The Conquest of America | Page 7

in the present great conflict she may quite conceivably turn to America for the vast money indemnity that she will be unable to exact from her depleted enemies in Europe; and if Germany loses or half loses she may decide to retrieve her desperate fortunes in this tempting and undefended field. With her African empire hopelessly lost to her, where more naturally than to facile America will she turn for her coveted place in the sun?
And if not Germany, it may well be some other great nation that will attack us. Perhaps Great Britain! Especially if our growing merchant marine threatens her commercial supremacy of the sea, which is her life. Perhaps Japan! whose attack on Germany in 1914 shows plainly that she merely awaits favourable opportunity to dispose of any of her rivals in the Orient. Let us bear in mind that, in the opinion of the world's greatest authorities, we Americans are to-day totally unprepared to defend ourselves against a first-class foreign power. My story aims to show this, and high officers in our army and navy, who have assisted me in the preparation of this book and to whom I am grateful, assure me that I have set forth the main facts touching our military defencelessness without exaggeration. C. M.
WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY, 1916.
CHAPTER I
I WITNESS THE BLOWING UP OF THE PANAMA CANAL
In my thirty years' service as war correspondent of the London Times I have looked behind the scenes of various world happenings, and have known the thrill of personally facing some great historic crises; but there is nothing in my experience so dramatic, so pregnant with human consequences, as the catastrophe of April 27, 1921, when the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal were destroyed by dynamite.
At that moment I was seated on the shaded, palm-bordered piazza of the Grand Hotel at Colon, discussing with Rear-Admiral Thomas Q. Allyn of the United States Navy the increasing chances that America might find herself plunged into war with Japan. For weeks the clouds had been darkening, and it was now evident that the time had come when the United States must either abandon the Monroe Doctrine and the open door in China, or fight to maintain these doctrines.
"Mr. Langston," the Admiral was saying, "the situation is extremely grave. Japan intends to carry out her plans of expansion in Mexico and China, and possibly in the Philippines; there is not a doubt of it. Her fleet is cruising somewhere in the Pacific,--we don't know where,--and our Atlantic fleet passed through the Canal yesterday, as you know, to make a demonstration of force in the Pacific and to be ready for--for whatever may come."
His hands closed nervously, and he studied the horizon with half-shut eyes.
In the course of our talk Admiral Allyn had admitted that the United States was woefully unprepared for conflict with a great power, either on sea or land.
"The blow will be struck suddenly," he went on, "you may be sure of that. Our military preparations are so utterly inadequate that we may suffer irreparable harm before we can begin to use our vast resources. You know when Prussia struck Austria in 1866 the war was over in three months. When Germany struck France in 1870 the decisive battle, Sedan, was fought forty-seven days later. When Japan struck Russia, the end was foreseen within four or five months."
"It wasn't so in the great European war," I remarked.
"Why not? Because England held the mastery of the sea. But we hold the mastery of nothing. Our fleet is barely third among the nations and we are frightfully handicapped by our enormous length of coast line and by this canal."
"The Canal gives us a great advantage, doesn't it? I thought it doubled the efficiency of our fleet?"
"It does nothing of the sort. The Canal may be seized. It may be put out of commission for weeks or months by landslides or earthquakes. A few hostile ships of the Queen Elizabeth class lying ten miles off shore at either end, with ranges exactly fixed, or a good shot from an aeroplane, could not only destroy the Canal's insufficient defences, but could prevent our fleet from coming through, could hold it, useless, in the Atlantic when it might be needed to save California or useless in the Pacific when it might be needed to save New York. If it happened when war began that one half of our fleet was in the Atlantic and the other half in the Pacific, then the enemy could keep these two halves separated and destroy them one by one."
"I suppose you mean that we need two fleets?"
"Of course we do--a child can see it--if we are to guard our two seaboards. We must have a fleet in the Atlantic strong enough to resist any probable attack from