THE FRUITS OF OUR DELAY
March 26, 1918
The shameful betrayal of the Allies’ cause by the Russian Bolshevists and the delay and incompetence of the American Government have given the Germans a free hand for their drive against the British army. England is at this moment fighting our battles just as much as she is fighting her own, yet, although three years have passed since the Lusitania was sunk and a year since Congress declared that we had “formally†entered the war, America is still merely an onlooker.
We owe this ignoble position to the folly and the procrastination of our Government and its inveterate tendency to substitute rhetoric for action. We have a gallant little army across the ocean, but it is smaller than the Belgian army. We are not holding a greater extent of the battle front than the army of little Portugal. We have at the front no airplanes or field artillery and very few machine guns except those we have gotten from the French. Even the clothes of our troops are mainly obtained from the English. Yet we are the richest nation and one of the most populous nations on the earth.
Our Government is responsible for our dreadful shortcomings, but the responsibility is shared by all the foolish creatures who have willfully blinded themselves to these shortcomings and have clamored against the faithful public servants, like SenatorChamberlain, who laid bare the shortcomings for the purpose of remedying them. The truly patriotic men in this crisis have been the men who have fearlessly told the truth in order to speed up the war. The other men who have decried the truth-telling as “crying over spilt milk†have been profoundly unpatriotic. It was the failure to point out how much milk had been spilt which was primarily responsible for the failure to stop further spilling of milk.
In the face of the terrible battle which our English allies are now waging, and in view of the fact that for three years and a half we have owed our safety to the British fleet and to the French spirit typified by Premier Clemenceau, let the American people now demand that the Government recognize the need of instant and efficient action. Let our Government quit flirting with the Bolshevists at home and abroad. Let it declare war on Turkey at once. Let it acknowledge its dreadful failures and delays and henceforth act with all possible speed. Let it manfully endeavor to make our weight felt in the war this year. Let it stop boasting about the future and begin to act in the present.
Let the Government use common sense. It has talked magnificently about having twenty thousand airplanes ready in June, but it has not one American war plane at the front to-day. Let it quit boasting and act. Let it push the shipping programme by night and day. Let it give France and England the men they so sorely need.
Our Government has delayed until the Allies havebeen brought to the brink of destruction. Let it act at once lest the chance for action pass completely by.