INTRODUCTION.
As our war against Germany recedes into the past its temporal boundaries become more sharply defined, and it assumes the character of a complete entity—a rounded-out period of time in which the United States collected her men and resources, fought, and shared in the victory.
As such it offers to the critic the easy opportunity to discover that certain things were not done. American airplanes did not arrive at the front in sufficient numbers. American guns in certain essential calibers did not appear at all. American gas shells were not fired at the enemy. American troops fought with French and British machine guns to a large extent. The public is familiar with such statements.
It should be remembered that the war up to its last few weeks—up to its last few days, in fact—was a period of anxious suspense, during which America was straining her energies toward a goal, toward the realization of an ambition which, in the production of munitions, dropped the year 1918 almost out of consideration altogether, which indeed did not bring the full weight of American men and matériel into the struggle even in 1919, but which left it for 1920, if the enemy had not yet succumbed to the growing American power, to witness the maximum strength of the United States in the field.
Necessarily, therefore, the actual period of hostilities, between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918, was devoted in this country to laying down the foundations of a munitions industry that should bring about its overwhelming results at the appointed time. What munitions of the more difficult sort were actually produced in this period might almost be termed casual to the main enterprise—pilots of the quantities to come.
The decision to prepare heavily for 1919 and 1920 and thus sacrifice for 1917 and 1918 the munitions that might have been produced at the cost of any less adequate preparation for the more distant future, was based on sound strategical reasoning on the part of the Allies and ourselves.
On going back to the past we find that on April 6, 1917, the United States scarcely realized the gravity of the undertaking. There was a general impression, reaching even into Government, that the Allies alone were competent to defeat the Central Powers in time, and that America's part would be largely one of moral support, with expanding preparation in the background as insurance against any unforeseen disasters. In line with this attitude we sent the first division of American troops to France in the spring of 1917 to be our earnest to the governments and peoples of the Allies that we were with them in the great struggle. Not until after the departure of the various foreign missions that came to this country during that spring did America fully awake to the seriousness of the situation.
All through the summer of 1917 the emphasis upon American man power in France gradually grew, but no definite schedule upon which the United States could work was reached until autumn or early winter, until the mission headed by Col. Edward M. House visited Europe to give America place on the Supreme War Council and in the Interallied Conference. The purpose of the House mission was to assure the Allies that America was in the war for all she was worth and to determine the most effective method in which she could cooperate.