LET GEORGE SPEED UP THE WAR
February 3, 1918
In my last editorial I spoke of the things of which Secretary Baker explicitly or implicitly denies the existence, in justifying the Administration for the military delay and shortcomings that have marked our entry into war. But as to the major facts there is no room for denial. As to these Secretary Baker falls back on the comfortable doctrine that all our shortcomings are of no consequence because they are made good anyhow by the efforts of our allies—who, by the way, with preposterous silliness, are in official circles merely termed our associates. Secretary Baker explains that, although our forces in France have no field artillery or auto rifles, this is of no consequence because the French love to give us artillery and auto rifles. He explains that the greatest German offensive movement of the war is about to take place, an offensive movement which, if successful, means that we have lost the war, and he adds that we can trust England and France to repel this offensive. This is a naked statement that we are to let George do it. We are to announce that after being at war just a year our delays have been so great that we are almost negligible in the military sense and that we must trust to our allies to speed up the war.
This verifies the prediction of von Hindenburg and von Tirpitz that it would take us eighteen months to become a real factor in the war. Americans laughed at this statement, but the ruthless and brutal and intelligent Germans were right and our own soft sentimentalities were their efficient allies. We are in the position of letting George speed up the war. Are the citizens of a proud and high-spirited Nation to be content with such a position?
Our major shortcomings can neither be concealed nor denied. In October I personally saw thousands of infantrymen drilling with sticks. In December, I still saw artillerymen with sticks instead of rifles. A month ago most of the cannon in the national army camps, which I saw, were made of logs or of sections of telegraph poles and all the machine guns I saw were wooden dummies. The daily press has repeatedly published photos of these wooden rifles, cannon, and machine guns. Secretary Baker cannot deny this nor can he deny that in modern war an army without artillery is helpless. We are now getting a small number of machine guns. We are turning some heavy coast guns into field artillery, but as yet gallant General Pershing and his gallant men in France have to trust to the French for artillery and machine guns and war planes, and, thanks to our dawdling and indecision, we have an utterly insufficient number of cargo ships.
We have been at war for a year. In April Congress stated that Germany had already committed repeated acts of war against us and that our own declaration of war was formal. It was then too late to undo the criminal mischief caused by our refusal to prepare during the preceding two and a half years, but we aggravated the damage immensely by our delays and follies. If we had exercised reasonable energy we would in six months have achieved more than we have actually achieved in a year. The least we can do now is to speed up the war ourselves. Let us insist that this be the end toward which with all our energy we now strive.