Out To Win | Page 6

We've got four years to do this job."
That is the spirit of America. Her soldiers give her four years, but to
judge from the scale of her preparations she might be planning for
thirty.
America is out to win. I write this opening sentence in Paris where I am
temporarily absent from my battery, that I may record the story of
America's efforts in France. My purpose is to prove with facts that
America is in the war to her last dollar, her last man, and for just as
long as Germany remains unrepentant. Her strength is unexpended, her
spirit is un-war-weary. She has a greater efficient man-power for her
population than any nation that has yet entered the arena of hostilities.
Her resources are continental rather than national; it is as though a new
and undivided Europe had sprung to arms in moral horror against
Germany. She has this to add fierceness to her soul--the reproach that
she came in too late. That reproach is being wiped out rapidly by the
scarlet of self-imposed sacrifice. She did come in late--for that very
reason she will be the last of Germany's adversaries to withdraw.
She did not want to come in at all. Many of her hundred million
population emigrated to her shores out of hatred of militarism and to
escape from just such a hell as is now raging in Europe. At first it
seemed a far cry from Flanders to San Francisco. Philanthropy could
stretch that far, but not the risking of human lives. Moreover, the
American nation is not racially a unit; it is bound together by its ideal

quest for peaceful and democratic institutions. It was a difficult task for
any government to convince so remote a people that their destiny was
being made molten in the furnace of the Western Front; when once that
truth was fully apprehended the diverse souls of America leapt up as
one soul and declared for war. In so doing the people of the United
States forewent the freedom from fear that they had gained by their
journey across the Atlantic; they turned back in their tracks to smite
again with renewed strength and redoubled hate the old brutal
Fee-Fo-Fum of despotism, from whose clutches they thought they had
escaped.
America's is the case of The Terrible Meek; for two and a half years
she lulled Germany and astonished the Allies by her abnormal patience.
The most terrifying warriors of history have been peace-loving nations
hounded into hostility by outraged ideals. Certainly no nation was ever
more peace-loving than the American. To the boy of the Middle West
the fury of kings must have read like a fairy-tale. The appeal to armed
force was a method of compelling righteousness which his entire
training had taught him to view with contempt as obsolete. Yet never
has any nation mobilised its resources more efficiently, on so titanic a
scale, in so brief a space of time to re-establish justice with armed force.
The outraged ideal which achieved this miracle was the denial by the
Hun of the right of every man to personal liberty and happiness.
Few people guessed that America would fling her weight so utterly into
the winning of the Allied cause. Those who knew her best thought it
scarcely possible. Germany, who believed she knew her, thought it
least of all. German statesmen argued that America had too much to
lose by such a decision--too little to gain; the task of transporting men
and materials across three thousand miles of ocean seemed insuperable;
the differing traditions of her population would make it impossible for
her to concentrate her will in so unusual a direction. Basing their
arguments on a knowledge of the deep-seated selfishness of human
nature, Hun statesmen were of the fixed opinion that no amount of
insult would compel America to take up the sword.
Two and a half years before, those same statesmen made the same
mistake with regard to Great Britain and her Dominions. The British
were a race of shop-keepers; no matter how chivalrous the call, nothing
would persuade them to jeopardise their money-bags. If they did for

once leap across their counters to become Sir Galahads, then the
Dominions would seize that opportunity to secure their own base safety
and to fling the Mother Country out of doors. The British gave these
students of selfishness a surprise from which their military machine has
never recovered, when the "Old Contemptibles" held up the advance of
the Hun legions and won for Europe a breathing-space. The Dominions
gave them a second lesson in magnanimity when Canada's lads built a
wall with their bodies to block the drive at Ypres. America refuted
them for the third time, when she proved her love of world-liberty
greater than her