st nine months of 1918 no less than
eighty-three destroyers were launched, as against sixty-two for the
preceding nine years. Submarine chasers of a special design were built
and many private yachts taken over and adapted to the war against the
submarine. During the course of the war two battleships and twenty-eight
submarines were completed. Expansion in naval shipbuilding plans was
paralleled by the construction of giant docks; by camps sufficient for
the training of two hundred thousand men; and by a naval aircraft
factory from which a seaplane was turned out seven months after work on
the factory was begun. Naval aviators returning from the Channel coasts
superintended flying schools and undertook the patrol of our Atlantic
seaboard.

If much of these military preparations was not translated into
accomplishment before the war ended, it was because the United States was
preparing wisely for a long struggle and it seemed necessary that the
foundations should be broad and deep. "America was straining her energies
towards a goal," said the Director of Munitions, "toward the realization
of an ambition which, in the production of munitions, dropped the year
1918 almost out of consideration altogether, which indeed did not bring
the full weight of American men and _materiel_ into the struggle even in
1919, but which left it for 1920, if the enemy had not yet succumbed to
the growing American power, to witness the maximum strength of the United
States in the field." It was the knowledge of this preparation which, to
some extent, helped to convince the German General Staff of the futility
of further resistance and thus to bring the war to an early end.

The dependence of the United States upon the Allies for equipment and
munitions does not deserve the vitriolic anathemas of certain critics.
The country did not enter the struggle as if it expected to fight the war
single-handed. Distribution of labor and supplies between the United
States and the Allies was merely a wise and economic measure. At their
own request, the Allies were furnished with that which they most
needed--money, food, and man-power. In return they provided the United
States with the artillery and machine guns which they could spare and
which they could manufacture more cheaply and rapidly. Finally there is
the outstanding fact, of which America may always be proud, that this
heterogeneous democracy, organized, so far as organization existed, for
the pursui