History of the World War | Page 8

figured in the ethnological total.
There were representatives of many Asiatic races, including not only
the volunteers from the native states of India, but elements from the
French colony in Cochin China, with Annam, Cambodia, Tonkin, Laos,
and Kwang Chau Wan. England and France both contributed many
African tribes, including Arabs from Algeria and Tunis, Senegalese,
Saharans, and many of the South African races. The red races of North
America were represented in the armies of both Canada and the United
States, while the Maoris, Samoans, and other Polynesian races were
likewise represented. And as, in the American Army, there were men of
German, Austrian, and Hungarian descent, and, in all probability,

contingents also of Bulgarian and Turkish blood, it may be said that
Foch commanded an army representing the whole human race, united
in defense of the ideals of the Allies.
It will be seen that more than ten times the number of neutral persons
were engulfed in the maelstrom of war. Millions of these suffered from
it during the entire period of the conflict, four years three months and
fifteen days, a total of 1,567 days. For almost four years Germany
rolled up a record of victories on land and of piracies on and under the
seas.
[Illustration: TERRITORY OCCUPIED BY THE ALLIES UNDER
THE ARMISTICE OF NOVEMBER 11, 1918 (East/West: Brussels to
Berlin; North South: Keil to Bern)] Dotted area, invaded territory of
Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine to be evacuated in
fourteen days; area in small squares, part of Germany west of the Rhine
to be evacuated in twenty-five days and occupied by Allied and U. S.
troops; lightly shaded area to east of Rhine, neutral zone; black
semi-circles bridge-heads of thirty kilometers radius in the neutral zone
to be occupied by Allied armies.
Little by little, day after day, piracies dwindled as the murderous
submarine was mastered and its menace strangled. On the land, the
Allies, under the matchless leadership of Marshal Ferdinand Foch and
the generous co-operation of Americans, British, French and Italians,
under the great Generals Pershing, Haig, Petain and Diaz, wrested the
initiative from von Hindenburg and Ludendorf, late in July, 1918. Then,
in one hundred and fifteen days of wonderful strategy and the fiercest
fighting the world has ever witnessed, Foch and the Allies closed upon
the Germanic armies the jaws of a steel trap. A series of brilliant
maneuvers dating from the battle of Chateau-Thierry in which the
Americans checked the Teutonic rush, resulted in the defeat and rout on
all the fronts of the Teutonic commands.
In that titanic effort, America's share was that of the final deciding
factor. A nation unjustly titled the "Dollar Nation," believed by
Germany and by other countries to be soft, selfish and wasteful,
became over night hard as tempered steel, self-sacrificing with an

altruism that inspired the world and thrifty beyond all precedent in
order that not only its own armies but the armies of the Allies might be
fed and munitioned.
Leading American thought and American action, President Wilson
stood out as the prophet of the democracies of the world. Not only did
he inspire America and the Allies to a military and naval effort beyond
precedent, but he inspired the civilian populations of the world to
extraordinary effort, efforts that eventually won the war. For the
decision was gained quite as certainly on the wheat fields of Western
America, in the shops and the mines and the homes of America as it
was upon the battle-field.
This effort came in response to the following appeal by the President:
These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, besides
fighting--the things without which mere fighting would be fruitless:
We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and
our seamen not only, but also for a large part of the nations with whom
we have now made common cause, in whose support and by whose
sides we shall be fighting;
We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our shipyards to carry to
the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will every
day be needed there; and--
Abundant materials out of our fields and our mines and our factories
with which not only to clothe and equip our own forces on land and sea
but also to clothe and support our people for whom the gallant fellows
under arms can no longer work, to help clothe and equip the armies
with which we are co-operating in Europe, and to keep the looms and
manufactories there in raw material;
Coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of
hundreds of factories across the sea;
Steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both here and there;

Rails for worn-out railways