Page:The web (1919).djvu/44

 It is all very well to have confidence in our government and to believe in a general way that it cannot err and cannot fail, but government in peace and government in war times are two distinct and separate propositions. The sheer truth is that there was absolutely no arm or branch of our government which was prepared for war. In part, we never did get prepared for it, so far as essential equipment of a military sort is concerned. In artillery, in aeroplanes, in various sorts of munitions and of equipment, we were not ready for war when the Armistice was signed. We had no adequate military or intelligence system, and the splendid force built up as M. I. D. was built after the war was begun and not before. In the same way—although, of course, we had the American faith and respect for our courts, believing them to be in some way supernal institutions which could not err and which needed no attention on the part of the people—our judiciary also was unprepared for war. It never would have been prepared for war—never in the world—had it not been for the American Protective League. It is certainly a most curious, almost an uncanny story, how the Minute Men of America once more saved the day, responding instantly to a great national need, not knowing overmuch of this new game, but each resolved to fight—each, if you please, resolving in unheroic and undramatic way—in much the same frame of mind of those men at Verdun who wrote on the page of martial history the clarion phrase, "They shall not pass!"

The enemy did not pass in Chicago, nor in New York, nor in San Francisco, nor in any place between. Not prepared—a whole nation in shirtsleeves at the plow—we became prepared. We fought with one hand, while, with the other, we buttoned on the new tunic for which we had not yet been measured, and in Army, Navy, Aviation, Intelligence, Supply, Motor Transport and Department of Justice, we learned as we fought—and won. The organization of the American Protective League reveals a curious phase of life in this republic. It could not have taken place in any other country of the world.

"A word as to the Chicago organization is in order," says the writer of this first report of D. J. on A. P. L.