f it--the American, too. It demands to know what is being
done. It was not silent in the Civil War. From the time McClellan
started forming his new army until the Peninsular campaign was six
months, if I remember rightly. Von Moltke, who built the German staff
system, said that the Civil War was a strife between two armed mobs;
though I think if he had brought his Prussians to Virginia a year later,
in '63, which would have ended the Civil War there and then, he
would have had an interesting time before he returned to Berlin.

The British new army was not to face another new army, but the most
thoroughly organized military machine that the world has ever known.
Not only this, but the Germans, with a good start and their system
established, were not standing still and waiting for the British to catch
up, so that the two could begin again even, but were adapting
themselves to the new features of the war. They had been the world's
arms-makers. With vast munition plants ready, their feudal socialistic
organization could make the most of their resources in men and
material.

More than two million Englishmen went to the recruiting depots,
though no invader had set foot on their soil, and offered to serve in
France or wherever they were needed overseas. If no magic could
put rifles in their hands or summon batteries of guns to follow them on
the march, the fact of their volunteering, when they knew by watching
from day to day the drudgery that it meant and what trench warfare
was, shows at least that the race is not yet decadent. Perhaps we
should have done better. No one can know until we try it. If liberal
treatment by the government and the course set by Secretary Root
means anything, our staff ought to be better equipped for such a task
than the English were; this, too, only war can decide.

Whatsoever of pessimism appeared in the British Press was
telegraphed to America. Pessimism was not permitted in the German
Press. Imagine Germany holding control of the cable and allowing
press dispatches from Germany to pass over it with the freedom that
England allowed. Imagine Germany having waited as long as
England before making cotton contraband. The British Press
demanded information from the government which the German Press
would never have dared to ask. I have known an American
correspondent, fed out of hand in Germany and thankful for anything
that the fearful German war-machine might vouchsafe, turning a
belligerent wh