Excerpt from The American Review of Reviews, Vol. 58: An International Magazine
Of all the great nations of the world, with the single exception of China, the least military - only one year ago - was the United States. Several of the very small countries had larger and better equipped armies than ours. We had declared war against the most efficient and powerful fighting organization in the history of the world. We had not expected at first to take a part in the land fighting on the battle lines in Europe, for several reasons. To begin with, we were assured that the English, French, and Italians had an immense superiority of men on their respective fighting fronts, and that the help most needed from us was financial credit, food and supplies, the building of merchant ships, and the assistance of the American navy against submarines. This estimate of the situation was accurate enough early in the spring of last year, when we entered the war. If there had been full unity of political and military programs on the side of the Allies - if there had been anything like such centralization of war control as existed on the Teutonic side - the war could have been ended last summer, in spite of the collapse of Russia. The stupendous mistakes of the Allies in 1917 might well he politely overlooked just now but for the fact that they have compelled the United States to adopt a totally changed program, and for the further reason that a dislike of facing the truth has been a greater enemy to the Allied cause than have the armies of the Kaiser. It is necessary from this time forth to preach the wholesome gospel of seeing tilings as they are. Americans arc willing to submit to a censorship that holds in reserve necessary military information. But Americans arc no longer willing to take their news from foreign sources after it has been so contaminated for political reasons as to he wholly misleading. The mismanagement of the war in 1917 led inevitably to the disasters of the opening weeks of the campaign of 1918. The truth could no longer be hidden, and through disaster and defeat there dawned the prospect of real victory and of satisfactory peace.
So terrible have been the ravages of the war, that the only compensation to the world lay in securing the right kind of conclusions. A German victory foreshadowed at least another century of militarism and struggle. Even an Allied victory at a period earlier than 1917 meant a rearranging of empires, and the continuance of a European political system that ought to be discarded.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The American Review of Reviews, Vol. 58