The Sea Strategy an Invader Would Employ
“The enemy fleet,” said the bulletin, “has expanded its line enormously to threaten many far separated points simultaneously, and thus mask its actual design for landing. Our ships and air scouts, and the army air scouts, are trying to penetrate the screen of cruisers, destroyers and enemy air-craft to find the real fleet with the convoys.”
“But is this not a chance for the navy to attack the scattered enemy ships?” asked one.
“Opportunities may occur,” answered the Admiral. “But the business of our fleet is to keep itself in battle formation.”[12]
The sea-coast cities read the bulletin and held their breath. Through their streets thundered their traffic, as in peace. But the exchanges were closed—had closed half an hour after opening, in panic. Even in that short time, a thousand fortunes had been destroyed: and men passing outside had heard from within a vast noise of cries and shrieks as of animals.
The banks were closing. The streets leading to the railroad stations from the financial centers were clogged by slowly moving but madly crowding automobiles and cabs and trucks. Everything on wheels had been pressed into service. On one open truck, guarded by half a dozen men who showed automatic pistols ostentatiously, were bags of gold. The United States sub-Treasuries were being emptied. Men tore at securities in their safe-deposit vaults and stuffed them into valises, and ran. The treasure of the cities was being sent inland.
In front of the newspaper offices stood the citizens. They stood so closely crowded that there was no passage through those parts of the towns. Their throngs were so great that from their outskirts only those could read the announcements who were armed with field glasses. These fortunate ones told the news as it appeared: and it was repeated to the crowds in the side-streets, who packed the roads from house-edge to edge.
All these great crowds were utterly silent. There was no sound from them, except for the voices of those who passed the news on. A man looking from a high window in a newspaper office suddenly stepped back, with a choking in his throat. “It is—it is,” he said, and choked again, “as if they were waiting for the end of the world.”
A Strategical Shelling of the Coast
Incessantly the bulletins spoke. Lighthouses, coast-guards, patrols, harbor defenses, ships, air-scouts wirelessed their reports to Washington, and Washington flung it swiftly through the land.