AMERICA'S EPIC.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 January 1918, Page 7

AMERICA'S EPIC.

A MARVELLOUS UPRISING. MEN, MOTfEY. SniPS AND AIR-SWARMS. A WORLD'S RECORD IN iufUOIC MEASURES. London, Oct. 14. Congress rose a week '.go, txaetly six months after the President's historic summons and tho national declaration of war. Of the magnitude of wliat has hap poned since, the Britislr people have 110 notion. When we look ba'.'k upon the series of colossal war measures taken in tliw United States since last spring tho American effort seems less like a national uprising than an elemental upheaval, reminding us of nothing so much as those prima! ages of the shaping of earth ivhen the pressure of internal forces threw up whole mountain chains. There is a memorable stroke of moral teaching, in this iNemesis of sea-murder. The nonmoral theory of history and politics is not onh an offence but a fallacy. Just after Maehiavelli explained the whole art of non-moral success Italy went for centuries to the dogs. When Germany threw to the winds the last shred of ?cruple by declaring unlimited piracy and the arbitrary abolition of all neutral rights that challenge to America was the suicide, of Prussian arroganco and the Hohcuzollcrn system, THE LAST STRAW. To show how American action, when the die was cast, rose for beyond all former supposition we must take the warperiod up to the present historically, and review events in their sequence. Nothing had N suggested to Germany the full danger of the coining storm from the West. The Germans understand no other people. Least of all did t'hey understand the United States. Last November President Wilson was elected for a second term, chiefly on the argument that he had kept the country out of war. We .were of those who never breathed a s'eirScice of criticism against him on that score. That was when ill'. Wilson's words last Christmas seemed to encourage thoughts of a premature peace, and to lower the relative honor and justice of flip Allies' cause. Thnt passing jar has long been made good by the better knowledge of things that were not clear at the time.

From the opening of this year President Wilson begai. i.o plav n part so calm and mnsi'Tly in the management of democracy as to compare, more and more in greatness with Lincoln and the founders of Hie Republic. For reserved demeanour and apparent hesitation combined with inward, settled audacity waiting o:ily for its sure moment, no passa/jo of it'a kind in the records of the world's statesmanship can be called quite, equal to it. lie was' resolved to carry the whole country with him. He was threatened by grave political dili'!r:ii!ties and troubles. Jle swept them away in a few weeks I>y stroke on stroke of popular as well as Parliamentary action. Tie '.v.is wailing for some "overt act'' which would mean for the American people a crisis read by a flash of lightning. If it came to thai much as he had staked on peace for nearly three year', he would stake all on war.

Blinded as at the bp-ffinninpf. tho Kaiser. Ilindenburg, Tirpiiz. anil nil the. Potsdam eamorrn, forced oil the hour. Tlioy laughed lond at the vision nf those "idiot ie Yankees'' impotent,ly brandishinj; iliciv "wooden swords" on the other side of a .A ton lie which •( Jcjsp.n n sn!>n>nrinos wot'.ld prevent. tlieii> from crossin?. Unrestricted piracy \va* decreed as from February 1. To add insult to outrage America was told tlint her eommuuicalions with Europe must b« reduced to one weekly boat sent to Falmouth and guyed with painted stripes. FROM RUPTURIO TO WAT!. Washington took a first step towards war. Diplomatic relations were ruptured, t'ount liernstorll', plausible and false like Kuhlnumu and ell his stamp—head centres of seditious intrigue against the Government to. which he was accredited —was bundled hack to Derliii. While nothing eise seemed io be happening tho American Secret Service went on with its investigations and got ready. The j President 'went on thinking. lie can think. I'lesently, towards the end of

February and in March, the ''overt acts" began to occur in quantity. American ships were sunk right and left. They were torpedoed at sight or exploded with ho'ivbs after the Stars and Stripes had been hauled down American passengers —milieu and women—uv, e drowned or perished in open boats. The President asked Congress for full powers to arm merchantmen and defend American interests by any means which an incalculable emergency might prove to require. The Tresidnnt, the Legislature, and the nation were held up by a little group of eleven pro-fiermnn Senators, Congrocs actually rose at the beginning of March without giving Mr. Wilson the powers he had demanded. It was all to the good, and worked eloan contrary to the designs of the handful offilibusters. It roused it.he whole country from sea to sea. Onlytwo or three days earlier the education of the United States had seemed far from ripe. Xow Mr. Lansing made the, first of many astounding revelations which have worked in Armageddon like moral explosives. He published the telegrams from 'llerr Zimmermami, then Foreign Minister at the Wilhelnistrasse, to llerr von Eckhardt, German Minister to Mexico, instructing the latter agent to stir up President t'avrau'/.a, and, if possible, Japan, against the United States. Nothing could have been better designed lo set at one. East and West, Middle I West, and South. The United States was electrified with amazement and wrath as never since the war began. Tt was an ep.ich-inaklng movement of psychological change in American opinion. The overthrow of the Tsardom removed the last barrier to American cooperation with the Allies. THE OR EAT DECLARATION, Henceforward, the President had destiny in his hands Ho summoned Congress! to meet in extraordinary session. It assembled on April ?. 011 that day Mr. Wilson delivered a speech as worthy of jt.i occasion and as momentous in its consequence? for the world #« any ever made. He declared that freedom and the Orman war-sv.-tem opuld no longer exist together. He summoned the American Republic to spend (Tie last of its blood and treasure, if need be, in the struggle (oi-ithe safety of deniecraey in the world, lor liberty against despotism, emancipation against ascendency, International law against criminal aggression, for humanity and justice against unscrupulous violence and. perfidy, for pence against I militarism, and for right against wrong. Congress answered t'lie summons by overwhelming limjorities in both Tloii-'es.

Tin April (i (lit- President's signature completed <">e.e of \)\v doe'slvf rift* of all lii«tui'v : 'l'lie United States had entered tho wiir. Kvuvywhefa outside the doom-

Ed clique* of' Prussian war-'garoblew and their dupes it was recognised that neither America nor the world would ever be the same .again. KxaeUy six months after, the extraordinary session closed on Saturday week, October U. That interval of six months had seen, under the President's direction, the liugcst legislative and administrative work ever done in the same lime by any free Government and Parliament in the course of history. It had not been known how much America in action might mean, ledge with a vengeance began to come which have not yet ceased to peal their like a. continued series of thunderclaps, So far as tl):> enemy Ti concerned, knowmeaning into German ears. The retrospect takes away one's breath. What was revealed to the twentieth century was the America, of the Civil War true to type, but with the North and South fused to make something incomparably more formidable than then. It had been at first assumed that the United States, like ourselves, would fumble before finding themselves But America had learned our lessons, and was able to avoid our mistakes. In April and May the British mission under Mr. Balfour ,and the French under General JofTre and M. Viviani placed all the knowledge and experience of the Western Allies unreservedly at America's disposal. ;There was 110 fumbling. Instead there was stroke, after 'stroke of constructive revolution. The back of all the main difficulties of policy was broken in a matter of weeks. . At the end of the first' six months America was well under way I with a total effort ten times better in [rapidly and efficiency, taken as a whole, than had been Anticipated at the.outset.. From next spring that new giant force will begin to toll. Thnt is one chief reason why we have 'beeii pointing out for many weeks to the faint-hearted and the feebie-kneed that the issue of this war is no longer in do\il>t. CONSCRIPTION AND TIIE NEW ARMIES. Wo now take' briefly the various aspects of the American effort. And, 'firstly, man-power. A country's manner of dealing with that supreme part of the whole problem of service and sacrifice is the critical test of the will to win. Mr. Wilson owes all the;, rest of his success to his courage in declaring outright and at once for conscription when he summoned the nation to war. Without that there would have been increasing moral and practical chaos, as there was for so long amongst ourselves. Doubt, delay, .confusion in respect of recruiting would have hindered every other war-purpose.

There .Mr. Wilson showed the touch of great leadership. No society in the world had been so deeply steeped as America in thoughts of continued peace. To none had the idea of conscription been so strange and abhorrent. Any man would have been thought out of his senses who had suggested in 11)12 or long afterwards that a Democratic President of all men would induce the United States to adopt, the principle of universal liability to service on the battlefields of Kuropo against an enemy menacing the life of freedom throughout the world. The sheer boldness and Tightness of that policy went through all reluctance like a ploughshare. The spirit that made ihe Republic and saved the Union lived again. The bigness of the President's action has never been adequately appreciated on this side of the Atlantic it was one of the strongest strokes of political leadership in the annals of democracy. By refusing to fumble on the most vital question, Mr. Wilson made it certain that all other questions would be dealt with in the same sweeping and thorough temper. He had ensured America's general ."liicieivy for war.

.Mark the sequel. There 9wd been some tail; of a ''dollar-war," mainly eonsisting of financial help to the Allies, of intervention 011 terms of limited liability. Many bad scouted the idea of any military 1 expedition to Europe. In a few weeks that talk was extinguished. America was out for full and final victory. She was committed in every respect as completely as anv Ally of tlicin all. Tt was decided to throw the military strength of the United .States into the European scales and to raise new armies by the million on Kitchener's model That was another trenchant, historic decision. JIF.N BY THE MILLION. In 11a,v a vanguard of the little Regular Army was warned for early departure to France. 011 June 13, General Pershing and his staff landed at Boulogne. On June 2.> began to arrive at a French port a first, Armada of American transports which had crossed the Atlantic without the loss of a man. There, indeed, was a moment woithv of the greatest passage of interpretation that the foremost of future historians may write. But it was already made clear to the Allies, the enemy, and the world that these c-allant advanced detachments were but Hie forerunners of limitless reserves. In the very first, month of intervention the National Service Bill 'became law. It provided for the registration of all able-bodied males between twenty-one years and thirty. That first category of meii in the prime of their fighting age was expected to yield about 10,000,000 names. Think again of the vast latent power to which that one fact is the index. There had been some fears of what would happen when the draft was applied. The event laughed at the fears. June was Registration (lay. Tt was ushered in with ringing of hells and wlioops of syrens, another ewni.-le of stirring methods which we might well imitate. The national roll-call went like clockwork from ocean to wan. Tne Middle West had often been called hackward in the war-cause, but it wm the best of the lot in the speedy fUiing-up of its quota. The West was good as well as tV East There were not three Aronneans in this businos-i, as we hail been told. There was only one America. When the register was complete it numbered !),!I4!),!);18 men. All this time volunteers were (lowing into the Regular Army and the. National Guard-(or State Militia) until the peace. eO'eetiui of the former was more than quadrupled and the latter doubled. September 10 was ,Mobilisation Day for the first draft of the new armies—over 'IOO,OOO men. By these means 110 less than 1.500,000 men pf all arms are already under intensive trainin ' -mostly in rump* anfl cantonments all over tht-Union. hut more in than is vet realised. The transput s lave never eea-vd to arrive at ports in France—still without the loss if a man.

', A marvellous story of six months' work. But even that is a prelude. Under American good nature, so veal and human and genial as it is, (here is a certain severity and primness. The f!prmans have invited that grasp. It will he an iron grasp. The Hnhpitzollerns and all their Krhlmanns and other slippery awnts will never wrinfrle out. of it until the stubborn neck of Prussian militarism is broken for good. Another three-quarters of a million of men on the National "Rc.'istcr arc lo he called up as fast as equipment can he provided. Jlv the owning "t W§, or fhorllv afterwards, the number of Americans umley intensive milifary training will b$ Wj&r

000. And it is now certain that this number will bo doubled or even trebled before America consents to accept defeat or anything shurt of thorough victory followed W impregnable security for peace. | flo much for/quantity. As we know, the quality, physically and intellectually, is unsurpassed in the. world. Scores of thousands of ollieers are being trained as our boys were, and thc»e young Americans will be as good. Remember that West Point has always been :i military school of thorough intellectual application and Spartan temper. Its work stands America in good stead to-day. It was nearly two years before our own Now Annies were ready for the Battle of the Somme. Ameriea will havo her first million at least ready for the next fighting season, and her second million will be in the field long before the coming year is through. (To be continued/