of 1917 than she had been at any time, and, as events were shortly to prove, in reality stronger, because the collapse of Russia enabled Germany to withdraw practically all her troops from the East and use them on the Western front. America found, as Great Britain and France had found every year since 1914, that the war instead of becoming easier was taxing their strength to the utmost, and America quickly saw that the only hope of defeating Germany was to bring all her resources to bear and to accept whatever sacrifice was necessary.

Mistakes have been made, certain things have been done which ought not to have been done and things have been left undone which ought to have been done, and the blunders of my own countrymen have been repeated by yours, but a nation, like an individual, does not learn from the experience of others but only by its own experience, for which it usually pays dearly. When England entered the war against Germany it was not exactly with a light heart, but it was with only a faint conception of the magnitude of the task she faced and the strain it would impose upon her. Instead of immediately adopting conscription she dallied with it, talked about it, made it a political question, and then accepted a compromise, which is the usual English fashion, and only when much valuable time had been lost and the emergency was so great that further delay was impossible universal service was enforced. It was the same with many other things. The blockade of Germany was lax because of the timidity of the Foreign Office. “Business as usual" was our boast, and we went about our several ways spending money foolishly and refusing to be put on rations or voluntarily reducing our consumption of luxuries because of the unworthy fear it would be an admission of weakness and an encouragement to Germany. We did not want her to think we could not carry on the greatest war the world has known without giving up our pleasures or abandoning our luxurious way of living. Time, of course, taught us wisdom. We bought our experience, and a pretty price it cost us.

You in that respect at least have done much better. You went to conscription with the very beginning of the war, and although at the time you did not believe you would have to send more than half a million men to France, as soon as the gravity of the situation was fully understood you went forward prepared to send not half a million but millions if

necessary. Of course you have made your mistakes—at least I am told you have, and it would be impolite in me, a foreigner, to doubt the veracity of American critics of Americans-but your mistakes seem to me trivial compared with what you have done, and I am speaking not entirely without knowledge. Possibly, as some critics have asserted, you ought to have had at the declaration of war armies and guns and ammunition and aeroplanes and a military establishment complete to the last gaiter button, and because you didn't have them, for which nobody is to blame, but everyone is responsible, the men who sit in Congress and the men who send the men who sit in Congress-the whole country, in a word-the old faith in the miracle revived and the people at large believed it was only necessary for war to be declared to have Mr. Bryan's million armed men spring into life, and aeroplanes to fill the sky, and heavy guns build themselves; and it would have been possible, quite possible, if the age of miracles had not passed and Americans were supermen.

What has impressed me, what has given me continual pleasure to say to my countrymen and has encouraged and put new strength in them, is not what you have failed to do or might have done, but what you have done. If you take a broad view, if you look at the picture as a whole and do not go hunting with a magnifying glass to discover defects and blemishes, you must be, I am sure, as profoundly impressed as I am and those Englishmen and Frenchmen whose technical knowledge and professional experience entitle them to be heard with respect; you must be so profoundly impressed with the marvellous achievement that, materialist though you be, you will waver and in your doubt be almost tempted to believe that faith in the miracle is not misplaced.

What has a year seen? Had Germany been told that in less than a year it would be possible for America to have under arms and fully equipped 2,000,000 men, of whom more than 500,000 were sent to France without the loss of a single life, Germany, with brutal and clumsy pleasantry, would have indulged in contemptuous references to "those idiotic Yankees." Had Germany been told that the United States could turn out so many (purposely vague with the fear of the Censor before my eyes) destroyers in so many (also in deference to the Censor) months, she would have sneered, and even the British Admiralty would have hoped the good news was true but waited to be shown. You have done this,

you have made a record in destroyer-building that will be one of the things proudly to relate when the war is over and the men who labored may come into their reward. Germany knew how long it had taken her to prepare, the factories built, the years spent, the thousands and thousands of men employed, the millions of tons of raw materials that passed through her workshops to come out as the machinery of death and destruction, and knowing that America had no great ammunition or ordnance plants, only a limited number of men-limited, that is, gauged by the requirements-skilled in the manufacture of guns, only a handful of professional ordnance officers and few technical civilians expert in the art of making instruments of slaughter, no wonder Germany thought she could safely affect to despise America and consider her a negligible quantity for at least five years under the most favorable circumstances, but in all probability for ten.

For the last few years Americans have been talking about the wonderful efficiency of Germany and bemoaning their own inefficiency, reproaching themselves for not having patterned after German example. What it has taken Germany forty years to do, what for forty years has been the life of Germany, the one thought on which her people have centered, the idea around which all Germany has revolved, America will have done in two years. That may seem an exaggerated statement, but it is nevertheless true. A year hence the United States will, if necessary, have a larger army in the field than Germany had at the beginning of the war. A year hence the American Navy will be more powerful than that of Germany. A year hence the guns, ammunition and aeroplanes manufactured by the United States in the first two years of the war will exceed the material with which Germany entered the war. It is unfortunate that one must use generalities, as a few exact figures would be more convincing, but if there is one thing the Censor hates more than another, and he has a large and varied assortment of pet dislikes, it is mathematics. To the Censor inexactness is of all virtues the most blessed, and of all sins precision is the most deadly.

You have made your mistakes, as I have so often been told, and one of the greatest-and there you took us as your model was a failure to understand that civilization no longer rides on a gun carriage but on the printing press, and

that the moving force of the world is not steam or electricity or even gasolene, but publicity. In the next war-and it may seem somewhat premature to be considering the next war before we have finished the present one; and it may be a shock to those persons to hear reference made to the next war when they are certain this is the last of all wars-but in the next war one of the most important members of the War Cabinet will be the Secretary of Psychology and Publicity, and on the staff of every corps and division commander will be an officer of the corps of Psychology and Publicity, whose functions in winning the war will be no less important than those of the medical officer, the ordnance officer and the other members of the staff. You made the mistake, and for that our example is largely responsible, of concealing what you ought to have published broadcast, and scattering to the four winds of heaven that which never should have been breathed. We are so much alike, we English and Americans, that we have the same vice of telling ourselves-although we would just as soon not have anybody else tell us-what utter incompetents we are and what a race of doddering idiots we have become; but we don't consider it a vice, and cling to it as one of our most cherished virtues. We hide our achievements, but a thousand printing presses expose our failures. We camouflage success-we understand so little of the art of psychology and publicity that we always fear we may "convey information of military value to the enemy," a lovely phrase behind which more than one incompetent has found safety-but failure is revealed stark and naked for the edification of the enemy and our own humiliation. And we seem to think we are serving ourselves and putting strength in our cause by sitting in sackcloth and ashes and advertising that our garb is the hair shirt of incompetence.

Much of the discouragement and disappointment of the past year might have been spared, and there would have been little of the impression so generally prevalent that the Government's only successful quantity production was in piling up one colossal and inexcusable blunder on the other, had those in authority spoken when silence was folly; but Governments, even the Governments of Democracies, put up a bar between themselves and the people and have a foolish idea that it does not comport with the dignity of Government to deny what the press sees fit to print or to enlighten the press so that it may have understanding.

A case in point is interesting. Some months ago a horrible discovery was made and promptly exploited. It was that the American troops in France had no heavy guns of American manufacture and were equipped by the British and French. To send troops to France without heavy guns was not only disgraceful but criminal, and the summary execution of the men responsible for this infamy would have been sanctioned by the public as the punishment fitting the crime. Now the facts are that the discovery was no surprise to the War Department and brought to it no feeling of shame, although intense regret. With the declaration of war last year the highly accomplished experts of the ordnance department, with the cold precision of science, reduced requirements and production to the passionless formula of pure mathematics and worked out an equation with X, the unknown quantity, eliminated. It would take so many days and weeks and months to build so many guns of a certain calibre, hence it was as certain as mathematics itself that by a prescribed date the ore still buried in the ground and the steel not yet molten would take the form of guns, and if military necessity demanded that troops must be in France before that date the guns would not be there. Incidentally, it may be added the British and French authorities said to the American Government what they needed were men, and if artillery was not then available they could furnish it without embarrassment; and incidentally it may also be added that the War Department's production of guns has been ahead and not behind its original schedule; but these things have been sedulously concealed from the public because the invaluable Secretary of Psychology and Publicity has not yet been nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

Both nations have the common quality of stubbornness, but it does not take the same form. We stubbornly cling to the medieval tradition that the machine is perfect but the machinist is incompetent, which explains why we turn out Governments and our favorite indoor sport is rebuilding Cabinets. You, more sensibly, scrap the machine while keeping the man. Our attitude is that of the owner who discharges his chauffeur because he gets nothing out of his car except an unholy noise and a repair bill, and then proceeds to tinker afresh; when your car gurgles and gives up the ghost in the middle of the road you buy something bigger and better, to the delight of the owner no less than that of