A good many competent authorities have disliked the idea of the Dardanelles expedition, on the strength of a general principle applicable to all military operations. It is said that in every war there is one distinct objective, and that that should never be neglected for any subsidiary operations. Thus, in the present instance, our main effort is to drive the Germans out of France and Belgium, and then to attack them in their own territory. Anything which interferes with this or throws it, however temporarily, into the background, is held to be unwise, because it leads to the most dangerous of results in warfare—the dissipation of forces, which, if united, would win the desired success, but if disunited will probably fail. Thus we are told that we must not fritter away our energies in enterprises which, however important in themselves, are not comparable with the one unique preoccupation of our minds—the conquest of Germany in Europe.
Selling Arms to the Allies
Horace White has no two opinions in his article in The North American Review for July as to the wisdom and justice of the practice of American manufacturers in selling munitions which the Allies are using to kill their Germanic enemies. Mr. White expresses it as the belief of the great majority of people in the United States that Germany's war is without sufficient cause, and that when she invaded Belgium she "made herself the outlaw of the nations—a country whom no agreements can bind." Therefore he can see why no limit should ever be put to the world's expenditure for armaments "while one incorrigible outlaw is at large." He adds:
It is the opinion of most Americans that the most incorrigible and dangerous outlaw and armed maniac now existing is Germany, and that the first and indispensable step toward a restriction of armaments and a quiet world is to throttle and disarm her, and that no price is too great to pay for such a consummation. Any result of the present war which falls short of this will be the preliminary to a new armament and another war on a wider scale than the present one, since the United States will make preparations for the next one and most probably take part in it.
Hence proceeds Mr. White's justification for this neutral nation's supplying the Allies with arms:
Germany, by bursting her way through Belgium, was enabled to seize eighty to ninety per cent. of the coal and iron resources of France and the greater part of her apparatus for the production of arms. She holds also the entire resources of Belgium, both of raw material and finished product. The foul blow by which she possessed herself of these indispensable treasures had two consequences which she did not look for—the active hostility of England and the moral indignation of all other nations. In helping France to make good the loss which she sustained through such perfidy the American people think that they are doing God's service, and their only regret is that they cannot do more of it. If they had foreseen the present conditions they would have enlarged their gun factories and powder mills to meet the emergency more promptly.
A German writer in the New York Times of May 30, Mr. Vom Bruck, says: "If the German nation is wiped out with the help of American arms and ammunition no man of the white race in the United States would be able to think of such a catastrophe without horror and remorse." All of the contending nations say that they are fighting for existence, which means that if they do not win in the end they will be wiped out. With such an alternative staring us in the face very few tears would be shed by Americans, of any color, if both the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, with all their belongings, should be wiped off the face of the earth.