"A graphic and effective presentation of facts revealing the defenseless condition of this country and indicating what must be done to avert national humiliation."
"THIS POWERFUL BOOK HAS JARRED AMERICAN COMPLACENCY AS NO OTHER BOOK HAS EVER DONE"
From The New York American
One of the most remarkable men of our time has written a book—and the book is probably the most startling document ever placed before the American people. Its author is Hudson Maxim, world-famous inventor, writer on many topics of public interest, member of the Naval Advisory Board—and an American patriot.
His book, called "Defenseless America," has fallen among the complacent, the self-satisfied, the careless and the indifferent like a seventeen-inch shell.
It is a pitiless book—pitiless in its facts, pitiless in its logic, pitiless in its conclusions.
Mr. Maxim knows what he is writing about; he is one of the greatest authorities on military affairs in the world. His book has the cold steel precision of truth.
He shows that all wars have economic causes, no matter how they are painted over with sentiment. And he demonstrates that one of the most urgent economic incentives to war that has ever existed will be the relative condition of Europe and the United States at the close of the Great War.
Imagine the victors of this gigantic conflict—Allies or Teutons—impoverished in money and resources, with the most colossal public debt in the world's history hanging over them, but possessing an enormous army of trained veterans and a world-beating navy.
Then, on this side of the Atlantic, a nation that thinks it "can whip all creation," and acts on that principle—a hundred million over-fed, money-making people, nine-tenths of whom could not load a modern infantry rifle if they should ever happen to see one; a country of countless dollars protected by obsolete battleships and submarines that can neither float nor sink; a nation rich but undefended, confident but weak, dictatorial in manner but powerless in action.