THE ARTEMUS WARD THEORY OF WAR
January 17, 1918
The great American humorist, Artemus Ward, whose writings gave such delight to Abraham Lincoln, once remarked that he was willing to sacrifice all his wife’s relatives on the altar of the country. Mr. Ward was not in President Lincoln’s Cabinet. Mr. Baker is in President Wilson’s Cabinet. He takes substantially the same ground that Artemus Ward took, although possibly with a more unconscious humor. He has just uttered a heroic sentiment expressing his pleased acquiescence in the sacrifice of France and England’s armies for the defense of the common cause.
On Wednesday of last week, discussing the likelihood that the Germans, relieved from anxiety of Russia, would make a tremendous assault on the western front, Mr. Baker said: “The impending German offensive will possibly be their greatest assault. The French and British armies can be relied upon to withstand the shock.” Mr. Baker is President Wilson’s Secretary of War. He holds at this time the most important office in our Government. He thus announces to our allies and the world that in the twelfth month after Germany went to war with us, America, the richest country of the world with a population of one hundred million people, after being at war nearly a year and after such warning as never a nation had before, is wholly unable to send any effective assistance to repel the greatest assault of the war, and that the only military measure which can be taken is to express through Mr. Baker the belief that the British and French armies can be relied upon to do alone the duty which we ought to share with them.
This statement of Mr. Baker absolves us from all necessity of commenting on his ingenuous defense of a system of preparedness which leaves our small army at the front with no artillery except what we get from the French and our army at home with batteries made out of telegraph poles and logwood. It is not necessary to discuss the exact amount of pride we should as a Nation take in the fact that as a Nation after eleven months of war we are proudly emerging from the broomstick rifle stage preparedness into the telegraph pole stage preparedness. Mr. Baker’s statement sums up the situation exactly. We have been at war nearly a year, and when the Germans make their greatest assault our preparedness is only such as to warrant our expressing belief that our allies can win without our help.
The New York Times, a supporter of the Administration, comments truthfully on the situation:
Nine months after entering the war not only are we giving our allies no effective military aid, but all our bustle and stir doesn’t hide the fact that, through incompetence and lack of organization and system, we are far behind in our preparations to supply rifles, ammunition, machine guns, airships, uniforms, clothing for the troops we shall some time have at the front. Our backwardness is naturally disquieting to our allies. If one million American soldiers, or half that number, fully equipped, had stood on the soil of France, Lloyd George would have made no speech to British working-men restating after a fashion the war aims of the Allies. There would have been no occasion, nor demand for a speech telling the labor unions what the troops of Britain are fighting for.
The pacifists and the agencies of German intrigue would not be working for a peace in the interests of the capitalistic and militaristic autonomy of Germany. As the Times well says, the man who now works for such a peace while Germany is unconquered “is the most heartless of militarists or enemy of the world’s peace and freedom.”