The war in Europe, once ended, will likewise find such virile armies with warships and transport service comparatively unimpaired and aggregating, as to the latter, millions of net tons.
The teaching of history shows that so long as human nature remains unchanged, war cannot be eliminated as a factor in human affairs. Meanwhile, and doubtless for centuries to follow, war is inevitable as a recurrent consequence of the ceaseless operation of an inexorable law of progress toward world unity under that ultimate governmental form that shall approach nearest to the laws of humanity and righteousness.
As our own experience in the Spanish-American war abundantly proves, intervening oceans lost to our command by reason of the insufficient strength of our navy, offer no obstacles to the landing on our shore of a first armed enemy relay sufficient to secure a gateway through which others would rapidly follow. To this we should be able to oppose only an available mobile force--at present little more than double the police force which is deemed somewhat inadequate to preserve order and protect life and property in the City of New York.
This book thus simply stages here in New England, the heart of our industrial efficiency for war or peace, scenes the counterpart of those occurring abroad from day to day, against the actual happening of which in our own land there now intervenes a wholly inadequate navy and but the skeleton of an army, as in the days of the late Thomas Nast.[1]
Brigadier General U. S. Army (Resigned); President Army League of the U. S.
PAGE “It Was Not Because They Knew How to Fight; It Was Because They Meant to Stay There Till They Died” _Frontispiece_
“Days Before, the American Fleet Had Steamed Out of Long Island Sound” facing 14
“There Were Ships Moving Toward the Long Island Coast as if to Threaten New York” 28
“There in Connecticut Lay the Army ... Miles of Tents Separated by Geometrically Straight Rows of Company Streets” 33
“The Dragons of Twelve-Inch Mortars that Squatted in Hidden Pits” 48
“Destroyers Moved Straight for the Harbor in a Long Line” 60
“He Steered His Craft, Awash, from Behind Fisher’s Island, at Dawn” 83
“For Miles Beyond that the Enemy’s Patrols Had Occupied Points ...” 92