It is not agreeable to keep insisting on the need of doing better than we have done. It is not agreeable to keep pointing out our shortcomings, but to do so is the only way of remedying them and of securing better action in the future.
The people, some of them well-meaning, some of them anything but well-meaning, who denounce criticism and who object to telling the minimum of truth necessary to correct our faults, are the efficient allies of Germany and the foes of the United States. Actual events have shown that fatuous complacency on the part of our officials has resulted in inefficiency and delay which would have meant overwhelming disaster to this Nation if we had not been protected by the fleets and armies of England and France.
For the first eleven months of this war the inefficiency at vital points in our Government, notably in the matter of shipping and in the management of the War Department, was worse than anything Russia herself has ever seen. Nearly thirteen months have now passed since Germany went to war with us and we broke relations with Germany and afterwards timidly and helplessly drifted stern foremost into what we styled a “formal” state of war. The Russo-Japanese War likewise began before there was any formal declaration of war. It only lasted sixteen months. We have been accustomed to hold out Russia’s action during that sixteen months as a miracle of inefficiency, but she showed herself far less inefficient than we have shown ourselves during the thirteen months that have just passed, and, of course, there was nothing in her conduct quite as bad as our criminal folly in utterly failing in any shape or way to prepare during the two and a half previous years. There is just one difference between the two cases. Russia did not have England and France to protect her from the effects of her folly. That we have been at liberty to indulge in our folly with impunity is due only to the fact that England and France have protected us with the blood of their bravest, while we have refused to prepare and then delayed and blundered and fatuously boasted after the war came on. Every pro-German, of course, heartily applauds these blunders and delays and bitterly objects to their being pointed out, but every American with a particle of patriotism in him, every American proud of his country, should learn the bitter lesson and should resolve that never again will we permit our great Nation to be put in such an ignoble position.
Our worst failure, of course, has been our failure to grapple with the shipping problem. But there have been many such failures. One was the failure to equip Pershing’s army. I do not believe a more gallant little army than Pershing’s was ever sent abroad, but without abundant artillery, machine guns, and airplanes a modern army is as helpless as if its men were armed only with stone-headed axes. Pershing’s army has only the field artillery, machine guns, and airplanes that the French have given it, and this, although since our troops landed last June, a longer time has elapsed than covered the whole Franco-Prussian War. As regards the field artillery, the fault is due to the blind refusal of the Government to prepare in advance to build the guns. As regards the machine guns and auto rifles, the fault is due to our Government’s refusal during the last thirteen months to utilize the Lewis gun.
Steps have been taken to remedy some of the worst of these evils in the War Department. They have been taken only and purely because of public criticism of them and because of the fearless exposure of inefficiency of Senator Chamberlain and his colleagues of the Senate investigating committee. Until this committee began its labor, the War Department had striven to conceal and had refused to remedy its inefficiency, blundering, and delay. There has been some improvement, and this improvement is due solely to the Senate committee.
This is the people’s war. It is not the President’s war any more than it is Congress’s war. It is America’s war. We are in honor bound in conducting it to stand by every official who does well and against every official who fails to do well. Any other attitude is a servile attitude. Congress on the whole has done well. Until Congress finally asserted itself the executive branch of the Government did very badly. If Congress follows the lead outlined in the Chamberlain Bill, it will continue to do well; if it follows the lead outlined in Senator Overman’s Bill, it will condone the inefficiency of the past and put a premium upon inefficiency in the future. Congress must not shirk its duty to the people. Let the machinery of the Government be modernized and above all let this machinery be manned by men of distinguished and demonstrated ability who will make the governmental conduct efficient instead of grossly inefficient, as it was during the first year of the war.
Let us quit being content with feeble mediocrity. Let us demand really first-class efficiency in both preparation and performance. That is the only way to do what we must do and see this war through to a triumphant conclusion.
THE FRUITS OF FIFTY-FIFTY LOYALTY
March 2, 1918
A captain in the regular army of the United States has just been justly sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment for trying to combine loyalty to this country with loyalty to Germany. He was born here of German parents. In Germany, for such an offense, he would have been instantly shot or hung. And in Germany organizations and newspapers responsible for causing such action would be instantly suppressed and their organizers and editors heavily punished.