Inviting War to America

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Contents

CHAPTER PAGS

I. Scaring a People into Camp .... 7

II. When is a Nation "Prepared"? ... 23

Chapter I Scaring A Peoplb Into Camp

IN this country, at this moment, is being made what is perhaps the greatest attempt of its kind in all history to stampede a nation into committing an act of monumental folly. For many years, the interests that believed they could derive profit, in one way or another, from making this a great military power have been trying to make it a great military power. So long as we retained our sanity, they had but modcrate success.

We are now about to learn whether greed, masquerading as patriotism and operating upon our fears, can accomplish what thus far we have prevented greed from doing. The war in Europe has been seized by our militarists as the club with which to drive us into camp. We were more or less deaf when, in times of profound world-peace, they talked to us of love of country and tried to get us to arm. Having talked love and f aile4, they are now talking fear. We are invited to behold Belgium, as we are also admonished to beware her sad fate, and the militarists who once demanded only a great navy, now demand a great army, as well. The greatest publicitymachine that was ever set in motion is now running at toi>-speed to spread fear to the smallest and most remote hamlet in our land.

Our national history contains the record of no crisis so grave as this. Not even the secession of the Southern States was so freighted with horrible possibilities. What we are facing is the danger of militarism.

Opponents of "preparedness" cannot be convicted of lack of patriotism. The most of which they might be convicted is lack of sense. But the advocates of militarism are not so fortunately circumstanced. The militarists, tmlike their opponents, are not disinterested. The peace advocates have nothing to gain by not building a greater navy and summoning a vast army, while the militarists have much to gain if they can put through their program. However much they may protest their patriotism, the militarists cannot escape the fact that some of them would derive hundreds of millions of profits from a plunge into "preparedness," while the capitalist class as a whole craves great military establishments with which to force its way more deeply into the markets of the world. The great personal profits at stake properly place some of the militarists under suspicion. If their motives are pure, examination cannot make them rotten. If their motives arc rotten, examination may save the country from disaster.

Consider the significant fact that while the militarists declare defense to be their only purpose in ttrging "preparedness," their pretensions are belied by the kind of weapons they advocate. Their pretentions are also belied by the weapons they do not advocate. It is more than passing strange that men who talk so much about defense are so little interested in purely defensive measures and eagerly alert only when the instruments of offensive warfare arc considered.

A case in point is that of Mr. Edison. The inventive genius of Mr. Edison no man will deny. The militarists are not only willing but eager to utilize it. Mr. Edison is, indeed, the chairman of the board of scientists and inventors who have been summoned to strengthen our military machinery. But Mr. Edison is more than an inventor — ^he is a man and an American. As an American he has both interest in our country's welfare and ideas as to what should be the nature of its equipment for defense. He has expressed these ideas repeatedly and at length. He expressed them early in the summer of 191 5 in an extended interview in the New York World. That they were not hasty conclusions, as hastily abandoned, is proved by the fact that he repeated them frequently during the summer and again in October to Chicago reporters while he was en route to the Panama-Pacific Exposition. When asked to "give his idea" of what America should do toward preparedness, a Chicago despatch to the New York Times quoted him as follows:

"Well," he replied reflectively, "my idea of that may not be just the same as the idea of many people. Let me see. Consider the great amount of powder being shot off on the European battle front every day. I would build great factories in which twice as much powder as that could be manufactured. I would locate and have stored away enough material to make up the powder. Then I would not make it. I would have everything ready, so that within forty-eight hours I could go ahead turning it out.

''Then as to shells : I think it is a wasteful thing to make shells on lathes, as they make them now. We should get up shell machines for making them rapidly and in enormous quantities. Then I would grease the machines up and store th^m away with a great quantity of steel billets, ready to be worked up on short notice. In fact, I would make my preparation potential, and I would do it right away. The proposition should not be a military one at all. I don't like this military idea at all. It should be done solely on an economical basis — a business basis.

**Building these powder factories and these machines and ammunition factories wouldn't cost much. But I would keep this in mind in preparing to make stores and ammunition. I would prepare to turn out right along twice as much as is being used now on the whole European battlefield — then not make it

"Now as to actual fighting. I would rather use machines than men. A man is only a man, after all. A machine can be easily as good as twenty men. Then one man, using it, is as good as twenty men. He should be at least that good if he is an American.

"America is the greatest machine country in the world, and its people are the greatest machinists. They can, moreover, invent machinery faster and have it more efficient than any other two countries. It is a machine nation ; its battle preparation should be with machinery.

"I am down on military establishments. A standing army is not worth anything unless it is on a war footing, which is absurd. We do need an enormous ntmiber of trained officers and drill sergeants, how-

SCARING A PEOPLE INTO CAMP ii

ever. These should be trained right along, even more than apparently would be needed, then turned back into industry.

**They should be kept in touch at stated, intervals with the latest things in warfare, so that they would be ready as soon as telegraph ^nd railroad could summon them to go into active service. We can gamble on a volunteer army because the American is the quickest-minded human being in things mechanical. He could learn the use of machinery of war with sufficient despatch."

Mr. Edison, in his Qiicago interview, did not discuss the navy, but in earlier interviews he had advocated the education of a greater number of officers who should spend a certain number of weeks each year in practice aboard ship, and then return to industrial pursuits, where their scientific education should be of great value. Except during such drills, our warships, he said, should be tied up at docks, with nobody aboard except watchmen. In the hour of need officers and crew, at the tick of a telegraph instrument, should hasten to their ships.

Mr. Edison's ideas are obviously purely defensive. What reception did they receive from the administration at Washington or from the ammimition and gun manufacturers who assert that they wish only to defend the country? Mr. Edison's ideas were utterly ignored. Though Mr. Edison is the head of the government's great defensive board of scientists and inventors, his personal ideas of what should constitute our defenses were given no more consideration than as if they had come in a letter from an unknown man. Mr. Edison denounced a standing army, yet the same newspapers that contained his Chicagp interview also contained the announcement from Washington that Secretary Garrison had formulated a plan to increase the army to 540,000 men, exclusive of the National Guard of the various states.

Why is Mr. Edison, in matters of defense, so wise one moment and so unwise at others? Why do the munitions patriots regard him as wise when he is inventing things that might be used in offensive warfare and foolish when he is discussing defensive measures that could not be used for offense?

If it be assimied that the munitions patriots are frauds and that they and the other capitalists of this coimtry are trying to frighten us into filling their pockets with money, the reasons for the treatment of Mr. Edison's suggestions for defense become plain.

If the munition patriots are frauds, they would naturally oppose Mr. Edison's plan to prepare to malce twice as much ammunition as is being used in Europe — ^''and then not make it." If such great factories were to be built, raw materials assembled, then the machinery greased so it would not rust and the doors locked, obviously the government would have to build the factories and manufacture its own munitions of war, since private individuals would hot care to build plants and lock them up, perhaps for twenty years or more. If the mimitions patriots arc mere grafters in search of loot from the public treasury, they would naturally withhold approval from any plan that, if in effect, would cut off their loot But if the munitions patriots are really patriots, and if they really believe the country is in danger of attack, why should they withhold approval from a plan that, if in effect, would give at the time of need the maximum amount of ammunition at the minimum cost?

It is such fact$ as these that the American people must not alone consider but correctly appraise if they are to avert national disaster by giving the right answer to the question as to whether we shall proceed to become a heavily armed nation. If we were in danger and only more defenses could save us, we should have more defenses. If we are in danger, why is it that the men who are shrieking so loudly of our peril are so languidly interested in purely defensive measures that are also without graft for private individuals ?

Either the danger is less than they say it is, or their desire for personal profit is so great that it overshadows their patriotism.

One or the other of these possibilities is a fact. No submarine was ever more tightly caught in a; steel net than these gentlemen are caught in this reasoning. They cannot have their patriotism and eat it too. If they love their country, they will not try to pick its bones. If they believe it is in danger they will not stand in the way of its defense at the least possible cost. If they are mere grafters who, for their private profit, are trying to frighten the people into consenting to militarism, they will probably continue to do as they have long done and are doing.

Having in mind the success of the Germans, for more than a year, in standing off the entire British navy with mines and submarines scattered along the German coast, I once ventured to suggest the advisability of protecting our own coasts with such instruments, instead of with dreadnoughts. The ideai seemed to me to be worthy of consideration, not alone because German mines have proved so successful, but for the further reason that mines planted in home waters and exploded from shore by electric current, are not a menace to any nation that remains at home, nor would the laying of mines by one nation cause any other nation, in self-defense, to increase either its fleet or the extent of its mine-fields. Mr. Finly H^ Gray, a member of the House Committee on Naval Affairs, after reading the article, kindly sent me a transcript of certain official testimony in which Admirals Fiske and Fletcher, in reply to Mr. Gray's questions, had admitted that with mines, submarines and land guns, the Panama Canal, with no American ship present, could be held against the largest naval force that could be sent against it. After the publication of these facts, one of the Washington newspaper correspondents went to the Navy Department to ask why mines, supplemented by submarines, were not better defensive weapons than dreadnoughts. Secretary Daniels was not at the department when the correspondent called, so the question was put to Assistant Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt I quote from the report of the correspondent :

"Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt said that the defense of tihe entire coast of the United States by means of mines would be impracticable. When his attention was called to the testimony of Admirals Fletcher and Fiske with regard to the Panama Canal, Mr. Roosevelt said that while a harbor could be completely protected by mines and coast defense guns, it would not be possible to defend a long coast line in that way. He said that in the event of war, an enemy desiring to capture or destroy the canal would naturally make a landing at some part ;of the coast not belonging to the United States, say

Costa Rica or Panama, and would march thence to the canal.

"In regard to mining the Atlantic coast, Mr. Roosevelt said that to be effective, mines must be laid fifty feet apart. One could easily make a calculation, he said, as to the number of mines that would be required to lay only one line along the Atlantic coast. In practise, several lines would have to be laid, and Mr. Roosevelt said the work would take years. Ocean currents, winds and other natural conditions, he said, would make it very difficult to keep mines at certain places on the coast.'*

Mr. Roosevelt's interview is reproduced here to show how the desire of the militarists for weapons with which offensive warfare can be waged is powerfully reenforced by the conservatism of the men who stand high in our navy. These charges lie, for the most part, against the professional men in the navy, one of whom I shall soon use as an illustration, but for the present let us consider Mr. Roosevelt, who speaks with all the stolid obstinacy of a sea-dog, though he is but 33 years old, was educated to be a lawyer, and a few years ago was nothing but rather a useless member of the New York legislature. Mr. Roosevelt is a member of the Army and Navy and the Metropolitan clubs in Washington, one of which, as its name indicates, is a professional fighting men's club, where only orthodox ideas with regard to military measures and weapons are ever heard, and the other is an ultra-exclusive social club which, in large part, is composed of, or at any rate seasoned with, high military personages from both the army and the navy. So, plainly, all that Mr. Roosevelt knows about naval defense matters, if he knows anything, he has picked up around Washington during the last year or two, from men whom he is now parroting. He is of momentary importance only because he is functioning as a parrot.

Let us first consider Mr. Roosevelt's statement that mines, in order to be effective, "must be laid fifty feet apart,'' that *'one could easily make a calculation as to the number of mines that would be required to lay only one line along the Atlantic Coast" and that "in practise," several lines would be required.

The cost of a mine containing approximately 500 pounds of gun-cotton— enough to blow up the largest warship that ever was made — ^is $200.

If such mines were to be laid fifty feet apart, 106 mines would be required to lay a single line a mile long. If three rows were laid, side by side, the mines being so placed as to leave a minimum opening between any two of approximately eight feet, the number of mines required to the mile would be

318.

To put three rows of mines along 2,000 miles of

coast would require 636,000 mines which, at $200

If the cost of anchoring each mine ten feet below the keel of the deepest-draught vessel were equal to the cost of the mine itself (and that seems a generous figure), the cost of laying the mines would be $127,- 200,000 more.

The total cost of putting three rows of mines along 2,000 miles of coast would therefore be $254,400,000.

The administration, it is announced, will this year ask for a naval appropriation of $246,000,000, and during the next five years it is planned to expend for new fighting craft $500,000,000 in addition to the cost n of maintenance of the present fleet, which will amount to $700,000,000 more.

For this enormous sum — one billion, two hundred millions — we shall have paid the regular running expenses of our fleet and added to it ten dreadnoughts at $18,000,000 each, with an appropriate number of supplementary craft.

The same amount of money would put six rows of mines along 4,000 miles of coast. The navy we shall have five years hence, if the present program be carried out, will still be smaller than the British navy and, if Germany should take a building spurt, might be little or no larger than the German navy. With which kind of defense should we feel most nearly safe — s, navy that would be smaller than Britain's and not mudi if any larger than Germany's, or with six rows of mines along 4,000 miles of coast?

If we build the dreadnoughts, there will be precisely as much reason, five years hence, for building ten more as there is now reason for building ten. If we lay six rows of mines, they will still be there in five years and we shall not be compelled to lay six additional rows merely because Germany may have added six rows to the mine fields along her coast, or because Great Britain may have built a score of dreadnoughts.

Mr. Roosevelt said the work of laying mines "would take years." Indeed ! The work of achieving national safety by building dreadnoughts takes no time. It is mere child's play. We have been at it fifteen years, during which time our navy has cost us sixteen hundred million dollars, with the result that according to the war-alarmists, we are as far away as ever from our goal of safety.

Mr. Roosevelt also calls attention to ocean currents, winds, "and other natural conditions" which would make mines "impracticable." Of course, there are no difficulties about the dreadnought plan. Mines do not sink them, nor does the constant progress of invention make them out of date almost before the paint on them is dry. The dreadnought policy, we may gather from Mr. Roosevelt's remarks, presents no great obstacles, but "ocean currents, winds and other natural conditions" would raise the dickens with mines. Mr. Roosevelt talks like a great lawyer.

Yet Mr. Roosevelt, a few days after this interview, expressed himself in quite a different vein. On October 5, 191 5, in an article that he wrote for a syndicate of Western newspapers, he said:

"Strictly speaking, if national defense applies solely to the prevention of an armed landing on our Atlantic or Pacific coasts, no navy at all is necessary."

And then Mr. Roosevelt added :

"But if defense means also the protection of the vast interests of the United States as a world nation, its commerce, its increasing population and resources in Alaska and other territory cut off from the United States except by sea, its 'mankind benefiting* enterprises like the Ptoama Canal, then and then only does a navy become necessary. And if a navy is necessary the success of that navy against any other naval power demands that it be able to receive and repel an attack in force anywhere on the high seas within that sphere in which American interests lie."

There are the cards on the table. To get a big navy, these gentlemen try to frighten you with the specter of invasion, but what they really want is a big navy with which to safeguard their present and prospective foreign investments and force into foreign markets American goods that are needed at home and could be consumed at home if our workingmen were paid enough wages to enable them to buy the things they have made.

What Mr. Roosevelt says about the Panama Canal is true. If it were protected only by mines, submarines and land guns, it would still be open to attack through adjoining countries. But that is not the whole story about the Panama Canal. That great waterway, as every well-informed person knows, was built, not for peace but for war. It was not built to carry our merchant marine, because we have none to speak of, but to enable our navy to make a quick shift, in an emergency, from one ocean to the other. Therefore, if the Panama Canal, which was built for war, is a handicap rather than a help, it might be better for us to neutralize it and throw it open to the world, under the world's guarantee of equal treatment to all, than to try to hold it at the cost of a mighty fleet of dreadnoughts when, without the canal, we might much better defend ourselves with mines.

The American people should not forget that, in the beginning, it was intended to neutralize the canal and place no fortification near it. The fortifications, if not an afterthought, appeared to be. Perhaps we might better go back to the original plan. If the world should guarantee the use pf the canal to all on equal terms, the guarantee, of course, could not be depended upon. In the event of war, any nation that had the incentive and the power would break its pledge and close the canal to its enemy. We should be just as likely to break the pledge as would any other nation, and seek to justify it on the ground of necessity. But most of the time the canal, if neutralized, would be open to the world on equal terms, precisely as it is to-day. If our control of the Panama Canal compels us to build dreadnoughts when mines would serve us better, there is an exceedingly easy way to get rid of the Panama Canal. Neutralize it.

Mr. Roosevelt may be presumed to know, as every man of sense knows, that competitive construction of armaments leads nowhere but to the poorhouse and the grave. Nothing is ever settled because the more rapidly one nation builds, the more rapidly its potential enemies build. Representative Finly H. Gray of Indiana performed a valuable public service when at a meeting of the House Committee on Naval Affairs, he smoked Admiral Vreeland out on this point. I quote from the testimony :

''Mr. Gray. I wish to inquire of the admiral if it is not the policy of other governments to increase their navies with all the other leading powers ? 'Admiral Vreeland. It is, sir. ^Mr. Gray. What would be the advantage to us or any other powers if the navies were increased equally by all the nations of the world ? Would there be any advantage to us or to any other power ?

"Admiral Vreeland. Not if you mean in the same ratio.

"Mr. Gray. Would not the same grounds exist after an increase for a further increase?

"Admiral Vreeland. It would seem so.

"Mr. Gray. There would be no advantage gained by any nation, then. How long could that be maintained, that even increase, and what advantage would it be to any nation ?

"Admiral Vreeland. If it continues to increase.

it the poorer nation will eventually exhaust itself, and then the other nations, the United States included, will have a free hand — I mean, be free to build in accordance with the changed conditions.

"Mr. Gray. Then it is only a question of the limit of taxation?

"Admiral Vreeland. Yes, sir."

Up to a certain point, that is quite frank. Each appropriation paves the way for another appropriation until the least strong go broke. It is at this point that the admiral becomes anything but frank. When only the strongest are left — ^which would include the United States — ^they would "have a free hand to build in accordance with the changed conditions."

Was greater nonsense ever talked? Our "free hand," at such a time, would consist in the necessity of extending ourselves to the uttermost in an attempt to outstrip our most powerful rival, with the certainty that if we should do so, two rivals whom we could not outstrip might combine against us and give us the beating of our lives. We are richer than any other nation in the world, but we are not richer than any two nations.

Yet the militarists talk of "preparedness" as if nobody but ourselves could engage in it.

The militarists are frauds. They pretend to love peace and to be concerned only with defense. The Navy League of the United States prates much of the non-aggressive character of its demand for a big navy. The League has headquarters in Washington, has a monthly magazine called The Seven Seas, and is grinding out pamphlets as rapidly as men can write them and presses can print them. One of its pamphlets is entitled "Sixty-Seven Reasons for a Strong

Navy for Defense, But Not One Reason for a Navy for Aggression."

Compare this noble sentiment with the following paragraph from the September ntmiber of the League's organ, The Seven Seas:

"In Germany, though degeneracies such as inordinate love of money and preoccupation about pain are manifest as in other Western countries, besides a great deal of anti-government talk, the iron-fisted arm of militarism remedies defects quickly enough. Hard, pitiless for the individual, it all tends, for the state, to the making of a perfect runnmg machme for the purpose of expansion, conquest, world-empire. To adopt German standards of militarism would of course be impossible among Anglo-Saxons, hut this does not minimize the fact that world-empire is the only logical and natural aim for a nation that really desires to remain a nation"

And the Navy League of the United States knows "sixty-seven reasons why we should have a strong navy for defense, but not one reason for a navy for aggression/'

CHAPTER II WHEN IS A NATION "prepared** ?

IN a military sense, when is a nation "prepared"? It may surprise some gentlemen to know that, eighteen years ago, Charles M. Schwab, now of the Bethlehem Steel Company, expressed the opinion before a Congressional committee that our navy would be "completed" in ten years! At that time, our naval appropriations were running round thirty million dollars a year. Since then, we have poured into our navy almost two thousand million dollars.

When Mr. Schwab, in 1897, predicted that our navy would be "completed" in 1907, he never dreamt of such a navy as we now have. Though he was Mr. Carnegie's head armor plate man and had an armor plate man's appetite for government contracts, he did not dare to hope for such fat pickings as have since been picked. The naval appropriation bill of 1914 took out of the people's earnings the enormous sum of $140,- 718,434. Yet, eight years after Mr. Schwab believed our navy would be "completed" and after almost two thousand million dollars have been spent, we are told that we are in a frightful state of unpreparedness !

But there is hope. Some of the same gentlemen who, eighteen years ago, told us what to do to become prepared are still with us and, as ever, are patriotically willing to tell us what to do. If we may take their word for it, all we need to do is to pour dollars into the army and navy where we used to pour dimes. Mr. Wilson's defense program contemplates the expenditure upon the army and navy, during the next five years, of more than two thousand million dollars.

Suppose the President's plan should be carried out. In five years, should we be able to say, "We are prepared" ? Might we then rest on our oars in the belief that the "completed" navy that Mr. Schwab announced for 1907 had at last come? By no means. The same reasons that account for the failure of the navy to be "completed" at the time set by Mr. Schwab would account for the failure of two thousand more millions to make us "prepared" in 1920. If we should decide to spend two thousand millions for armament during the next five years, there will be two reasons, in 1920, for spending ten thousand millions more, for every reason that is now advanced for spending two thousand millions.

The "preparedness" delusion is the most expensive luxury in which the world ever indulged. Its cost never stands still. It constantly rises in the most appalling fashion. In the days when Mr. Schwab had visions of a completed navy only ten years distant, first-class battleships could be built for two million dollars. The cost is now eighteen millions. The twenty-five million ship is coming over the horizon. Where the limit is, no one knows. All we know is that they are multiplying not only the size and the cost, but the nimiber of ships that are required. No matter how many great ships we have, we are still in danger. The naval experts — not of this country only, but of all countries — ^never have enough ships. Military experts have always been in a class by themselves. Lord Salisbury, when Prime Minister of England, had his troubles with them. Writing to Lord Cromer, in Egypt, Salisbury said, "Pay no attention to the military experts. If they had their way, they would fortify Mars to prevent an invasion from the moon." Nor are our military experts different from the British army experts with whom Lord Salisbury dealt. Given two thousand millions to spend between now and 1920, they will be able to cite most alarming circumstances to prove that we are still unprepared and should spend ten billions in the succeeding five years.