to the front, I do not think it will ever be forgotten. And 1 am equally convinced that, no matter what material support we give the French, it will not take the place of an expeditionary army. A million Frenchmen have died for the cause the French never describe save as "civilisation against force," and it was not until the British sacrifices at the Somme '-ime, the los.s there of large numbers of men, that France recognised Britain and British effort for what it wsvs. Many British and French officers and state men with whom 1 talked, notably M. Albert Thomas, the French Minister of Munition, asked me anxiously about the possibility that when America c;ime in material vitally necessary ir tlie Allies, particularly steel in the ease of France, might be diverted to the equipment of new American armies. President Wilson U«>alt admirably with this detail iri his message to Congress. 1 do not think the danger can be exaggerated; certainly there were no qualification; in the words of Albert Thomas, who quite frankly pointed out that American >teel was a matter of life and death with the French. THK GREATEST ALLIED SUCCESS SINCE THE MARXE.

In sum. oflr entrance into the war will lie for the Allies, immediately, a heartening and a reinforcing which will have an effect that will be incalculable, an effect u|Rin the firing lines, where American Hags have already l>een slmwn and busy bulletin Ini.irds hav* transmitted the news to the German trenches. Tile arrival of a small e.\peditionary force will complete what the French and British agreed would be the greatest moral victory of th«» war and the n:o.-t important success since the Marne.

Beyond tliis' the material aid that w? lender will l>e viewed in the light of Allied Heredities. Since the submarine war i-> the greatest menace to Britain and tn the Allied cause, our aid in breaking tins blockade will be most is regarded a* the la't bid of the Germans tor vi ton', the last no*]* 1 of Kai-eri-ni. After this come questions of li alls, questions of credit, with the eventual despatch of a great army, if tne war la>ts for another year, as the best iniormed > oldiers with whom I talked in England believed. The I'iiitcd States has now assumed t;!i> position 111 the ranks' of the foos of Germany long held by Britain. And Britain L, holding the place, in part. 01 France. This year the groat effort in the We>t and the great sacrifice must be made by British, an<l it means ; of eour>e. very heavy (vasualtieNext 'year. when we have liogtin to have a real army, there may be need for our nian-jxiw er. too. This is the European view, where it is recognised that there may be two more years of war ind the <lefeat ol Germany may net be :'eliieve<l until attrition reaches a point -till far distant.