CHAPTER I. — I WITNESS THE BLOWING UP OF THE PANAMA CANAL
In my thirty years’ service as war correspondent of the London Times I have looked behind the scenes of various world happenings, and have known the thrill of personally facing some great historic crises; but there is nothing in my experience so dramatic, so pregnant with human consequences, as the catastrophe of April 27, 1921, when the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal were destroyed by dynamite.
At that moment I was seated on the shaded, palm-bordered piazza of the Grand Hotel at Colon, discussing with Rear-Admiral Thomas Q. Allyn of the United States Navy the increasing chances that America might find herself plunged into war with Japan. For weeks the clouds had been darkening, and it was now evident that the time had come when the United States must either abandon the Monroe Doctrine and the open door in China, or fight to maintain these doctrines.
“Mr. Langston,” the Admiral was saying, “the situation is extremely grave. Japan intends to carry out her plans of expansion in Mexico and China, and possibly in the Philippines; there is not a doubt of it. Her fleet is cruising somewhere in the Pacific,—we don’t know where,—and our Atlantic fleet passed through the Canal yesterday, as you know, to make a demonstration of force in the Pacific and to be ready for—for whatever may come.”
His hands closed nervously, and he studied the horizon with half-shut eyes.
In the course of our talk Admiral Allyn had admitted that the United States was woefully unprepared for conflict with a great power, either on sea or land.
“The blow will be struck suddenly,” he went on, “you may be sure of that. Our military preparations are so utterly inadequate that we may suffer irreparable harm before we can begin to use our vast resources. You know when Prussia struck Austria in 1866 the war was over in three months. When Germany struck France in 1870 the decisive battle, Sedan, was fought forty-seven days later. When Japan struck Russia, the end was foreseen within four or five months.”
“It wasn’t so in the great European war,” I remarked.
“Why not? Because England held the mastery of the sea. But we hold the mastery of nothing. Our fleet is barely third among the nations and we are frightfully handicapped by our enormous length of coast line and by this canal.”
“The Canal gives us a great advantage, doesn’t it? I thought it doubled the efficiency of our fleet?”
“It does nothing of the sort. The Canal may be seized. It may be put out of commission for weeks or months by landslides or earthquakes. A few hostile ships of the Queen Elizabeth class lying ten miles off shore at either end, with ranges exactly fixed, or a good shot from an aeroplane, could not only destroy the Canal’s insufficient defences, but could prevent our fleet from coming through, could hold it, useless, in the Atlantic when it might be needed to save California or useless in the Pacific when it might be needed to save New York. If it happened when war began that one half of our fleet was in the Atlantic and the other half in the Pacific, then the enemy could keep these two halves separated and destroy them one by one.”
“I suppose you mean that we need two fleets?”
“Of course we do—a child can see it—if we are to guard our two seaboards. We must have a fleet in the Atlantic strong enough to resist any probable attack from the East, and another fleet in the Pacific strong enough to resist any probable attack from the West.
“But listen to this, think of this,” the veteran warrior leaned towards me, shaking an eager fore-finger. “At the present moment our entire fleet, if massed off Long Island, would be inferior to a fleet that Germany could send across the Atlantic against us by many ships, many submarines and many aeroplanes. And hopelessly inferior in men and ammunition, including torpedoes.”
As I listened I felt myself falling under the spell of the Admiral’s eloquence. He was so sure of what he said. These dangers unquestionably existed, but—were they about to descend upon America? Must we really face the horrors of a war of invasion?
“Your arguments are very convincing, sir, and yet—” I hesitated.
“Well?”
“You speak as if these things were going to happen right now, but there are no signs of war, no clouds on the horizon.”
The Admiral waved this aside with an impatient gesture.
“I tell you the blow will come suddenly. Were there any clouds on the European horizon in July, 1914? Yet a few persons knew, just as I have known for months, that war was inevitable.”
“Known?” I repeated.
Very deliberately the grizzled sea fighter lighted a fresh cigar before replying.
“Mr. Langston, I’ll tell you a little story that explains why I am posing as a prophet. You can put it in your memoirs some day—if my prophecy comes true. It’s the story of an American naval officer, a young lieutenant, who—well, he went wrong about a year ago. He got into the clutches of a woman spy in the employ of a foreign government. He met this woman in Marseilles on our last Mediterranean cruise and fell in love with her—hopelessly. She’s one of those devilish sirens that no full-blooded man can resist and, the extraordinary part of it is, she fell in love with him—genuinely in love.
“Well—it was a bad business. This officer gave the woman all he had, told her all he knew, and finally he asked her to marry him. Yes. He didn’t care what she was. He just wanted her. And she was so happy, so crazy about him, that she almost yielded; she was ready to turn over a new leaf, to settle down as his wife, but—”
“But she didn’t do it?” I smiled.
The Admiral shook his head.
“He was a poor man—just a lieutenant’s pay and she couldn’t give up her grand life. But she loved him enough to try to save him, enough to leave him. She wrote him a wonderful letter, poured her soul out to him, gave him certain military secrets of the government she was working for—they would have shot her in a minute, you understand, if they had known it—and she told him to take this information as a proof of her love and use it to save the United States.”
I was listening now with absorbed interest.
“What government was she working for?”
The Admiral paused to relight his cigar.
“Wait! The next thing was that this lieutenant came to me, as a friend of his father and an admiral of the American fleet, and made a clean breast of everything. He made his confession in confidence, but asked me to use the knowledge as I saw fit without mentioning his name. I did use it and”—the Admiral’s frown deepened—“the consequence was no one believed me. They said the warning was too vague. You know the attitude of recent administrations towards all questions of national defence. It’s always politics before patriotism, always the fear of losing middle west pacifist votes. It’s disgusting—horrible!”
“Was the warning really vague?”
“Vague. My God!” The old sea dog bounded from his chair. “I’ll tell you how vague it was. A statement was definitely made that before May 1, 1921, a great foreign power would make war upon the United States and would begin by destroying the Panama Canal. To-day is April 27, 1921. I don’t say these things are going to happen within three days but, Mr. Langston, as purely as the sun shines on that ocean, we Americans are living in a fool’s paradise. We are drunk with prosperity. We are deaf and blind to the truth which is known to other nations, known to our enemies, known to the ablest officers in our army and navy.
“The truth is that, as a nation, we have learned nothing from our past wars because we have never had to fight a first-class power that was prepared. But the next war, and it is surely coming, will find us held in the grip of an inexorable law which provides that nations imitating the military policy of China must suffer the fate of China.”
The Admiral now explained why he had sent for me. It was to suggest that I cable the London Times, urging my paper to use its influence, through British diplomatic channels, to avert another great war. I pointed out that the chances of such intervention were slight. Great Britain was still smarting under the memory of Americans’ alleged indifference to everything but money in 1918 when the United States stood by, unprotesting, and saw England stripped of her mastery of the sea after the loss of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal.
“There are two sides to that,” frowned the Admiral, “but one thing is certain—it’s England or no one. We have nothing to hope for from Russia; she has what she wants—Constantinople. Nothing to hope for from France; she has her lost provinces back. And as for Germany—Germany is waiting, recuperating, watching her chance for a place in the South American sun.”
“Germany managed well in the Geneva Peace Congress of 1919,” I said.
The veteran of Manila threw down his cigarette impatiently.
“Bismarck could have done no better. They bought off Europe, they crippled England and—they isolated America.”
“By the way,” continued the Admiral, “I must show you some things in my scrap book. You will be astonished. Wait a minute. I’ll get it.”
The old fellow hurried off and presently returned with a heavy volume bound in red leather.
“Take it up to your room to-night and look it over. You will find the most overwhelming mass of testimony to the effect that to-day, in spite of all that has been said and written and all the money spent, the United States is totally unprepared to defend its coasts or uphold its national honour. Just open the book anywhere—you’ll see.”
I obeyed and came upon this statement by Theodore Roosevelt:
What befell Antwerp and Brussels will surely some day befall New York or San Francisco, and may happen to many an inland city also, if we do not shake off our supine folly, if we trust for safety to peace treaties unbacked by force.
“Pretty strong words for an ex-President of the United States to be using,” nodded the Admiral. “And true! Try another place.”
I did so and came upon this from the pen of Gerhard von Schulze-Gaevernitz, professor of political economy at the University of Freiburg and a member of the Reichstag:
Flattered and deftly lulled to sleep by British influence, public opinion in the United States will not wake up until the ‘yellow New England’ of the Orient, nurtured and deflected from Australia by England herself, knocks at the gates of the new world. Not a patient and meek China, but a warlike and conquest-bound Japan will be the aggressor when that day comes. Then America will be forced to fight under unfavourable conditions.
The famous campaigner’s eyes flashed towards the Pacific.
“When that day comes! Ah! Speaking of Japan,” he turned over the pages in nervous haste. “Here we are! You can see how much the Japanese love us! Listen! This is an extract from the most popular book in Japan to-day. It is issued by Japan’s powerful and official National Defence Association with a view to inflaming the Japanese people against the United States and preparing them for a war of invasion against this country. Listen to this:
“Let America beware! For our cry, ‘On to California! On to Hawaii! On to the Philippines!’ is becoming only secondary to our imperial anthem!... To arms! We must seize our standards, unfurl them to the winds and advance without the least fear, as America has no army worthy the name, and with the Panama Canal destroyed, its few battleships will be of no use until too late.
“I tell you, Mr. Langston,” pursued the Admiral, “we Americans are to-day the most hated nation on earth. The richest, the most arrogant, the most hated nation on earth! And helpless! Defenceless! Believe me, that’s a bad combination. Look at this! Read this! It’s a cablegram to the New York Tribune, published on May 21, 1915, from Miss Constance Drexel, an American delegate to the Woman’s Peace Conference at The Hague:
“I have just come out of Germany and perhaps the predominating impression I bring with me is Germany’s hatred of America. Germany feels that war with America is only a matter of time. Everywhere I went I found the same sentiment, and the furthest distance away I found the war put was ten years. It was said to me: ‘We must settle with England first, but then will come America’s turn. If we don’t make war on you ourselves we will get Japan into a war with you, and then we will supply arms and munitions to Japan.’”
At this point, I remember, I had turned to order an orange liqueur, when the crash came.
It was terrific. Every window in the hotel was shattered, and some scores of labourers working near the Gatun Locks were killed instantly. Six hundred tons of dynamite, secreted in the hold of a German merchantman, had been exploded as the vessel passed through the locks, and ten thousand tons of Portland cement had sunk in the tangled iron wreck, to form a huge blockading mass of solid rock on the floor of the narrow passage.
Needless to say, every man on the German ship thus sacrificed died at his post.
The Admiral stared in dismay when the news was brought to him.
“Germany!” he muttered. “And our fleet is in the Pacific!”
“Does it mean war?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. Unquestionably it means war. We have been misled. We were thinking of one enemy, and we have been struck by another. We thought we could send our fleet through the Canal and get it back easily; but—now we cannot get it back for at least two months!”
CHAPTER II. — AMERICAN AEROPLANES AND SUBMARINES BATTLE DESPERATELY AGAINST THE GERMAN FLEET
A week later—or, to be exact, on May 4, 1921—I arrived in New York, following instructions from my paper, and found the city in a state of indescribable confusion and alarm.
War had been declared by Germany against the United States on the day that the Canal was wrecked, and German transports, loaded with troops and convoyed by a fleet of battleships, were known to be on the high seas, headed for American shores. As the Atlantic fleet had been cut off in the Pacific by that desperate piece of Panama strategy (the Canal would be impassable for months), it was evident that those ships could be of no service for at least eight weeks, the time necessary to make the trip through the Straits of Magellan; and meanwhile the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Florida was practically unguarded.
No wonder the newspapers shrieked despairingly and bitterly upbraided Congress for neglecting to provide the country with adequate naval defences.
Theodore Roosevelt came out with a signed statement:
“Four years ago I warned this country that the United States must have two great fleets—one for the Atlantic, one for the Pacific.”
Senator Smoot, in a sensational speech, referred to his vain efforts to secure for the country a fleet of fifty sea-going submarines and twenty-five coast-defence submarines. Now, he declared, the United States would pay for its indifference to danger.
In the House of Representatives, Gardner and Hobson both declared that our forts were antiquated, our coast-defence guns outranged, our artillery ridiculously insufficient, and our supply of ammunition not great enough to carry us through a single month of active warfare.
On the night of my arrival in Manhattan I walked through scenes of delirious madness. The town seemed to reel in a sullen drunkenness. Throngs filled the dark streets. The Gay White Way was no longer either white or gay. The marvellous electrical display of upper Broadway had disappeared—not even a street light was to be seen. And great hotels, like the Plaza, the Biltmore, and the new Morgan, formerly so bright, were scarcely discernible against the black skies. No one knew where the German airships might be. Everybody shouted, but nobody made very much noise. The city was hoarse. I remembered just how London acted the night the first Zeppelin floated over the town.
At five o’clock the next morning, Mayor McAneny appointed a Committee of Public Safety that went into permanent session in Madison Square Garden, which was thronged day and night, while excited meetings, addressed by men and women of all political parties, were held continuously in Union Square, City Hall Park, Columbus Circle, at the Polo Grounds and in various theatres and motion-picture houses.
Such a condition of excitement and terror necessarily led to disorder and on May 11, 1921, General Leonard Wood, in command of the Eastern Army, placed the city under martial law.
And now on every tongue were frantic questions. When would the Germans land? To-day? To-morrow? Where would they strike first? What were we going to do? Every one realised, when it was too late, the hopeless inadequacy of our aeroplane scouting service. To guard our entire Atlantic seaboard we had fifty military aeroplanes where we should have had a thousand and we were wickedly lacking in pilots. Oh, the shame of those days!
In this emergency Rodman Wanamaker put at the disposal of the government his splendid air yacht the America II, built on the exact lines of the America I, winner of across-the-Atlantic prizes in 1918, but of much larger spread and greater engine power. The America II could carry a useful load of five tons and in her scouting work during the next fortnight she accommodated a dozen passengers, four officers, a crew of six, and two newspaper men, Frederick Palmer, representing the Associated Press, and myself for the London Times.
What a tremendous thing it was, this scouting trip! Day after day, far out over the ocean, searching for German battleships! Our easy jog trot speed along the sky was sixty miles an hour and, under full engine pressure, the America II could make a hundred and twenty, which was lucky for us as it saved us many a time when the slower German aircraft came after us, spitting bullets from their machine guns.
On the morning of May 12, a perfect spring day, circling at a height of half a mile, about fifty miles off the eastern end of Long Island, we had our first view of the German fleet as it ploughed through smooth seas to the south of Montauk Point.
We counted eight battle cruisers, twelve dreadnoughts, ten pre-dreadnoughts, and about sixty destroyers, in addition to transports, food-ships, hospital-ships, repair-ships, colliers, and smaller fighting and scouting vessels, all with their full complement of men and equipment, moving along there below us in the pleasant sunshine. Among the troopships I made out the Kaiserin Auguste Luise and the Deutschland, on both of which I had crossed the summer following the Great Peace. I thought of the jolly old commander of the latter vessel and of the capital times we had had together at the big round table in the dining-saloon. It seemed impossible that this was war!
I subsequently learned that the original plan worked out by the German general staff contemplated a landing in the sheltered harbour of Montauk Point, but the lengthened range (21,000 yards) of mortars in the American forts on Fisher’s Island and Plum Island, a dozen miles to the north, now brought Montauk Point under fire, so the open shore south of East Hampton was substituted as the point of invasion.
“There’s no trouble about landing troops from the open sea in smooth weather like this,” said Palmer, speaking through his head-set. “We did it at Santiago, and the Japs did it at Port Arthur.”
“And the English did it at Ostend,” I agreed. “Hello!”
As I swept the sea to the west with my binoculars I thought I caught the dim shape of a submerged submarine moving slowly through the black depths like a hungry shark; but it disappeared almost immediately, and I was not sure. As a matter of fact, it was a submarine, one of six American under-water craft that had been assigned to patrol the south shore of Long Island.
The United States still had twenty-five submarines in Atlantic waters, in addition to thirty that were with the absent fleet; but these twenty-five had been divided between Boston Harbour, Narragansett Bay, Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, and other vulnerable points, so that only six were left to defend the approaches to New York City. And, of these six, five were twenty-four hours late, owing, I heard later, to inexcusable delays at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where they had been undergoing repairs. The consequence was that only the K-2 was here to meet the German invasion—one lone submarine against a mighty fleet.
Still, under favourable conditions, one lone submarine is a force to be reckoned with, as England learned in 1915.
The K-2 attacked immediately, revealing her periscope for a minute as she took her observations. Then she launched a torpedo at a big German supply-ship not more than a thousand yards away.
“Good-bye, ship!” said Palmer, and we watched with fascinated interest the swift white line that marked the course of the torpedo. It struck the vessel squarely amidships, and she sank within five minutes, most of the men aboard being rescued by boats from the fleet.
It now went ill with the K-2, however; for, having revealed her presence, she was pursued by the whole army of swift destroyers. She dived, and came up again two miles to the east, bent on sinking a German dreadnought; but, unfortunately, she rose to the surface almost under the nose of one of the destroyers, which bombarded her with its rapid-fire guns, and then, when she sank once more, dropped on her a small mine that exploded under water with shattering effect, finishing her.
As I think it over, I feel sure that if those other five submarines had been ready with the K-2, we might have had another story to tell. Possibly the slowness of the Brooklyn Navy Yard—which is notorious, I understand—may have spoiled the one chance that America had to resist this invasion.
The next day the five tardy submarines arrived; but conditions were now less favourable, since the invaders had had time to prepare their defence against this under-water peril. As we flew over East Hampton on the following afternoon, we were surprised to see five fully inflated air-ships of the nonrigid Parseval type floating in the blue sky, like grim sentinels guarding the German fleet. Down through the sun-lit ocean they could see the shadowy underwater craft lurking in the depths, and they carried high explosives to destroy them.
“How about our aeroplanes?” grumbled Palmer.
“Look!” I answered, pointing toward the Shinnecock Hills, where some tiny specks appeared like soaring eagles. “They’re coming!”
The American aeroplanes, at least, were on time, and as they swept nearer we counted ten of them, and our spirits rose; for ten swift aeroplanes armed with explosive bombs can make a lot of trouble for slower and clumsier aircraft.
But alas for our hopes! The invaders were prepared also, and, before the American fliers had come within striking distance, they found themselves opposed by a score of military hydroplanes that rose presently, with a great whirring of propellers, from the decks of the German battle-ships. Had the Americans been able to concentrate here their entire force of fifty aeroplanes, the result might have been different; but the fifty had been divided along the Atlantic coast—ten aeroplanes and five submarines being assigned to each harbour that was to be defended.
Now came the battle. And for hours, until night fell, we watched a strange and terrible conflict between these forces of air and water. With admirable skill and daring the American aeronauts manoeuvred for positions above the Parsevals, whence they could drop bombs; and so swift and successful were they that two of the enemy’s air-ships were destroyed before the German aeroplanes really came into the action. After that it went badly for the American fliers, which were shot down, one by one, until only three of the ten remained. Then these three, seeing destruction inevitable, signalled for a last united effort, and, all together, flew at full speed straight for the great yellow gas-bag of the biggest Parseval and for certain death. As they tore into the flimsy air-ship there came a blinding flash, an explosion that shook the hills, and that brave deed was done.
There remained two Parsevals to aid the enemy’s fleet in its fight against American submarines, and I wish I might describe this fight in more detail. We saw a German transport torpedoed by the B-1; we saw two submarines sunk by rapid-fire guns of the destroyers; we saw a battle-cruiser crippled by the glancing blow of a torpedo; and we saw the K-1 blown to pieces by bombs from the air-ships. Two American submarines were still fighting, and of these one, after narrowly missing a dreadnought, sent a troop-ship to the bottom, and was itself rammed and sunk by a destroyer, the sea being spread with oil. The last submarine took to flight, it seems, because her supply of torpedoes was exhausted. And this left the invaders free to begin their landing operations.
During four wonderful days (the Germans were favoured by light northeast breezes) Palmer and I hovered over these East Hampton shores, watching the enemy construct their landing platforms of brick and timbers from dynamited houses, watching the black transports as they disgorged from lighters upon the gleaming sand dunes their swarms of soldiers, their thousands of horses, their artillery, their food supplies. There seemed no limit to what these mighty vessels could carry.
We agreed that the great 50,000-ton Imperator alone brought at least fifteen thousand men with all that they needed. And I counted twenty other huge transports; so my conservative estimate, cabled to the paper by way of Canada,—for the direct cables were cut,—was that in this invading expedition Germany had successfully landed on the shores of Long Island one hundred and fifty thousand fully equipped fighting-men. It seemed incredible that the great United States, with its vast wealth and resources, could be thus easily invaded; and I recalled with a pang what a miserable showing England had made in 1915 from similar unpreparedness.
{Illustration: AS THE GERMAN LANDING OPERATIONS PROCEEDED, THE NEWS OF THE INVASION SPREAD OVER THE WHOLE REGION WITH THE SPEED OF ELECTRICITY. THE ENEMY WAS COMING! THE ENEMY WAS HERE. WHAT WAS TO BE DONE?}
As the German landing operations proceeded, the news of the invasion spread over the whole region with the speed of electricity, and in every town and village on Long Island angry and excited and terrified crowds cursed and shouted and wept in the streets.
The enemy was coming!
The enemy was here!
What was to be done?
Should they resist?
And many valorous speeches in the spirit of ‘76 were made by farmers and clerks and wild-eyed women. What was to be done?
In the peaceful town of East Hampton some sniping was done, and afterward bitterly repented of, the occasion being the arrival of a company of Uhlans with gleaming helmets, who galloped down the elm-lined main street with requisitions for food and supplies.
Suddenly a shot was fired from Bert Osborne’s livery stable, then another from White’s drug store, then several others, and one of the Uhlans reeled in his saddle, slightly wounded. Whereupon, to avenge this attack and teach Long Islanders to respect their masters, the German fleet was ordered to shell the village.
Half an hour later George Edwards, who was beating up the coast in his trim fishing schooner, after a two weeks’ absence in Barnegat Bay (he had heard nothing about the war with Germany), was astonished to see a German soldier in formidable helmet silhouetted against the sky on the eleventh tee of the Easthampton golf course, one of the three that rise above the sand dunes along the surging ocean, wigwagging signals to the warships off shore. And, presently, Edwards saw an ominous puff of white smoke break out from one of the dreadnoughts and heard the boom of a twelve-inch gun.
The first shell struck the stone tower of the Episcopal church and hurled fragments of it against the vine-covered cottage next door, which had been the home a hundred and twenty years before of John Howard Payne, the original “home sweet home.”
The second shell struck John Drew’s summer home and set it on fire; the third wrecked the Casino; the fourth destroyed Albert Herter’s studio and slightly injured Edward T. Cockcroft and Peter Finley Dunne, who were playing tennis on the lawn. That night scarcely a dozen buildings in this beautiful old town remained standing. And the dead numbered more than three hundred, half of them being women and children.
CHAPTER III. — GERMAN INVADERS DRIVE THE IRON INTO THE SOUL OF UNPREPARED AMERICA
The next week was one of deep humiliation for the American people. Our great fleet and our great Canal, which had cost so many hundreds of millions and were supposed to guarantee the safety of our coasts, had failed us in this hour of peril.
Secretary Alger, in the Spanish War, never received half the punishment that the press now heaped on the luckless officials of the War and the Navy Departments.
The New York Tribune, in a scathing attack upon the administration, said:
The blow has fallen and the United States is totally unprepared to meet it. Why? Because the Democratic party, during its eight years’ tenure of office, has obstinately, stupidly and wickedly refused to do what was necessary to make this country safe against invasion by a foreign power. There has been a surfeit of talking, of explaining and of promising, but of definite accomplishment very little, and to-day, in our extreme peril, we find ourselves without an army or a navy that can cope with the invaders and protect our shores and our homes.
Richard Harding Davis, in the Evening Sun, denounced unsparingly those Senators and Congressmen who, in 1916, had voted against national preparedness:
For our present helpless condition and all that results from it, let the responsibility rest upon these Senators and Congressmen, who, for their own selfish ends, have betrayed the country. They are as guilty of treason as was ever Benedict Arnold. Were some of them hanged, the sight of them with their toes dancing on air might inspire other Congressmen to consider the safety of this country rather than their own re-election.
The New York World published a memorable letter written by Samuel J. Tilden in December, 1885, to Speaker Carlisle of the Forty-ninth Congress on the subject of national defence and pointed out that Mr. Tilden was a man of far vision, intellectually the foremost democrat of his day. In this letter Mr. Tilden said:
The property exposed to destruction in the twelve seaports, Portland, Portsmouth, Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Galveston and San Francisco, cannot be less in value than five thousand millions of dollars.... While we may afford to be deficient in the means of offence we cannot afford to be defenceless. The notoriety of the fact that we have neglected the ordinary precautions of defence invites want of consideration in our diplomacy, injustice, arrogance and insult at the hands of foreign nations.
To add to the general indignation, it transpired that the American reserve fleet, consisting of ten predreadnoughts, was tied up in the docks of Philadelphia, unable to move for lack of officers and men to handle them. After frantic orders from Washington and the loss of precious days, some two thousand members of the newly organised naval reserve were rushed to Philadelphia; but eight thousand men were needed to move this secondary fleet, and, even if the eight thousand had been forthcoming, it would have been too late; for by this time a German dreadnought was guarding the mouth of Delaware Bay, and these inferior ships would never have braved its guns. So here were seventy-five million dollars’ worth of American fighting-ships rendered absolutely useless and condemned to be idle during the whole war because of bad organisation.
Meantime, the Germans were marching along the Motor Parkway toward New York City with an army of a hundred and fifty thousand, against which General Wood, by incredible efforts, was able to oppose a badly organised, inharmonious force of thirty thousand, including Federals and militia that had never once drilled together in large manoeuvres. Of Federal troops there was one regiment of infantry from Governor’s Island, and this was short of men. There were two infantry regiments from Forts Niagara and Porter, in New York State. Also a regiment of colored cavalry from Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont, a battalion of field artillery from Fort Myer, Virginia, a battalion of engineers from Washington, D. C., a battalion of coast artillery organised as siege artillery from Fort Dupont, Delaware, a regiment of cavalry from Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, two regiments of infantry from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, one regiment of field artillery from Fort Sheridan, Illinois, one regiment of horse artillery from Fort Riley, Kansas, one regiment of infantry and one regiment of mountain guns from Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming.
I may add that at this time the United States army, in spite of many efforts to increase its size, numbered fewer than 70,000 men; and so many of these were tied up as Coast Artillery or absent in the Philippines, Honolulu, and the Canal Zone, that only about 30,000 were available as mobile forces for the national defence.
As these various bodies of troops arrived in New York City and marched down Fifth Avenue with bands playing “Dixie” and colours flying, the excitement of cheering multitudes passed all description, especially when Theodore Roosevelt, in familiar slouch hat, appeared on a big black horse at the head of a hastily recruited regiment of Rough Riders, many of them veterans who had served under him in the Spanish War.
Governor Malone reviewed the troops from the steps of the new Court House and the crowd went wild when the cadets from West Point marched past, in splendid order. At first I shared the enthusiasm of the moment; but suddenly I realised how pathetic it all was and Palmer seemed to see that side of it, too, though naturally he and I avoided all discussion of the future. In addition to such portions of the regular army as General Wood could gather together, his forces were supplemented by infantry and cavalry brigades of militia from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, these troops being more or less unprepared for battle, more or less lacking in the accessories of battles, notably in field artillery and in artillery equipment of men and horses. One of the aides on General Wood’s staff told me that the combined American forces went into action with only one hundred and fifty pieces of artillery against four hundred pieces that the Germans brought.
“And the wicked part of it is,” he added, “that there were two hundred other pieces of artillery we might have used if we had had men and horses to operate them; but—you can’t make an artillery horse overnight.”
“Nor a gun crew,” said I.