serve for the transmission of news. Under the allegation that they were
susceptible of use in war, they took all sorts of subjects of peaceful
commerce or industry, from telegraph wire to houses.[160]
_Putting on the Screws_
Already they had subjected Boston to a levy of $50,000 a day for the
maintenance of the troops. They laid on New York and the factory cities
of New Jersey a joint levy of $100,000. They laid another impost for the
same purpose on the big cities of New England of seventy-five thousand.
This one levy alone amounted to 1 million, 575 thousand dollars a week;
and it was only one of many.[161]
They confiscated outright all the cash, funds, realizable securities and
notes belonging to the state, city and local governments. Every bank was
warned under threat of condign punishment to deliver over everything
that might be considered public property. In New York City they seized
from a bank $100,000 that was deposited by a State Department to pay a
draft; and they issued a warning that if the holder of the draft
attempted to collect the amount or permitted it to pass from his
possession, his house and lands would be confiscated.[162]
They declared themselves possessed as absolute owners by right of
conquest of all public property besides cash. Thus in New York they
asserted ownership of ninety-nine million dollars’ worth of suspension
bridges and in Boston they took bridges to the value of ten and a
quarter millions. They took the New York City armories valued at fifteen
millions. They declared that they owned the subways valued at 100
millions.
All United States property, comprising fortifications everywhere in the
conquered territory, navy yards, post offices, customs houses,
lighthouses, treasury buildings, and court houses were listed in
proclamations throughout the occupied country as good and legal prizes
of war. The property so seized in the city of New York alone amounted to
sixty-six millions.[163]
_Working Furiously for Defense_
The United States was working furiously for defense. In the steel
country of Pennsylvania and the West, all the works were being altered
to turn them into factories for shells, shrapnel, big guns and gun
carriages. At Watervliet and Indian Head the capacity of the shops had
been enlarged immensely and there was not a moment in the day or the
night when there was a pause in the headlong labor. Powder was being
made in the Middle West, in places safe from any possible attack by
aeroplanes. The flying machine works of Hammondsport, and Buffalo, in
New York, San Diego, and Overland Park, were turning out machines at the
rate of one and sometimes two a month. Half a dozen other factories were
being erected.[164]
A group of automobile factories had agreed to turn out 2-ton trucks at
the rate of forty a day, and, indeed, already were producing thirty a
day. One concern was working under a contract to produce enough
automobiles every day to carry one regiment, each machine capable of
making 100 miles an hour with four men and ten days’ rations of food and
ammunition. Others had agreed between them to produce enough motors in
every working day to carry five or six regiments.[165]
_The Handicap of Unpreparedness_
The efficient land was rising to the occasion with magnificent ability
and temper. So far, those were justified who had said that America could
meet a crisis with miraculous speed. But there were things that could
not be met with speed--and these things were vital.
All the industrial efficiency on the land could not provide 35,000
trained and experienced officers: and that number was needed if the
country was to put half a million volunteers into the field.
All the efficiency of men and engines could not correct, except by
tedious, slow training, the defects in an army system that had made it
impossible in peace times to concentrate 16,000 men and officers at the
San Antonio border of Texas in less than three months after the order
was issued.[166]
All the efficiency could not alter the fact that of the whole militia
force of the United States, enrolled as “men armed with the rifle,”
exclusive of the four divisions already with the army, there were only
24,000, or 38 per cent., who could shoot well enough to make them
suitable for battle purposes.[167]
The capture of Massachusetts and Connecticut had cut off at one blow the
source of 68 per cent. of all the ammunition and weapon works of the
United States. The army, already short of cartridges, would have to
remain short till all the complicated and minutely accurate machinery
for making them could be built and established.[168]
There were only 425,000 rifles in reserve. The volunteers would have to
drill without arms till factories could be put into operation.
_What Had Been Lost_
Seven militia mobilization camps were in the territory lost to the
United States. One thousand acres of powder works in New Jersey were in
the possession of the invaders.
The volunteers needed shirts, breeches, underwear. The four leading
cities in the manufacture of cotton goods, the four that led in making
woolen goods and the leaders in making clothing were cut off from the
United States.
The volunteers needed shoes. More than all, they needed shoes. Shoes,
shoes, and again shoes! Americans realized with heavy hearts how these
unromantic things were making them helpless--what a blow it had been to
their defense when the great Massachusetts factories of Lynn, Brockton,
Haverhill, and Boston with their un-replaceable machinery had been
taken. These cities and cities scattered through the rest of lost New
England, had produced 57 per cent. of the boots and shoes for the United
States.
The army was short, even under its old, economical estimates of more
than 500 field artillery. To put the army of 300,000 volunteers into the
field, it would need at least 1,500. In the days of peace it had been
calculated that the shortage then existing could not be made good in
less than two years. Now, with half a hundred factories toiling, with
blackened Watervliet roaring and clanging as never a factory had labored
before, guns were being turned out at a rate that promised to reach
surprising dimensions when all the shops were fully at work.
_Six Months of Helplessness_
But at best there were six months during which nothing could be done
except to prepare. During those six months, while the country poured
forth its money prodigally to make up in wasteful speed what it had
neglected during long years, the invader could sit in the conquered
seaboard cities and suck them dry.
Nothing on earth could alter it. The volunteers had to learn everything.
They had to learn to shoot, to survive slush and rain and cold, to dig
trenches. They had to become hardened enough to march twenty and more
miles a day with blankets, half a tent, frying pan, plate, knife, fork,
water bottle, first aid kit, an emergency ration, an intrenching tool
and bayonet, a heavy rifle and ninety heavy cartridges.
The militia regiments had to be raised from peace strength to war
strength. That meant that into every company of 65 trained or partially
trained men there would have to be an influx of 85 utterly untrained
ones who would, of course, instantly destroy the original efficiency of
the organization till they were trained up to it.[169]
“Six months at the very lowest possible estimate!” said the Secretary of
War. “And it will be six months of such work as this country never did
before in its history.”[170]
_Six Months of Bleeding_
“Six months with the North Atlantic Seaboard amputated,” said the
President, “means six months of bleeding to death.”
Even without the mortal blow that was struck at the country’s commerce
by the locking of its Atlantic and Gulf ports, this severance of New
England and the metropolitan district of New York did, indeed, cause a
huge, bleeding wound.
Of the seventy-five manufacturing cities of the United States whose
manufactured product ranked highest in value and played the greatest
part in the industrial wealth of the country, the invader possessed
twenty-seven, or more than one-third.
Fifty-six thousand manufacturing establishments were in his control.
Those of the New England States had produced 30 per cent. of the total
wealth of the country in manufactures. When they were cut off, the blow
struck every human being in the continent who needed their products, and
every human being who depended directly or indirectly on the income from
their purchases of raw material.
The United States had lost the source of 65 per cent. of its woolen
manufactures in value, 48 per cent. of the cotton manufactures, 45 per
cent. of the bronze and brass products.
All the amounts involved were enormous. The annual value of the raw
material used by the conquered territory was beyond 2 billion dollars.
The value of the completed products was 5 billions, 642 millions.[171]
_An Incalculable Prize_
The Nation, thus maimed, stared aghast at the value of the prize that
had been wrested from it for lack of a little insurance. Its individuals
had paid scrupulously each year for insurance against fire and crime and
had scrutinized their policies with the utmost care. But they had
permitted their chosen representatives in Legislatures and Congress to
do as they chose about insuring against war, to spend money as they
would or not at all, and to accept a worthless policy obtained at an
extravagant price.
Now they faced a loss that, for the time at least, might well be called
total. The value of Boston and the city of New York alone in taxable
property was 9 billions and 880 millions. Five cities of Connecticut
were worth 483 millions. Massachusetts had 22 cities exclusive of Boston
whose value was 1 billion and 415 millions. Counting all New England,
with New York and Boston, and leaving out the New Jersey conquest, the
enemy’s loot was 15 billions and 386 millions, exclusive of the public
city, State and Federal property that he had seized.[172]
_What Can He Do With It?_
“But what can he do with it?” the people of the rest of the United
States began to ask each other presently.
Men had prophesied in the beginning that the conqueror with his guns
turned on the great cities, would extort vast tribute under threat of
leveling them. But there had swept through the land a spirit that would
face anything rather than to purchase safety and ignoble peace. “Let him
destroy the cities and all the land!” said America. “We will build the
sea-board up again, better than before. We will recompense our
fellow-citizens for every scrap that they lose. But we shall never pay
blackmail!”
Had the invader entertained any such plan, this spirit that flamed
unmistakably through the continent would have daunted him. But he had no
such puerile design as to turn his wonderful prize into ashes. If his
errand was one of brigandage and robbery, it was brigandage and robbery
in the most scientific modern terms. It was brigandage that enlisted in
its conception and prosecution the brains of a world’s financiers, the
keen wit of a world’s merchants who wanted to win back the markets of
the earth and the far-sighted policy of international diplomats.
For almost a month the conqueror did not show his hand. For almost a
month the seaboard from the end of Maine to New Jersey remained sealed.
Then, suddenly, he gave the United States his reply to the question:
“What Can He Do With It?”
_The Invader’s Reply_
He opened the wires. He did not send out a word over them. The people of
New England and New York did it. They sent out a flood of dispatches
that were like a great cry for help. It was the invader’s reply, through
them. The reply was “Starvation!”
“We need coal! We need iron and steel! We need cotton!” cried the people
of New England. “We have used up all our raw materials. We cannot work
any longer unless you ship to us.”
“We must re-open our banks!” said Boston and New York and the hundred
other cities. “We are paralyzed without our exchanges and relations with
the financial system of the country.”
“We need foodstuffs!” said they all.
The first quick decision of the country was one of wrathful refusal to
furnish the supplies that the enemy might fatten himself. But the
importunities from the conquered places grew. They went to all the land,
west and north and south. They came at the White House like a storm.
“We are on the edge of panic! We have three millions of factory workers
who will starve unless we can instantly reëstablish our industries and
our finances!”
“It is intolerable!” said the President, his face white with anger. “It
is simply a disguised form of blackmail. He means to make us finance
him; for, of course, he will levy contributions on the country as soon
as money begins to flow in.”
“_He Has Us!_”
“He has us!” said the Secretary of the Treasury. “As we were helpless
against his cannon, so we are helpless against the new weapon that he
has drawn--the starvation of our own people. All the messages that we
have received prove that. He has shown them that their fate is wholly in
our hands--that if we refuse to send them money and foodstuffs and raw
material, they will have to blame us for the consequences.”
The President of the United States arose. “Gentlemen,” he said, “they
are our own people. There is nothing else that we can do!”[173]
* * * * *
That is the story of The Invasion of America. There was nothing else
that we could do!
How the land labored heart-breakingly to put an army into the field; how
the invader for eight long months held the conquered land, and under his
efficient mastery made its soil produce prodigally, its manufactories
pour forth their wealth in redoubled measure; how he laid tax after tax
on the men whose necks were under his foot; how, toward the end, he
gathered his transports in all the harbors; and how, when three American
armies, each 500,000 strong, began to move toward the coast from three
grand bases, he embarked all his men within one hundred and twenty hours
and sailed away unscathed--these things were but inevitable
consequences.
The United States of America never knew how much wealth the
Conquestadore had squeezed from the conquered territory in requisitions,
in fines, in license fees, in taxes on imports and exports, and in war
levies. Statisticians figured for years afterward to discover from the
wildly tangled accounts how much he had extorted. They figured and
quarreled for a generation over the vast amounts that the United States
had lost by losing the markets of the world; for when her ports were
opened, she found that the markets were gone.
Men said that from first to last the invading army had taken a sum not
short of four billions of dollars. But whatever the sum, it was as
nothing to the wound that had struck America near the heart--a brave
Nation, a greatly capable Nation, made to grovel for her life because,
in a world of men, she had failed to prepare for what men might do.
THE END
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The reader will recall Nast’s skeleton representing the Regular
Army with the legend, “Match it for grit if you can” or words to that
effect.
[2] Statement based on statistics.
[3] Authorities concede these matters.
[4] See War Department Reports, 1915.
[5] Taken from actual stations of various troops at various times. The
army post system is considered indefensible among military men.
[6] Speed of embarkation of a mobilized and prepared army as
calculated by European military staff officers.
[7] One thousand rifled cannon could be enumerated from the naval
lists of less than four Powers. Less than four Powers could match our
Navy with battleships.
[8] This is exactly what happened during the Spanish-American War.
[9] From U. S. War Department Reports for 1915 on Militia Organization.
[10] This statement does not betray a military secret. It is well
known to all foreign governments that we cannot defend our coast
defenses against land attack.
[11] Certain naval experts, basing their opinion on study of the
recent naval battles, claim that a difference of as little as 10 per
cent. in efficiency between fleets otherwise absolutely equal means
inevitable destruction for the inferior fleet.
[12] A tactical necessity for an outnumbered fleet.
[13] This statement is based on official army calculations.
[14] From tabulated returns by the militia departments of twelve
Eastern States.
[15] From annual reports of rifle practice for 1914, militia
organizations.
[16] See tabulated returns published by War Department, 1915.
[17] Under-stated. Annual reports for 1915 show many practically
useless batteries.
[18] Annual report Militia Organization, 1915. (An Eastern seaboard
State.)
[19] Tables given in War Department statistics, 1915.
[20] Extracted from tabulated returns to War Department. (Report on
Militia Organization, 1915.)
[21] Official figures: 12 Army aeroplanes, 13 Navy aeroplanes, no
dirigibles, two aeroplanes not serviceable, total effective, 23.
[22] Block Island men helped in the capture of a troopship during the
War of the Revolution.
[23] A landing party seizing an outlying island for a base, as Block
Island would infallibly be seized, always destroys everything that
might enable the inhabitants to communicate with the mainland.
[24] A submarine cannot attack until it has risen near enough to the
surface to lift its periscope above water. Having thus obtained its
aim, it submerges again only deep enough to conceal the periscope.
It fires its torpedo blind when submerged. If it dives too deep, it
might send the weapon harmlessly under the ship’s keel. Hence, it
is possible, often, to “spot” the disturbed, whitened water above a
submarine even though it is sunken out of sight.
[25] Target practice near the land has been found to so affect all
life nearby that it seriously injures the commercial fisheries. The
fishermen of Cape Cod have opposed fleet-firing several times. On one
occasion it is recorded that the fishing for lobsters (exclusively
bottom-haunting crustacean) was quite ruined for months owing to the
firing of big guns.
[26] As a matter of fact, the extreme range of the present armament
of American harbor defenses is 23,000 yards. This is not a reliably
effective fighting range, and is merely stated as being the extreme
range, “under crucial test,” of the 12-inch steel rifled mortars. The
rifled guns as now mounted have a range of not more than 13,000 yards.
Battle-ships now being constructed are armed with 15 and 16-inch guns
that can outrange the extreme theoretical range of the mortars.
[27] Harbor defenses are not constructed, necessarily, to protect
places near them. Their purpose is to prevent a naval force from
occupying an important harbor whose possession would open the way
to rich territory or lay commerce prostrate. Therefore it is no
defect in the construction of the Long Island entrance defenses
that it is possible to bombard coast places near them. It is
physically impossible ever to defend all the places on our coast with
fortifications.
[28] The Army War College has repeatedly called attention to the
urgent need of the mobile army for siege artillery and for the
organization of an efficient body of troops trained in its use to be
_available whenever needed_. “Ammunition on hand for artillery, 38 per
cent. of amount required.” (See report of Army Board, and Secretary
of War Garrison’s statement to House Appropriations Committee, 1915.)
Another estimate in the possession of the author would indicate that
the ammunition on hand for _heavy_ artillery is only about 15 per
cent. of the amount required.
[29] Troops cannot be landed with as little delay as this. But
naval tactics assume as a matter of course that an advance body of
bluejackets, trained for beach and surf work, can effect an immediate
landing if protected from attack.
[30] Lord Cochran landed 18,000 men on the open coast of Chile in
five hours, with some guns. The surf conditions there are extremely
hazardous.
[31] American submarines now in commission do not carry more than one
3-inch rapid fire gun. It is set in a watertight compartment from
which it is elevated when the vessel is on the surface. Armaments of
destroyers are: Ammen class, five 3-inch rapid fire 30 cal. rifles;
Aylwin class, four 4-inch rapid fire 50 cal. rifles; Bainbridge class,
two 3-inch rifles and five 6-pounders rapid fire.
[32] Submarine wire entanglements are being used effectively for the
protection of harbors during the present war. The wire cannot resist
cutting much more than twine can. It stops the submarine by menacing
it with being entangled and trapped. A submarine caught under water
cannot be cleared by its crew. The utmost the men can do is to try to
reach the surface by putting on “special escape helmets” and emerging
through the air-locks.
[33] With periscopes shot away, a submarine, even though uninjured,
is quite helpless. She may escape, if she is in deep water and the
assailant is far enough away to give her time to dive and flee, deeply
submerged. See loss of U-12 on March 10 merely through destruction of
periscope, which permitted enemy destroyers to ram her.
[34] Even steam vessels of high power often are rendered helpless by
jamming a trailing hawser around the shaft. The revolution of the
shaft so macerates and binds the fouled material that the engines are
unable to turn the propellor in either direction and only a diver can
clear it.
[35] The reserve buoyancy of a submarine when awash (technically known
as “diving-trim”) is so delicate that 100 additional gallons of water
would sink a 300-ton vessel.
[36] “From an altitude of 2,000 feet the movements of a submarine
torpedo boat may be easily observed unless the water is very
muddy”--Capt. V. E. Clark, Aviation Corps, U. S. A., December issue,
_Coast Artillery Journal_.
[37] Important cities in this territory besides New York and Boston
are Fall River, Providence, New Bedford, New London, Bridgeport, New
Haven, Hartford, Worcester, Springfield, Willimantic and Pawtucket.
[38] Colonel Abbott, U. S. A., one of the leading Chiefs of Engineers
who constructed the U. S. harbor defenses, stated that the fire of the
sixteen mortars, “like one giant musket throwing a charge of buckshot,
each pellet weighing ¼ ton,” could drop their sixteen projectiles into
a space 800 feet long by 300 feet wide. The author was present at a
test of a 16-mortar battery on Sandy Hook when the sixteen shells were
fired simultaneously at a deck-plan of the United States cruiser _San
Francisco_, the plan being outlined with stakes on the New Jersey
beach five and a half miles from the battery. Each projectile struck
inside of the staked outline.
[39] “It will thus be seen that there are now provided about
one-fourth of the officers and one-half of the enlisted men necessary
for this purpose,” i.e. manning the defenses of the American
coast--Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., to Chief of Staff,
September 19, 1914.
[40] “It is certain that present-day coast defenses could not
withstand an energetic attack from the land side,” i.e. they must be
defended with a mobile army--“Over-Seas Operations.”
[41] The present war has made evident to military observers that in
the future the “aeroplane screen” will play a vital part similar
to the “cavalry screen.” It is based on the simple principle of
overpowering the adversary’s attempts by vastly superior numbers.