[Illustration: “It was not because they knew how to fight; it was
because they meant to stay there till they died.”
Frontispiece_]
THE INVASION
OF AMERICA
A FACT STORY BASED ON THE INEXORABLE
MATHEMATICS OF WAR
BY
JULIUS W. MULLER
Author of “The A. B. C. of Preparedness.”
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
1916
Copyright, 1915
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
PREFACE
In January, 1915, Mr. G. T. Viskniskki, manager of The Wheeler
Syndicate, asked me: “Assuming that an enemy landed an army on the
American coast, what could we actually do with our actual present
resources used to their fullest possible extent?”
This story was written as the answer.
I hesitated a long time before I did it. I feared and fear still the
dangers to which the possession of military power drives Nations, and
which are particularly great in the case of a Republic. The obvious
danger that a Nation like ours if powerfully armed may be too easily
impelled to war, is great enough. But still more grave is the danger of
a deep and fatal change in our National spirit, our ideals and our
attitudes toward the world outside of our own borders.
Therefore when I did write the story I did it with no unworthy design,
and not for the sake of taking advantage of the popular interest in the
subject.
The story was written without any idea of suggesting that any Nation or
group of Nations may mean to attack us. It was written with no desire to
“scare” the people of the United States into giving thought to the army
and navy. I should hold it a sad reflection on our country to assume
that it must be aroused by terror or hatred into setting its house in
order.
I beg my readers to accept the story in this spirit. There are eight
words, uttered by one of the greatest of simple men. They are: “With
malice toward none, with charity toward all.” Let that spirit dominate
whatever this Nation may do for military Preparedness, and there will be
no danger that the Preparedness shall become Bellicosity and curse the
land.
As to the story itself, I need say only that I have tried scrupulously
to avoid twisting any fact to prove a point; and I have cited no fact,
even the most unimportant, without verifying it by reference to the
original source. The description of the method of attack by the
invading foreign armies is not based on any of the conflicting tales
that have come to us from the European scene of war. In fact, the
present war has been almost ignored. The foreign army statistics and
other facts are based on undoubtedly authoritative official and
semi-official publications issued during times of peace, on a study of
the great peace maneuvers, and on information possessed by our own
military experts.
Similarly, in treating of our own army and its situation I abstained
wholly from using any of the tempting material that has been made so
freely available since the beginning of the agitation for military
preparedness, and have used, instead, the simple and surely unbiassed
facts presented to Congress in responsible official reports before the
European War centered American interest on our own condition.
The book will demonstrate for itself that the “story element” is not
made to depend on invented battles or imagined catastrophes. Facing the
fact that war is an iron game, wherein the moves are predicated
inexorably on the possession of the material in men and appliances, the
fiction takes no liberties save in trying to present a living picture
of what such a war, falling on an army so unprepared, will be in such a
country as ours.
The technical soundness of the book is left by me to the verdict of
technical experts. The story was planned, drafted, written and rewritten
with the benefit of unusually authoritative assistance and under
technical coöperation rarely granted to books of this nature. My thanks
are due to men who gave freely of their knowledge, professional ability
and time without even asking that credit should be given to them in
return.
THE AUTHOR.
INTRODUCTION
Let us be safe rather than sorry! Every scene so graphically described
by the writer of this book will find its duplicate in the mind of the
reader who has kept himself informed of the occurrences in the European
fields of war.
In war the law of Nations, conserving the laws of humanity, is
superseded by the law of necessity which is invoked and interpreted as
to life and property by the belligerent concerned, to excuse every act
committed.
Four years of costly and exhausting Civil War found us able to mass on
the Mexican border a magnificently trained and virile army to execute
our mandate of withdrawal (under the Monroe Doctrine) of a so-called
Ruler by Divine Right and his government sustained by foreign arms. From
that task the Civil War armies of both sides, trained to look with
contempt upon obstacles hitherto regarded as insurmountable, turned and
accomplished the construction of trans-Continental railroads that would
not otherwise have been built for another generation, thus inaugurating
an era of unparalleled national development.
The war in Europe, once ended, will likewise find such virile armies
with warships and transport service comparatively unimpaired and
aggregating, as to the latter, millions of net tons.
The teaching of history shows that so long as human nature remains
unchanged, war cannot be eliminated as a factor in human affairs.
Meanwhile, and doubtless for centuries to follow, war is inevitable as a
recurrent consequence of the ceaseless operation of an inexorable law of
progress toward world unity under that ultimate governmental form that
shall approach nearest to the laws of humanity and righteousness.
As our own experience in the Spanish-American war abundantly proves,
intervening oceans lost to our command by reason of the insufficient
strength of our navy, offer no obstacles to the landing on our shore of
a first armed enemy relay sufficient to secure a gateway through which
others would rapidly follow. To this we should be able to oppose only an
available mobile force--at present little more than double the police
force which is deemed somewhat inadequate to preserve order and protect
life and property in the City of New York.
This book thus simply stages here in New England, the heart of our
industrial efficiency for war or peace, scenes the counterpart of those
occurring abroad from day to day, against the actual happening of which
in our own land there now intervenes a wholly inadequate navy and but
the skeleton of an army, as in the days of the late Thomas Nast.[1]
JOHN A. JOHNSTON,
Brigadier General U. S. Army (Resigned);
President Army League of the U. S.
Washington, D. C. November 1, 1915.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE BEGINNINGS 1
II THE COAST BOMBARDED 24
III THE LANDING 58
IV THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 100
V NEW ENGLAND’S BATTLE 135
VI THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 167
VII THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 201
VIII DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 238
IX THE CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 268
X THE PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 315
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“It Was Not Because They Knew How to Fight;
It Was Because They Meant to Stay There Till
They Died” _Frontispiece_
“Days Before, the American Fleet Had Steamed
Out of Long Island Sound” facing 14
“There Were Ships Moving Toward the Long
Island Coast as if to Threaten New York” 28
“There in Connecticut Lay the Army ... Miles
of Tents Separated by Geometrically Straight
Rows of Company Streets” 33
“Up Mounted a Hydro-Aeroplane” 46
“The Dragons of Twelve-Inch Mortars that
Squatted in Hidden Pits” 48
“Destroyers Moved Straight for the Harbor in a
Long Line” 60
“He Steered His Craft, Awash, from Behind
Fisher’s Island, at Dawn” 83
“For Miles Beyond that the Enemy’s Patrols Had
Occupied Points ...” 92
“They Flew over the Tall Municipal Building of
New York” 100
“The Efficient, Prepared, Resourceful Invader Was
Landing His Army, Not Only Without Losing a
Man, but Without Getting a Man’s Feet Wet” 109
“The Forward Turret of a Battleship Turned and
Spoke with a Great Voice” 129
“The People Had Gone out to Tear Up the Railroad
Tracks Leading into the Town” 152
“Entirely Raw Volunteers, Who Had Everything
to Learn” 160
“There Had Been Firing from Mill-Buildings,
Which Had Been Destroyed for Punishment” 183
“The Quick Searchlights Caught the Ships” 208
“A Landing Was Attempted in Greater Force,
with the Assistance of a Destroyer Division Lying
Close to the Beach” 213
“The Country-Club Had Been Turned into a
Brigade Headquarters” 243
“The Army of Madmen Went Forward to the Connecticut
River to Hold the Western Bank” 260
“The Only Activity that Remained in Full Progress
Was the Activity of the Bulletin-Boards” 291
“The Big Guns Behind Them Made No Despicable
Sentinels” 331
MAPS
The Landing of the Enemy Forces 123
Boston Harbor 201
The Attack on the New York Defences 300
THE INVASION OF AMERICA
I
THE BEGINNINGS
“Washington, D. C., March 20.--The President, as Commander-in-Chief of
the Army and Navy, has ordered a grand joint maneuver of the fleet, the
regular army and the Organized Militia (National Guard) of Divisions 5,
6, 7, and 8, comprising New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.”
No comment from official circles accompanied this dispatch when it was
printed in the newspapers. None was needed. Ever since the Great
Coalition had been formed, America had faced the probability of war.
In the White House there was a conference of the Cabinet, attended by
the Chief of Staff of the United States Army and the Admiral who was
President of the General Board of the Navy.
“The regular troops are moving,” reported the Chief of Staff. “Every
last man of ’em is on the way east.” He laughed grimly. “I take no
credit for it. The trains of the country can do it without changing a
schedule. Do you know, gentlemen, that even the smaller roads often
handle an excursion crowd as big as this whole army of ours?”[2]
The Secretary of War shrugged his shoulders. “Despite all the talk of
recent years, despite all our official reports, I doubt if the people
realize it.”
“Make them!” said the President. “Drive it home to them, before war is
brought to our coasts.” He turned to the two chiefs of staff. “Give the
newspapers a statement about the ‘maneuvers’ that will give the public
the cold truth.”
“The fleet,” said the Admiral to the newspaper correspondents an hour
later, “is assumed to be an enemy fleet too powerful for opposition. It
will attempt to land at least 100,000 fighting forces somewhere on the
Atlantic Coast. It is conceded that an actual enemy planning invasion
would not come with less than that number. It is conceded also that a
sufficiently powerful fleet can transport that number, and more, safely
across the ocean. The Navy, further, concedes the landing.”[3]
_What Our Harbor Defenses Cannot Prevent_
“But our coast defenses, Admiral!” spoke the correspondent of a Boston
newspaper. “We’ve been told that those affairs with their monster
12-inch rifled steel cannon and their 12-inch mortar batteries, and
mines and things, are as powerful as any in the world, and can stand off
any fleet!”
“They are not coast defenses, sir,” answered the Chief of Staff. “They
are harbor defenses. They can stop warships from entering our great
harbors. They cannot prevent an enemy from landing on the coast out of
their range. And on the Atlantic Coast of the United States there are
hundreds of miles of utterly undefended beach where any number of men
can land as easily as if they were trippers landing for a picnic. All
those miles of shore, and all the country behind them, lie as open to
invasion,” he held out his hand, “as this.”
“Then what’s the use of them?”
“They furnish a protected harbor within which our own navy could take
refuge if defeated or scattered,” said the Admiral. “They make our
protected cities absolutely secure against a purely naval attack. No
navy could readily pass the defenses, and probably none would venture so
close as even to bombard them seriously. Certainly no fleet could
bombard the cities behind them.
“Therefore,” he continued, “if an enemy wishes to bring war to us, he
must land an army of invasion. Our harbor defenses force him to do that;
but--having forced him to bring the army, their function ceases. They
cannot prevent him from landing it. We have to do that with OUR army.”
“And could you stop him, or is that a military secret?” asked one of the
party. He did it tentatively. He had been a war correspondent with
foreign armies, and he did not expect a reply.
_31,000 Men--Our Actual Mobile Army_
“My dear boy,” answered the Chief of Staff promptly, “there probably
isn’t a General Staff in the world that doesn’t know all about us, to
the last shoe on the last army mule. We’ve got 88,000 men in the regular
army, officers and privates.[4] Of these, you may count out 19,000. They
are non-combatants--cooks, hospital staffs, teamsters, armorers,
blacksmiths, and all the other odds and ends that an army must have, but
can’t use for fighting. Now, cut out another 21,000 men. Those are
fighting men, but they’re not here. They’re in Panama, Hawaii, the
Philippines, China and Alaska--and we wish that we had about three times
as many there, especially in Panama. How much does that leave?
Forty-eight thousand? Very well. That’s what we’ve got here at home. But
you’ll please count out another 17,000. They’re in the Coast Artillery,
and have to man the harbor defenses of which we’ve been talking. Now
you’ve got our mobile army--the actual force that we can put into the
field and move around. Thirty-one thousand men.”
“A pretty straight tip,” agreed the Washington correspondents when they
left the War Department. And as a straight tip they passed it on to
their readers. So the Nation read the next morning how their army was
being made ready. They read how four companies of one infantry regiment
were gathered from Fort Lawton in Washington and another four companies
from Fort Missoula in Montana. They read how still four other companies
of the same regiment were at Madison Barracks in New York State.[5]
Their fifth Cavalry regiment, they learned, was being assembled like a
picture puzzle by sending to Fort Myer, Virginia, for four troops of it,
to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, for four more troops and a machine-gun
platoon, and to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for the remaining four troops
needed to form a full regiment.
There was field artillery whose component units were scattered, guns,
horses and men, from the Vermont line to the Rio Grande. There were
signal troops in Alaska, Texas, the Philippines and Panama.
This was no such mobilization as that giant mobilization in Europe when
a continent had stood still for days and nights while the soldiers
moved to their appointed places. So far scattered was the American army,
so small were its units, that only a few civilians here and there could
have noticed that troops were being moved at all.
More than one un-military citizen, looking over his newspaper that
morning, cursed the politics that had maintained the absurd, worthless,
wasteful army posts, and cursed himself for having paid no heed in the
years when thoughtful men had called on him and his fellows to demand a
change.
More than one citizen, when he left his house to go to his accustomed
work, looked up at the sky and wondered, with a sinking heart, how soon
it would seem black with war.
_A Dreadnaught For Every Effective American Ship_
It was a peaceful, soft sky, with baby clouds sleeping on its bland,
blue arch. It radiated a tranquil warmth of coming spring; and under it
the Atlantic Ocean lay equally peaceful, equally soft, equally tranquil.
Yet even as the people of America were taking up the day’s work, under
that soft, tranquil sea a message was darting through the encrusted
cables that swept away all peace.
Before noon, from sea to sea and from lakes to gulf, from the valley of
the Hudson to the sierras of the Rockies, from Jupiter Inlet to the
Philippines, ran the silent alarm of the telegraph that the Great
Coalition had declared War!
Forty-eight hours later the combined battle-fleet of the four Nations
put to sea with its army transports, bound for the American coast.[6]
The United States learned of its departure before its rear-guard had
well cleared the land. The news did not come from American spies. It
came from the Coalition itself.
War, the Chameleon, as Clausewitz called it, was presenting a new aspect
of its unexpected phases. Not a cable had been cut following the
declaration of war; and now the submarine cables and the wireless began
to bring official news from the enemy--news addressed not to the
American government, but to the American people.
It was news that told of an invulnerable fleet carrying more than a
thousand rifled cannon of the largest caliber ever borne by ships in all
the world. It told of enough battleships alone (and named them) to match
the Republic’s fleet with a dreadnaught for every effective American
ship of any kind.[7]
“Clever!” said the Secretary of State to the President. “It is
Terrorism.”
“Don’t you think that you’d better reconsider your idea of letting this
go through?” asked the Secretary of War. “It’s pretty dangerous stuff.”
“It’s the Nation’s War,” answered the President. “Will it demoralize our
people to know the truth, even under the guise of terrorism? Do you know
in whose hands I’m going to leave that question?”
“I can’t guess,” said the Secretary.
“In the hands of the newspapers,” replied the President.
The newspapers did not require to be told that the purpose of this novel
news service from the enemy was Terrorism.
They answered Terrorism by Printing The News.
_The Battle That Was Decided Years Before_
Then the sea-coast cities began to call to Washington. By telegraph and
telephone they demanded protection. It was a chorus from Maine to
Georgia. Into the White House thronged the Congressmen.
“Defend us! Defend our people! Defend our towns!” said they.[8]
“We cannot do it!” said the Chief of Staff. “No wit of man can guess at
what point of many hundred miles the enemy will strike. He may land on
the New Jersey coast to take Philadelphia. He may land on Long Island to
march at New York. He may strike at Boston. He may land between Boston
and New York, on the Rhode Island or Massachusetts coasts, and keep us
guessing whether he’ll turn west to New York or east to Boston. He may
even strike for both at once, from there.”
“Then why not put men into each place to protect it?” demanded a
Congressman. “Are these great cities to be left wide open?”
“You know how many regulars we’ve got. Do you know how many effective
men we’ve pulled together by calling out those eastern divisions of
organized militia? Their enrolled strength is 50,000 men. Their actual
active strength as shown by attendance figures has been only about 30
per cent. of that; but we were lucky.[9] This danger has brought out
all, probably, that were able to come. Still, there are less than 30,000
men; and not quite half of those have had good field training. We need
them. We need them so badly that we’re putting them all in the first
line. But it’s a little bit like--well, it’s murder.”
“Then you mean to say--!” The Congressman was aghast.
“I mean to say,” answered the Chief of Staff, with a set face, “that the
army is going to take what it has, and do its best. But it’s going to do
it in its own way. No enemy will dream of landing an invading army
unless it is decisively, over-poweringly superior to our own. Now,
Congressman, the only way for an inferior army to accomplish anything
is to refuse battle until the chances are as favorable as they can be
made. The inferior force must retire before a superior. It must force
the invader to follow till he is weakened by steadily lengthening lines
of communications. His difficulties of food-and ammunition-transport
grow. He becomes involved in strange terrain. Last but not least, he
gets more and more deeply into a land filled with a hostile population.
But if we must defend a specific place at all hazards, then we must
stand and give battle--well, it will be only one battle.”
“You mean--?”
“I mean that such a battle is decided already. It was decided years
ago--when the country refused to prepare.”
“Good God, man!” The Congressman wiped his forehead with a trembling,
fat hand. “I can’t go back and tell my people that.”
“You’d better not,” said the General, grimly.
_No Men to Defend the Harbor Works_
The unhappy man, and other unhappy men like him, went back to their
constituencies knowing that now no campaign oratory would serve. Soften
the news they must, and would; but they were the bearers of ill tidings,
and they knew what comes to these.
The stricken cities heard. From all the great coast with its piled gold
and silver, there arose a cry. Men shook their fists and cursed the
machinery of politics that had worked through the blind years to hinder,
to deceive and to waste. The Pork Barrel ceased all at once to be the
great American joke.
“Throw men into our harbor defenses!” cried the cities of the coast.
“Hold them! Hold them!”
“We have seventeen thousand trained regulars and 5,000 militia more or
less experienced to handle these complex giants,” answered the Army,
implacably. “There are 1,184 guns and mortars to handle. It leaves no
men to defend the works. To throw the mobile army or any part of it into
the defenses for mere protection is only to lock them up. The mobile
army must defend the defenses from outside. If it cannot do it, they
fall.”[10]
“Where is the mobile army?” cried the cities. “Send it here!” clamored
each city.
There was no reply. Somewhere behind the Atlantic Coast lay the mobile
army, silent.
The cities stared to sea. They listened for sounds from the sea. That
serving ocean that had made them rich and great, had become suddenly
terrible, a secret place where there brooded wrath. Every day great
multitudes, stirred by helpless, vague impulse, moved toward the
waterfronts and gazed down the harbors. Every rumble of blasts or heavy
vehicle, every sudden great noise, startled the cities into a quick:
“Listen! Cannons!”
_The News the Fleet Sent Back_
“Where is the fleet?” The question ran from Maine to Florida, till it,
too, became one great clamor, storming at the White House. Again there
was no answer.
Days before, the American fleet had steamed out of the eastern end of
Long Island Sound. The tall, gray dreadnaughts and armored cruisers,
each with its circling, savage brood of destroyers; light cruisers,
torpedo boats,
[Illustration: “Days before, the American fleet had steamed out of Long
Island Sound.”]
sea-going submarines, hospital ships, auxiliaries and colliers, one by
one they had passed into the open sea and vanished.
But though no man knew where it was, from its unknown place it spoke by
wireless to Washington, and through Washington to the Nation.
From “somewhere between the Virginia Capes and the northern end of the
Bahama Islands” where it lay, it had sent out its feelers across the sea
toward the on-coming foe--swift gray feelers whose tall skeleton
fire-control tops were white with watching sailors. And so, presently,
between the enemy and the American coast there lay a line of relays to
catch the news and pass it on to the Nation and its fleet.
More than a hundred miles of sea, said the news, were covered by the
advancing fleet. It was a hundred miles of steel forts; and outside of
them, dashing back and forth in ceaseless patrol, were the lighter and
faster craft, consisting of destroyers and small, swift cruisers.
The scout cruiser _Birmingham_ had spied ships inside even the inner
line. But they were not transports. They were still warships. The troop
transports were so far within all the protective cordons that the
American scouts, lying far along the horizon, could not even sight their
masts.
The enemy fleet scarcely made an attempt to attack the spying vessels.
It seemed almost that the enormous mass was too insolently sure of its
power to trouble about the scouts.
So, with watching cruisers and destroyers hanging to its sides day and
night, the invaders’ armada moved westward as steady as a lifeless,
wicked machine. Never varying their distances or relative positions,
never falling out of line, never altering their speed of 14 knots, the
dreadnaughts and battle-cruisers guarded their precious transports,
trusting to their outer cordon to keep off all attacks. And the outer
cordon held true.
It did not move slowly, majestically, like the armored line. Incessantly
it swept back and forth, and in and out, patrolling the sea to a
distance so far from the battle-ships that the American scouts rarely
could approach nearer than to sight, from their own tops, the tops of
the dreadnaughts.
_The Message From the Kearsarge_
As the enemy covered the sea, so he filled the air. Constantly, all day
long, floating and drifting with the soft white clouds far beyond the
farthest extent of the cordon, his aeroplanes surveyed the water-world.
And all day long, and all night long, the ships’ wireless tore the air.
The American wireless, too, played forth its electric waves of air night
and day. From daring scouts to relay-ships, and from relay-ships to
hidden fleet and to waiting Nation, went the story out of the far sea.
The American millions knew the progress of the coming enemy as if the
fleet were an army moving along a populous highway of the land.
The Nation watched the implacable, remorseless advance breathlessly,
apprehensively; but behind its apprehension there was hope. “Surely,
surely,” men said to each other, “our splendid sailors will get at
them!”
Accustomed by its history to expect thrilling deeds of dash and
enterprise that should wrest success out of disaster, the United States
waited for The Deed.
It came. Out of the far Atlantic came the story. It came from the
battle-ship _Kearsarge_ and went to the _Chester_, it was passed on by
the _Chester_ and picked up by the _Tacoma_, and the _Tacoma_ tossed it
into the air and sent it to the coast.
“Engaged,” said the _Kearsarge_, “have--sunk,” and then there came a
break in the message. “Destroyer--light--cruiser--” spoke the wireless
again, and stopped. “Armored--cruiser,” spoke the wireless again in half
an hour. “Port--beam--disabled--withdrawing--pre-dreadnaught--abaft-
-starboard--beam--firing--14,000--yards--dreadnaught--port beam--”
Again there came an abrupt check to the wireless.
To the men on the fleet “somewhere off the Virginia Capes,” and to the
men in newspaper offices from ocean to ocean, it was as if they were
witnessing the fight. Indeed, the presses had some of it printed and on
the streets before the battle-ship’s story was done.
“Dreadnaught--” started the wireless again. “17,000--yards--am
struck--after--gun--upper--turret--am
struck--forward--gun--lower--turret--dismounted--am
struck--after--gun--lower--turret--”
The air fell silent. It was the last word from the _Kearsarge_.
_The Inevitable Order to an Inferior Fleet_
“As a man,” said the Admiral that night to the correspondents who
pressed him for an interview, “I am glad that the _Kearsarge_ did it. As
Admiral, I can only say that her destruction, old though she was, is a
heavy loss to us that would not be balanced even if, besides the ships
she sank, she had sunk both the dreadnaughts. We have ordered the fleet
to keep itself intact.”
“Does that mean that there are to be no raids?”
“It cannot be done,” answered the Admiral. “With sufficient machinery,
heroism can do great deeds to-day, as ever. Without the machinery, it
can only go down, singing.[11] The enemy transports are within an
inmost line of great ships. At the margin of their zone of fire is
another armored line of dreadnaughts. And the outer cordon is at the
margin of that zone of fire. Thus one of our raiding ships would have to
break through at least thirty miles, every inch of it under fire from
half a dozen ships. It cannot be done. This enemy fleet could be broken
only by brute force. To attack in force with our inferior fleet would
mean simply that we should smash ourselves against him as unavailingly
as if we smashed ourselves full speed ahead against a rocky coast.”
“But surely at night our ships can dash in!” insisted the public,
reluctant to give up romantic hopes. “Wait--and some night you will
see!”
Then there came a wireless relayed from the _Conyngham_, biggest and
swiftest of the American destroyer divisions. She had circled the whole
enemy fleet, flying around it through days and nights at the full speed
of her thirty knots. Her message told why there could be no raids at
night.
There was no night. All the sea, ran the _Conyngham’s_ tale, was lit
like a flaming city. The outer cordon played its search-lights far
toward each horizon. It played other lights inward, toward its own
battle-ships. And the line of battle-ships in turn, kept mighty
searchlights, bow and stern, steadily on their transports.
Each transport had its guard, whose bright surveillance never shifted,
never wavered, from dusk to dawn. These sentinel dreadnaughts never
turned a search-light to sweep the surrounding sea. They held their
transports steadily in the white glare.
There was not an inch of ocean within their lines that was not ablaze. A
fragment of driftwood could not have floated into that vivid sea without
being detected by a hundred eyes.
_The Invader Off the Coast_
Now the news came fast and faster, as the fleet, and its hovering spies,
came nearer.
The _Alabama_, sister-ship to the _Kearsarge_, by haphazard fortune got
between two enemy scouts and the main fleet, and accomplished by sudden
attack what she never could have accomplished by speed. She sank them
within twenty minutes, and returned without injury. It was 13-inch guns
against 8-inch, and the story was as it always is. The inferior enemy
ships went down like pasteboard, under the fire of the turret guns on
the American vessel.
On the same day, almost at the same hour, the scout cruiser
_Birmingham_, at the other end of the enemy line, sent report that the
destroyer _Bainbridge_, tiniest of the division, had driven her two
18-inch torpedoes home and sunk an armored cruiser that had fallen out
of line to repair some unknown injury to its machinery. The _Bainbridge_
did not tell its own story. The little boat and her men were blasted
into nothing within ten minutes by a battle-cruiser that had turned to
protect her mate.
These disasters, that might have been appalling to a lesser sea-power,
left the great navy of the Coalition unshaken. Steadily, imperturbably,
it kept on its way.
So there came the day when coasters and small craft sped wildly into the
shelter of Boston and New York Harbors, into Long Island Sound and into
the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays. They had seen the enemy.
Next morning, in a gray, transparent, peaceful April dawn, watchers on
the coast, gazing across the empty, flat Atlantic, to the immense
half-circle of the horizon, saw innumerable tiny objects just sticking
up above the rim of the sea. Through the glass they seemed to be little
perches of skeleton iron built in the deep ocean.
Set at beautifully precise distances apart, they dotted the sharply
outlined edge of water and sky, north and south, far beyond vision.
Innocent and quiet they appeared, as they stood there, growing slowly,
very slowly, up out of the far sea.
And the roaring presses, spouting forth extra editions east, west, north
and south, told the United States of America:
INVADER APPEARS OFF AMERICAN COAST
II
THE COAST BOMBARDED
Never, even in after years, was it determined whence the news of the
enemy ships came first. Almost as easily might a land invaded by locusts
have decided what eye first saw the coming cloud, or at what precise
spot.
“Warship on horizon. Standing in. Slowly.” It came from the keeper of
Peaked Hill Bar Life-Saving Station at the far end of Cape Cod’s
sweeping sand-arm. From the crest of the Navesink Highlands, standing
steep out of the Atlantic at New York’s harbor entrance, men saw ships.
On the high place their eyes commanded a view eighteen miles out to sea.
At that extreme distance were the tops of fighting craft, lying safely
outside of the zone of fire from the big guns in Sandy Hook’s
harbor-defenses.
From his lantern 163 feet high the lighthouse keeper of Barnegat on the
New Jersey coast, forty miles south of the Navesink, saw tops above his
horizon. “Ships standing off here,” came the word from Cape Ann, north
of Boston.
Philadelphia heard from Absecon Light and cried to Washington that the
enemy was preparing to land on its coast. Boston cried to Washington for
ships and men. New York telegraphed and telegraphed again and sent
delegations on a special train.
Washington faced the clamor, the appeals half-beseeching and
half-furious, with a great stern aspect, new in a Republic wherein the
rulers are the servants who must heed public demands. This coming
invasion was unprovoked. The Administration needed no party behind it
now; for it knew that this was to be a fight for life, and that only the
sword could decide. And it had given the sword to the army and navy
without conditions.
“It is the least we can do,” the President had said. “Long ago they
warned the Nation. The Nation would not give them the tools they needed.
Now that there is nothing left except to do their best, they shall be
left to do it in their own way.”
So the word went abroad among the politicians: “The army and navy have
the bit in their teeth.” And the politicians, once so powerful, went
helplessly to the Departments, to ask what they might tell their people.
“Tell them,” said the Admiral, “that there is nothing to say--yet. Here!
We are sending out a bulletin.” He passed it over.
_The Sea Strategy an Invader Would Employ_
“The enemy fleet,” said the bulletin, “has expanded its line enormously
to threaten many far separated points simultaneously, and thus mask its
actual design for landing. Our ships and air scouts, and the army air
scouts, are trying to penetrate the screen of cruisers, destroyers and
enemy air-craft to find the real fleet with the convoys.”
“But is this not a chance for the navy to attack the scattered enemy
ships?” asked one.
“Opportunities may occur,” answered the Admiral. “But the business of
our fleet is to keep itself in battle formation.”[12]
The sea-coast cities read the bulletin and held their breath. Through
their streets thundered their traffic, as in peace. But the exchanges
were closed--had closed half an hour after opening, in panic. Even in
that short time, a thousand fortunes had been destroyed: and men passing
outside had heard from within a vast noise of cries and shrieks as of
animals.
The banks were closing. The streets leading to the railroad stations
from the financial centers were clogged by slowly moving but madly
crowding automobiles and cabs and trucks. Everything on wheels had been
pressed into service. On one open truck, guarded by half a dozen men who
showed automatic pistols ostentatiously, were bags of gold. The United
States sub-Treasuries were being emptied. Men tore at securities in
their safe-deposit vaults and stuffed them into valises, and ran. The
treasure of the cities was being sent inland.
In front of the newspaper offices stood the citizens. They stood so
closely crowded that there was no passage through those parts of the
towns. Their throngs were so great that from their outskirts only those
could read the announcements who were armed with field glasses. These
fortunate ones told the news as it appeared: and it was repeated to the
crowds in the side-streets, who packed the roads from house-edge to
edge.
All these great crowds were utterly silent. There was no sound from
them, except for the voices of those who passed the news on. A man
looking from a high window in a newspaper office suddenly stepped back,
with a choking in his throat. “It is--it is,” he said, and choked again,
“as if they were waiting for the end of the world.”
_A Strategical Shelling of the Coast_
Incessantly the bulletins spoke. Lighthouses, coast-guards, patrols,
harbor defenses, ships, air-scouts wirelessed their reports to
Washington, and Washington flung it swiftly through the land.
Nantucket had seen ships. There were ships moving toward the Long Island
coast as if to threaten New York. Atlantic City on the southern New
Jersey coast, and Rockport in New England sent out warning.
It was a still, warm morning, heavy with the soft, humid air that early
spring lays on the cities of the sea. There was no breeze, except for a
languorous breathing from the distant
[Illustration: “There were ships moving toward the Long Island Coast as
if to threaten New York.”]
ocean, that stole up the harbors and scarcely moved the air. Suddenly
that brooding, heavy air was shaken. One! Two! Three!
Afterward, when men compared the time, they knew that it was heard at
the same instant at New York and Boston, and all the stretches of coast
between them and beyond. Even in that moment of fear, there were
thousands who instinctively looked at their watches and timed it. It was
exactly half-past ten when the first shot sounded. Very regularly,
almost somnolently, came the far-off shocks through the air. There were
half-minute intervals between them, quite exact.
The last boom was heard at eleven. Long before that the bulletins had
begun to tell that ships were shelling the coast. Duxbury Beach near
Boston was being shelled. Long Branch and Asbury Park were bombarded.
Amagansett on Long Island was in flames.
“It has stopped,” said the bulletins, then, “The ships have ceased
firing.”
Then there came news from the harbor defenses. Two ships, said Plum
Island at the east end of Long Island Sound, had engaged the defenses at
long range without effect. A ship had come in east of Coney Island,
just outside of the zone of fire from Sandy Hook, reported Fort
Hamilton, and dropped shells into Brooklyn’s suburbs.
Now the crowds were silent no longer. Long years afterward, old men told
how on that still April morning they were in quiet places on the
outskirts of the great cities, and heard from there a great, strange
sound as of a vast æolian harp. It was the noise of multitudes, risen.
They stormed their City Halls, roaring for soldiers. They tried to rush
their armories, demanding weapons. To Washington flashed the dreaded
news of Mobs. “Troops must be sent at once,” said the cities.
The old Chief of Staff, with “the bit in his teeth,” dropped the
dispatches on the floor. “Let ’em handle their own mobs,” said he.
_Not Enough Men to Guard Even the Water Supply of New York and Boston_
“Handle your own mobs!” he said again, to The Boss from New York, who
appeared with a flaming face.
But The Boss had the bit in his teeth, too. Those dispatches, and long
distance telephone messages from close lieutenants, had filled him with
a dread that was bigger than the new-born dread of the old soldier.
“I’ve broken bigger men than you!” he roared. “A thousand times bigger!
Once and for the last time, are you going to send the army to protect
us?”
“Once, and for the last time,” said the General, quietly, “no!”
The Boss looked at him. His eyes glared. Then, all at once, he saw that
in the General’s face that gave him a big, new, overwhelming knowledge.
He saw that the new word “NO” had been born in Washington; and that he
and his henceforth would have to admit that it meant “NO.”
It hit him like a club. Something came from his throat that was not a
sob, yet strangely like one. “Then what--then--are we going to
everlasting smash?”
“Listen,” said the General, gravely calm as in the beginning. He laid
his hand on the politician’s shoulder. “We have swept together the stuff
that you and your kind gave us in these past years. Up there,” he
pointed north, “in Connecticut, our officers have been fighting to make
an army of it--of battalions that have no regiments, of divisions that
are not divisions, of riflemen who never learned to shoot and of cavalry
that never learned to maneuver. But even if all that mess were not a
mess--if all these young men were fit to fight in the battle line this
moment, there are not enough of them to guard even the water-supply of
New York and Boston.”[13]
“Then you won’t put any men into the city?”
“To defend a city from within is an act of desperation, no matter how
big one’s army is,” said the General. “The place to defend a city is as
far away from it as you can meet the enemy.”
“But the newspapers say that you haven’t men enough to stop him.” The
Boss had dismissed all attempt to bluster. “Isn’t there a chance?”
“Not if he comes in the force we expect--and he will be sure to come
so.” The General did not endeavor to soften his statement. He spoke
sharp and short, “And remember--the cities are not the United States.
Our business is to keep the army in the field for the Union, not for New
York or Boston or even Washington.
[Illustration: “There in Connecticut lay the Army.... Miles of tents
separated by geometrically straight rows of Company streets.”]
There is a price to be paid--and perhaps the cities must pay it.”
“And you’ll pay the price, too,” muttered the Chief of Staff, looking
northward toward New England from his window after the politician had
gone. “You’re paying it now, with sweat and nerves; and you’ll pay it in
lives.”
_A Militia That Cannot Shoot_
There, in Connecticut, lay the army, looking formidable enough.
Radiating in beautiful precision from a central point, were miles of
tents separated by geometrically straight rows of company streets. Over
all the great space, afoot and horseback, in companies and troops, in
squadrons and battalions, moved spruce, agile figures in the trim
efficient campaign dress of the American soldier. Glossy, bright flags
floated everywhere. The sweet bugles sang.
It would have seemed a very harmonious, solidly welded whole, that army,
to any layman who could have had a bird’s eye view of its business-like
assembly, its great parks of artillery, its full corrals of mounts, its
endless rows of tents and equipage and its enormous trains of transport
vehicles and ambulances.
But at one end of that great, orderly, formidable camp were hordes of
organized militia firing at targets. With the enemy on the coast, these
men were still being broken in to shoot--not to become sharp-shooters,
but to qualify merely as second-class marksmen that they might at least
learn enough about the use of their rifles to be not entirely useless in
battle. Ever since the militia of the coast States had come in,
small-arms experts of the army had been clutching greedily at every bit
of daylight, to teach 14,000 men how to shoot--14,000 men of an armed
force that was offered by the States to be the country’s first line of
defense.[14]
Into that camp had marched a month before, with flags flying, bands
gallantly playing, weapons gleaming, one whole State’s militia
organization of which only 700 men had fired regularly in practice
during the whole preceding year. Only 525 of even that small number had
qualified as shots, and more than a thousand were carried as utterly
unqualified. Of that entire State force, only one man had passed through
the regular army qualification course with the rifle, and only twelve
had qualified at long range practice.[15]
“Brave?” said the hapless General of Brigade who had them under his
hands. “Brave? If we gave ’em the order, they would charge an army with
their bare hands, sir--and they might as well.”
He fluttered a sheet of paper in his hard, hairy fist. The sheet showed
25,353 organized militia enrolled as “trained men armed with the rifle.”
Of these 15,927 men had qualified sufficiently to be fit for firing in
battle. There were a thousand men in that command whose records showed
that they had not fired their rifles a single time in a year: and the
General had reason to believe that many of these never had used weapons
except as instruments of parade.[16]
_State Artillerymen That Have Never Qualified as Gunners._
A mile away, in the artillery encampment, a field artillery battery of
regulars from Fort Sill swept their guns at top speed through passages
so tight that it seemed impossible for the flying wheels to clear them.
Sharply they wheeled and came to position, just as a militia battery
arrived.
The militia guns were hauled by horses that their State had hastily
hired or bought. The brutes had hauled trucks in a city; and in trying
to wheel, one of them straddled the gun. In a moment the gun-team was
around and over the guns in a confusion of chains and leather.
“Do you stable your mounts on top of your guns in the milish?” shouted a
regular, gleefully. But he and his fellows helped good-naturedly enough.
“We never had horses till now,” growled one of the militiamen, who was
stooping to tug at a trace-chain. It made his face fiery red. “State
wouldn’t give us any, and we didn’t have stables, anyway, in our armory.
So we couldn’t break in any mounts.”
“Nor you couldn’t break yourselves in, chum, I guess,” spoke another
regular. “How the devil did you get gunnery practice? Haul your little
gun out by hand to the firing ground?”
The militiamen fumbled at the trace again. “Didn’t fire it,” he said,
without looking up.
“All right, milish!” shouted the regular. “Shake! You’re game, all
right, you boys! Willing, by gum, to face the Hell that you’re going to
get, and not a gunner in your battery. Fine leather-headed citizens you
must have, back home.”
“They didn’t think much of artillery at home,” grinned the militiaman.
“Thought that infantry was all they needed. They sort of thought we just
had a little toy to play with.”
“You ain’t going to be lonely, milish,” grunted the regular, sauntering
off. “Tie a necktie around your horses and then go over yonder. You’ll
find three other batteries from three other States that never had no
horses, never had no mounted drills, and never qualified as
gunners.”[17]
_Cavalry Without Horses and Undrilled_
A grizzled Colonel of Cavalry rode by. Under his shaggy eye-brows he
shot a glance at the helpless battery, and swore. He dated back to
Indian times, and they said of him in the army that he knew nothing
except cavalry tactics and horses. But he knew them; and he was breaking
his old heart over the militia cavalry that had come under his command.
Some he had that were good enough to win his full praise; but none of
these was full as to quota of men. The Colonel of the best of the
regiments was riding at his side. It was an organized force of rich men,
each of whom had brought his own mount, trained as carefully as any
cavalry horse, and perfectly equipped. “Fine, sir, fine!” said the old
Indian fighter. “But oh! Wait till you see what arrived last week. They
can ride! Yes, sir, they can ride. Heaven knows how they learned it, for
they didn’t ever have a mount except what they hired in livery stables.
A rich State, too, and one that did its infantry damned well, damned
well, sir. It was supposed to be a regiment of cavalry that we were to
get. Do you know what arrived? Two squadrons! And, sir, they came afoot.
They served a State that evidently prefers horseless cavalry.”[18]
He chewed his cigar and threw it away. “Look over there!” he continued.
“See those chaps? They were among the first to come to us. Yes, sir. The
entire cavalry force of that State came out--the entire force, you
understand. D’you want to know how many there were? Three
troops,--three--troops--confound me, sir. Not a whole squadron. But as
these three troops were in three different parts of the State they
hadn’t even been drilled to move together in their little three troops
as one body. We’re just getting ’em so that they can ride in squadron
without smashing into some other troop and crumpling the whole outfit to
Hades.”[19]
_State Troops Without Medical Supplies, Shoes, Overcoats_