Chapter X: The Price That Had to Be Paid 315 (7)

In this sealed city, for the first time in men’s memory, there were no crowds on the streets. Broadway from 59th Street to the Battery was almost naked of people by day and by night. Its electric signs were dark. Its hotels and theaters were all but dark.

Whenever, by chance, people found themselves in a given block in numbers sufficient to make a throng, there always was a hasty scattering, as if they feared to touch each other. As these little knots scattered, they cast swift glances of apprehension at the high roofs.

There had been an official notice on the front pages of all the New York newspapers on the morning after the occupation:

ALL ASSEMBLAGES OR GATHERINGS ON THE
STREETS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

By Order of the Military Government.[152]

There was no threat as to penalty for infraction. None was needed. The machine guns in all the towers and sky-scrapers were sufficient warning.

The shape of the island on which the Borough of Manhattan lay, with immensely long straight streets running north and south through its narrow width, made it a simple matter to isolate all sections in which there were populations who might become unruly. The crowded tenement districts of the East Side were cut off from those in the West. They were separated into units within themselves. Very soon, the soldiers moved around the city with the ease of careless visitors. Officers, mounted and in automobiles, went where they pleased. They paid apparently no attention to the people, and these, in turn, could not guess anything that the conquerors had in mind or what would be their next act in the next minute.

_Surrounded by the Unknown_

The city’s newspapers, like those of Boston and all New England, were controlled and edited by military censors. They were permitted to tell their readers nothing of importance. This utter ignorance in which the multitudes were kept, made them more helpless than did even the guns that watched them everywhere.

It was a city surrounded, perpetually confronted and oppressed by the unknown. The veil of secrecy and silence was lifted only when newspapers or placards printed some new proclamation in formal, legal verbiage.

The first one to be issued had proclaimed the occupation, and the institution of a Military Government. It had added that the existing civil authorities had been empowered and ordered to continue their administration with the sanction and participation of the Military Government, and that all civil and criminal laws remained in effect subject to changes demanded by military exigency.[153]

But immediately under this announcement was a paragraph headed:

LAWS SUSPENDED

On and after this date the following Classes of Laws are Suspended.
(1) The Right to Bear Arms. (2) The Right of Suffrage. (3) The
Right of Assemblage. (4) The Right to Publish Newspapers or
Circulate Other Matter. (5) The Right to Quit Occupied Territory or
Travel Freely in same.[154]

Another announcement that struck home after the people saw its real meaning under its smooth wording was:

“The municipal and other civil and criminal laws as administered by
the civil authorities, are for the benefit and protection of the
civilian population. Their continued enforcement is not for the
protection or control of officers and soldiers of the Occupying
Army, who are subject to the Rules of War, and amenable only to
their own Military Government.”[155]

At first this announcement seemed to the citizens to be for their protection, but the sharper readers soon pointed out that it was only a skillful way of intimating that the soldiers were above all the laws that controlled the conquered population.

_A Mysterious Flotilla_

A few days after the surrender, people along the water-front noticed a great movement of vessels. The big Fall River Line and other Sound steamers moved down the Upper Bay in long procession, with some steamships seized at the wharves.

They were full of troops. Some of the vessels towed railroad floats with flat cars on which were lashed cannon so big that even from the shore the eye could perceive their unusual size. Other craft towed strings of small scows, and still others towed floating derricks.

The flotilla passed down the Upper Bay, but it did not go out through the Narrows. It disappeared in the narrow water-way of the Kill von Kull that winds between Staten Island and the mainland of New Jersey, and connects with the Lower Harbor through Raritan Bay.

The story of the mysterious flotilla spread quickly through a city whose lack of newspapers made its apprehensive curiosity only the more keen. Robbed of its news and bulletin service, the people, without any conscious plan, had organized a news service of their own. They had fallen back on the primitive method of circulating information from man to man.

_New York’s “Bush Telegraph”_

Within twenty-four hours of the suppression of the liberty of its press, the highly modern, highly artificial city had in operation the same form of news-transmission that has so often puzzled and even awed travelers in savage lands. Under the sky-scrapers the “bush telegraph” carried its messages with almost the same astonishing swiftness as in the jungle.

It was done by hasty whispers and by furtive conversation, for among the Orders and Regulations that were promulgated daily there was a little warning that severe punishment would be inflicted on any person who “spread false news, communicated the movement of land and sea forces, made noises or uttered outcries of a nature to disturb troops, or inspected, sketched, photographed or made descriptions of views on land or sea without authority.”[156]

There were enough ominous elasticity and inclusiveness in this Order to cover almost any exchange of words. Yet men, even though they were mortally afraid while they did it, could not resist the human impulse to transmit anything that they learned.

The news merely puzzled the great mass of the population. Accustomed all their lives to turn to their newspapers for knowledge about everything, they were quite helpless with their one means of enlightenment shut off.

_To Open the Harbor_

The Citizens’ Committee and the city officials, however, were able to guess pretty clearly what this movement of troops and heavy artillery meant. There was nothing in the lower harbor that possibly could demand such force except one place--the forts on Sandy Hook, the last remaining harbor defense that still was under the American flag. Solitary though it was, so long as it remained intact it forbade the entrance of New York Harbor to any hostile vessel.

There had been wonder before because the enemy commander had not demanded the surrender of the Sandy Hook defenses under threat of bombarding the city, as he had demanded and forced the surrender of Forts Hamilton and Wadsworth.

“Because Sandy Hook is not within the city, as the other two forts were,” was the solution at which the city’s lawyers arrived, after considering the rules governing military action. “The invader plainly is adhering carefully to all the accepted Rules of War. By doing so, he can, and does, hold us to account rigorously under the same Rules. This is profitable to him, for despite all their apparent stipulations in favor of a conquered territory, the Rules of War are made, after all, to facilitate war.”

It was impossible to warn the commander at Sandy Hook. Private service over the telephone and telegraph systems was suspended entirely. The fire alarm system was operated under the watchful control of soldiers. In Police Headquarters sat a Colonel of Cavalry whose countersign was necessary for every order issued by the Police Commissioner.

This was a stern officer, who held the police force in a hard, masterful hand. The men were accountable more than ever for strict enforcement of all laws, but they were subject also to summary control by every military officer. Even guards and posts of private soldiers had some authority over them.

There were many daily experiences and sights in their streets that served to make the people tractable, but few things were so powerful as the daily spectacle of their pugnacious police yielding sullen but complete obedience.

“It is unlawful to disobey orders given by our army.” This short regulation covered a great deal. It tied the police and the citizens hand and foot.[157]

_Taking of Sandy Hook_

On Sandy Hook, fifteen miles down the harbor from the Battery, there were being demonstrated the inexorable mathematics of war that had been demonstrated at Narragansett, at Boston, at Forts Schuyler and Slocum in Westchester, and at Fort Totten in Long Island.

Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook, almost invulnerable to ship-attack from the sea, was being reduced from the land. The fort commander had disposed his men in the most formidable positions possible, and they made the narrow sandy neck of the Hook that led from the mainland to their fortifications a pass that no force, however contemptuous of death, would attack hastily. Barb wire and great sand mounds, rapid fire guns and big guns behind them, made them no despicable sentinels. But the Americans numbered companies where the enemy numbered battalions and regiments. The American mobile guns numbered pairs where the enemy’s artillery was counted by dozens.

The steel mass of fort that could protect harbor and city could not protect itself. The motley flotilla, emerging into Raritan Bay, landed its men on the New Jersey shore at Keyport inside of the lower harbor, and behind Sandy Hook. The defenses had not been devised or built to withstand attack from their own bay. The great rifled guns and the steel mortars were ponderous. They were mounted on complex engines, equally ponderous, whose bases were firmly anchored in concrete and steel. These mammoths were not things that could be swung around to all points of the compass. They were set in their solid beds for the one purpose of fighting things out at sea.

_The Open Back of the Fort_

The commander had succeeded, with desperate labor, by blasting away concrete emplacements and facings, in turning two of his big guns around to face the land and protect the open back of the fort. But the giant steel guns with their 1,000-pound projectiles that could fight 30,000-ton battleships, could not fight little two-legged men. They might, by chance of fortune, find and destroy one of the siege guns that were attacking them. But if they missed a gun and fell merely among soldiers, they would be scarcely more murderous than a little field gun that fires bursting charges or shrapnel.

The enemy did not try to rush the works. He had time and means and did not need to sacrifice men. To the heights of the Atlantic and Navesink Highlands, that ascend so strangely out of the sea and out of the flat-sea country there, he lifted guns of great caliber. He placed guns in cover behind every undulation. When he had placed all these weapons with scientific precision, they began to fire.

None of the mobile artillery installed for the defense of the fort against land attack could reach the invaders’ heavier artillery with any hope of effect. The men in the defenses, cowering under bomb-proofs and in pits, held out for a day and a night. They held out for another day. Then there was nothing left to defend. Dismounted and broken, their armament was destroyed. The survivors surrendered.

New York City did not know that the Sandy Hook defenses had fallen till three light enemy cruisers appeared in the upper bay and steamed through the East River to the Navy Yard. Then the city knew that its harbor was open.

_Enemy Invades New Jersey_

The army that took Sandy Hook did not return to New York. The flotilla took the troops and their light artillery aboard at the Atlantic Highlands, and steamed back through Raritan Bay, through the narrow sound behind Staten Island and into Newark Bay. Here other boats met it with cavalry and motor troops from Yonkers.

Troops landed at both sides of the entrance to the bay, taking Bayonne and Elizabethport, with their oil refineries and tanks, and their ship yards. Then the flotilla moved up the bay, and put great bodies of soldiers of all arms ashore at the great factory town of Newark. A big city, and a difficult city to control, it kept the commanders occupied for three days before they had made their footing good; but then it was an admirable and a vastly valuable base. From it the troops spread out and took Rutherford, Passaic, Hackensack, and Paterson.

It was rich commercial territory that complemented the value of possessing New York, for these factory cities were a part of the Metropolitan District counted with New York City in every National estimate of industrial wealth. This district contained almost thirty-two thousand factories. In wealth and productiveness, it was as choice a prize as New England.[158]

_Army Ceases Operations_

Having made good its hold on the new conquest across the Hudson River, the invading army ceased to expand. Even with the accretion that had been made to its forces, it had none to spare for further operations, for it now had under its charge 62,000 square miles of domain with more than thirty millions of people.

This was a Kingdom. The victor set himself to the task of organizing his government, which meant the task of turning it to profit.

From the beginning, he had taught the conquered people that an invading army lives on the country. Wherever his troops entered, the inhabitants were ordered to supply all that was needed by men and horses.

The occupying troops demanded lodgings and stable-room. They demanded accommodations for everything belonging to the army. They requisitioned fuel and straw. They called for teams, cars, motors, wagons, boats, and claimed the services of their owners. They occupied flour mills and bakeries. They took machinery, material, tools and equipment for repairing their munitions of war, bridges, and roads.[159]

In all the towns they seized parts of the hospitals and set them aside for the care of their men, impressing the hospital attendants into the service. For the use of their own medical service they forced the towns to contribute drugs and medicines.

They seized all appliances on land, on water or in the air that might 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.

[42] Estimates that were transmitted confidentially to this country by observers in Europe and are now before the writer are that the European Nations had raised their aeroplane efficiency to the following magnitude: France 1,400, Germany 1,000, Russia 800, Italy 600, England 400 (probably greatly increased since then), Austria 400, Spain 100, Belgium (in the beginning) 100, Switzerland 20 and Servia 60 aeroplanes. The United States has at present 12 army aeroplanes, 13 naval planes, no dirigibles, 2 aeroplanes old model, total effective 23. The first aero squadron of the army has just been formed at the Signal Corps Aviation School, San Diego, Cal. It will contain twenty officers and ninety-six enlisted men. The last House of Congress refused to consent to the Senate’s appropriation of $400,000 for military aviation, and the amount available this year was cut down to $300,000. The Navy Department is making specifications for a small dirigible, and on February 27 opened bids for the construction of six hydro-aeroplanes, bi-plane sea-going type, armored, to carry two men, wireless, guns and ammunition at speeds of from fifty to eighty miles an hour.

[43] Strength of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, 1914, as per returns of inspecting officers, 5,369 men, 424 officers.

[44] Only eleven States had on hand at the time of the last annual inspection one complete uniform (less shoes) for each enlisted man of the authorized minimum strength.... “In the opinion of the Division of Militia Affairs the States could have by this time, by proper economy and care in the use of property and the expenditure of funds, acquired stores sufficient to equip the militia at war strength.... The militia is not now equipped with supplies sufficient for peace strength.... In no State is the prescribed minimum peace strength maintained.”--Pages 206, 283 and 287, Organization and Federal Property, Annual Reports, War Department, June 13, 1913 to October 1, 1914.

[45] “We are still without an adequate reserve system either of officers or men.”--Leonard Wood, Major General, Chief of Staff, U. S. A., official report, January 20, 1914.

[46] So stated in instructions issued to foreign armies for the event of disembarkation.

[47] Landing barges of this capacity are possessed by at least three Powers and have been tested in maneuvers.

[48] All these details, and many more, are systematically worked out in European army instructions, both confidential and public.

[49] Under average conditions it is possible to land 25,000 infantry, 1,000 cavalry and 60 guns in six hours.... In the Crimean War 45,000 men, 83 guns and 100 horses were disembarked and set on shore in less than eleven hours, without modern appliances.--“Over-Seas Operations.” See also British and French records.

[50] This quotation is a literal quotation from the War Department report on “The Organization of the Land Forces of the United States,” August 10, 1912.

[51] This point has been emphasized in practically every War Department report on organization for many years back. Congress never has acted on the matter. The Chief of Militia Affairs, U. S. A., was forced to report in his last report that: “Little or no progress appears to be making toward correct Divisional organization.”--Part III, 1914, Report on Organization. Only two States have approachably organized their militia in correct proportions.

[52] The Division is the fundamental army unit.... The mobile elements of the Regular Army should have a Divisional organization in time of peace.--Office of the Chief of Staff, U. S. A., January 20, 1914.

[53] Tables 17 and 18, pages 228, 229, Annual Report Division of Militia Affairs, U. S. A., October 1, 1914.... “The States which send their Infantry into active service without having made every possible effort to supply it with an adequate Field Artillery support, will see in the needless sacrifice of that Infantry the cost of their short-sightedness in time of preparation.”--A. L. Mills, Brigadier General, General Staff, U. S. A.

[54] Page 26, Organization of the Land forces of the United States, U. S. Army report.

[55] “While the men who wish to spend the Army and Navy appropriation upon unnecessary army posts or unfit navy yards have such a voice as well as a vote,” i.e. in the Houses of Congress, “a great deal of waste and extravagance is sure to result.”--Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War.

[56] Only the most perfectly organized intelligence department can extract from the incredible mass of reports that come in during army movements, the few true and important facts on which the final orders of the commander may be based. An inadequate scouting service is worse than merely weak. It betrays its own forces to disaster.

[57] The Long Island Sound defenses are built to prevent the entrance of a hostile fleet into Long Island Sound. By thus closing Long Island Sound they protect all the Sound cities and the City of New York; but they cannot and do not protect all the possible landing places. Long Island, the land highway to New York City, is entirely undefended. The War Department desires to erect proper defenses on or near Montauk Point, but has still to get the authority.

[58] Trinitrotol, now being used in Europe largely for under-water work, is one of the most violently acting explosives known to-day.

[59] The latest type of 16-inch naval gun has a range of 23,000 yards or eleven and a half nautical miles, which is a little more than thirteen statute miles.... A projectile from a 12-inch rifled gun (U. S. A. coast-defense type) which was fired in the presence of the author, ricochetted seven times.

[60] Not a fanciful description. The impact of a 12-inch projectile was calculated exactly by Major General Abbot, Chief of Engineers, U. S. A., in order to formulate a precise comparison.

[61] The writer has seen iron bars two and a half inches wide, which locked the steel doors to a casemate, buckle and bend outward from the vacuum created by the blast of a rifled gun.

[62] Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., September 19, 1914, pages 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15.

[63] The ammunition now on hand and under manufacture is 73 per cent. of the allowance fixed by the National Coast Defense Board. Last report to the Chief of Staff, U. S. A.... “The actual supply of ammunition at present is very considerably behind even that modest standard,” i.e. the minimum allowance, “and in many cases of our most important sea-coast guns would be sufficient for only thirty or forty minutes of firing.”--Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War, March 1, 1915.

[64] Army and naval officers, both American and foreign, believe that 5,000 men would be more than sufficient to take such works if they are manned only by their Coast Artillery companies and undefended by a mobile army.

[65] We have less than one quarter of the ammunition considered necessary as an adequate supply and reserve for our full number of small-arms. (Author’s Note.) ... “We are less adequately supplied with field artillery material than with any other form of fighting equipment.”--Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, 1911.... “A full supply of this type of material must be stored and ready for use before war is undertaken.”--W. W. Wotherspoon, Major General, Chief of Staff, U. S. A., November 15, 1914, Annual Report.

[66] It has been said authoritatively that if all the guns of the army should have to go into action at any one time there is not enough ammunition for a single day’s engagement, even at a conservative estimate of the amount of shells expended by each gun. In some of the European battles, more guns than our whole supply were engaged on each side.

[67] There is only enough material on hand to keep our present mobile army (at its present low peace strength) in the field for six months in the event of war. There is nothing to spare.

[68] Cavalry troops in the regular army as now constituted are under law rarely filled to a number of more than 70, while their proper complement is 100.

[69] A comparatively small number of modern liners would be enough to aggregate this net tonnage.

[70] Based on foreign army calculations.

[71] Modern artillery is almost invariably concealed. Experienced soldiers would suspect that an infantry regiment hardly would be without at least one battery, and more probably two, of field artillery support.

[72] “Unless provision is made in the near future for additional Coast Artillery personnel, it will be necessary to reduce the garrisons to mere caretaker establishments at some of the defenses.”--E. M. Weaver, Brigadier General, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., September 19, 1914, Annual Report.

[73] Actual manning detail for New Bedford defenses, 1914, one company regular Coast Artillery.

[74] There is said to be only one firm in the United States that can produce the rifling tools, jigs, gauges and other exact and intricate machinery needed to make a rifle. Consequently, the loss of the Springfield Arsenal would be disastrous.

[75] Official statistics.

[76] Large numbers of guns and large numbers of ammunition are liable to capture and destruction.... To start into field operations with the expectation that the proper proportions will be maintained without large sources of manufacture, would be fallacious.”--Chief of Staff, U. S. A., 1914.--See Report on Militia Organization, 1914, for comments on the great loss and destruction of equipment and material.

[77] Some observers of the European War declare that the reserve of one gun per man has proved itself necessary for the proper equipment of an active army.

[78] “He,” i.e., Secretary Garrison, present Secretary of War, “asks for an increase in the number of officers to take the place, in time of peace, of such officers as are serving with the militia or on detached duty, and in time of war to assist in the organization of the citizens’ army. The necessity of these requests is self-evident. Yet the House of Representatives has completely ignored each and every one of them, and the pending appropriation bill contains no provision for them.”--Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War.

[79] The scandal caused in 1898 by appointing incompetent civilians to the Quartermaster’s Department and the ensuing difficulties with commissariat, etc., have been the subject of much discussion.

[80] Our War Department has asked for only about five guns to every thousand men, but has not yet been able to have this quota finished. European practice has been to increase the number of guns to the thousand rifles and sabers steadily. Before the war it was at least five. It has been enormously increased as a result of the experience gained during the recent fighting, in which it was established that infantry or cavalry without absolutely dominating gun protection were hopelessly weak.

[81] These movements of advance bodies and patrols have been carefully worked out as a campaign problem. The lines of advance mentioned are those that present themselves to military observers as the ones most likely to be selected by an invading army moving toward Boston from a base on Narragansett Bay or Buzzards Bay.

[82] So laid down as the most likely movement to be made by invading armies with heavy cavalry supports.

[83] The elementary tactics for the procedure of every army that has to hold any extended territory.

[84] Worked out from a consensus of opinions and plans by tactical experts both here and abroad.

[85] “When the defenses outside the Continental United States are provided for, there will remain for home gun defenses 176 officers and 7,543 enlisted men, _which is about one-third of one relief_.”--Page 15, Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., for year ended June 30, 1914.

[86] “The searchlight project is approximately 50 per cent. completed.... The fire-control system may be said to be approximately 60 per cent. completed.... Installation of power generating and distributing equipment is 25 per cent. completed.... Submarine mine structures are 83 per cent. completed.”--Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., for year ended June 30, 1914.

[87] Regular manning detail for Boston defenses, twelve companies of Coast Artillery. These have seven systems of defense to maintain. The companies are not enlisted to their full strength. Even if they were, there would be less than two hundred men to each defense. This is not sufficient for any sustained action at the big guns alone. A sufficiently energetic enemy, even if he might not damage the works, could wear out the men by incessant attack for a few days and nights. There certainly would not be men enough to provide for outlying defense against landing parties.

[88] These are all vitally necessary parts of the defense of the Boston harbor forts. They are only a small part of what would have to be done in case of naval attack. The data used here are not theoretical. They have been developed by actual test.

[89] So developed in sea and land maneuvers undertaken for the purpose of establishing the very points here mentioned.

[90] It is estimated, from careful calculations, that to put out of action a searchlight at night with shipfire at a range of 6,000 yards, more than a thousand shots from 3-inch guns should be required. The fact is mentioned here to illustrate the great strength of harbor defenses against fire from the sea, if there be enough mobile troops on the land to prohibit destruction by landing parties.

[91] That the American harbor defense system and construction are of the very highest type, has been acknowledged many times by the technical experts of the world. More than once the author has heard foreign officers express the belief that they were practically impregnable to naval fire, providing they were fully supplied and equipped with the material necessary for continuous defense.

[92] A generous system of reliefs is imperative in harbor defenses during war. Peace time maneuvers have developed the fact that the mere strain of incessant watchfulness while waiting for an enemy who may appear at unexpected points suddenly, is so great that unless the men have frequent relief, they cannot exert that concentrated energy which is needed instantly in the crisis.

[93] This system of night attack has been developed and tested by actual trial, and is such as is now laid down for battle practice in the tactics of most navies. “The ... squadron will enter ..., and will maneuver at range of about 9,000 yards from Fort ..., firing heavily, to induce the defense to expend as much ammunition as possible.”--Extract from actual orders in author’s possession, given to a squadron of battleships and cruisers for night attack. It will be noted that this distance is less than one-half the range of the 12-inch rifled mortars in a harbor defense battery.

[94] The search-light system, recognized as a vital part of harbor defense by the Endicott Board on harbor defense (appointed in 1885) has grown steadily in importance with the steady increase in ship armament and ship speed. A thoroughly efficient installation of search-lights for modern harbors demands as much scientific calculation and interlocation as do the gun-systems. If the search-lights cannot infallibly find any vessel that may approach within range, the guns of the fortification are useless.

[95] The inadequacy of the installation has been made the subject of continuous reports. It is a fact that a few years ago, when a mock attack on one of the most important Atlantic defenses was ordered by the War Department, the commander had to requisition search-lights from other coast defenses, and that during the maneuvers the search-light defense, because of its inadequacy and temporary character, failed at several critical points, permitting attacking ships to come within less than 4,000 yards of one important battery.