Page:William Howard Taft - America Can't Quit (1919).djvu/14



The Kaiser had the dream of universal dominion, and to assist him in that he took this wonderful military establishment and enlarged it and that enlargement went on from year to year, conscription of two years for all the youth of the Empire, with a reserve of these trained soldiers after that service by for six or seven years in addition. Strategic railways, great manufacture of ammunition, artillery, small arms, explosives, everything that science could suggest, or experience dictate with reference to making that military establishment the strongest in the world. The Germans stimulated action in their allies, Austria and Italy; conscription went on in both those countries. France and Russia were aroused for fear of aggression, and so they went on year after year and decade after decade until in 1914 these armaments had reached an enormous figure, far beyond anything ever contemplated.

That brought about the war. Its evil effects were four-fold. It loaded the poor people of Europe with overwhelming taxation. It took out of the life of all the youth two or three years of their producing capacity. It gave a truculence, a chip-on-the-shoulder disposition and temptation to war, a bullying tendency to the Kaiser, who felt the strength of this military establishment so that when he went into conference with other nations and came out winner, he told his people that he won by standing forth in shining armour, by rattling his sword in its scabbard. And when 1914 came, he had won in the race. Russia had not completed her strategic railways, France had not completed her plan of artillery or conscription. And he said, "Now is the time to strike. Our enemies are in condition where we can strike them and win." And when the Serbian difficulty came on he told the Emperor, Francis Joseph, "I will go north on a vacation, apparently, and then you put in the ultimatum and when I hear of it I will be surprised and I will hurry back," and he did. "But," he said, "No conference with other nations." And there was none. And war was on.

It brought on the war, this race for armament. And the worst feature of that enormous armament was the character of the campaign that it brought about. Never in history have we had, since the days of Attila, the Hun, such savagery; instruments of destruction were directed not against armies only, but against old men, against women and against children. Explosives, dropped from the clouds, made no discrimination between combatants and non-combatants. Explosives