Thursday 11 January 2018

100 Years Ago - USA






LAUNCH OF AN AMERICAN DREADNOUGHT

CHICAGO'S FIRST DRAFT MARCHING DOWN MICHIGAN A VENUE

THE 4th OF JULY, 1917, IN PARIS.

The American Colours at the Invalides on Independence Day, the first detachment of American Troop ;

having landed in France on June 25th
American troops marching past Buckingham Palace, August 15, 1917


The United States and the war

The presence of American soldiers at the front will undoubtedly quicken the spirit of all the Allies and further depress the enemy

Today ten million citizens of the United States are summoned by their country to register as soldiers in the cause of freedom. The Germans have been working hard to prevent them from answering the call. Demonstrations against the law and its enforcement have been organized and financed, but the result has been to fill “real Americans,” who include many millions of German origin, with disgust at the disloyal movement. The Balfour Mission has helped to open the eyes of many Americans as to the true significance for mankind of a German victory or a German peace, but the Germans themselves have taught the lesson, and continue to teach it best.
The letter from the Chancellor to General von Gebsattel which we quoted the other day shows how utterly apart are the ideals of the two nations. The Chancellor, it will be remembered, paid homage to the services of the Pan-German League. What were the services he singled out for approbation? That in the years of peace before the war, when Germany was loud in protest of her devotion to peace, and was simulating homage to it at The Hague and in countless dispatches, speeches, and articles, devised to throw her intended dupes and victims off their guard, this League had “raised the national will to power, and had combated the theory of the brotherhood of peoples”. In other words, the Pan-German League in a season of peace laboured with all its strength against the very conception of international relationships which Americans most highly, prize and which is the ideal aim of President Wilson’s foreign policy. And it is the boundlessly aggressive war aims of this body which the Chancellor has promised to appreciate “after the complete overthrow of all our enemies.”
Against these aims, and against the whole moral and political theory on which they are based, the Allies drew the sword, and America now draws it with them. Effective military help, it seems, may be expected earlier than was supposed. That will be a bitter disappointment to the Germans who have been assured that American aid could not reach the Allies until the conflict had been decided, just as they were again and again comforted by official and semi-official assurances that in no circumstances could a British conscript army be trained, and equipped in time. It is now probable, our Washington Correspondent tells us, that General Pershing’s Expeditionary Force will be promptly followed by from 100,000 to 120,000 men of the National Guard. They will be called up for Federal service next month, and as they correspond to our Territorials, and many of them have had the training of service oii the Mexican border, they will be fit to sail within a relatively short period. An equal number, it is thought, may be dispatched in the winter, so that when the recruits from the first conscription of 500,000 are ready for the field next year they will come to supplement some 250,000 trained troops who have preceded them under the Stars and Stripes. The presence of American soldiers at the front will undoubtedly quicken the spirit of all the Allies and further depress the enemy, while it will bring home to all citizens of the Republic with a new vividness their direct and immediate concern in the great struggle.
The message from Petrograd which the distinguished Czech leader, Professor Masaryk, sends us, lays stress upon the importance of sending American troops to France. Thoroughly devoted, as he is, to the principles of democracy and of nationality, he does not shrink from telling the other Allies that they will be prudent not to expect the Russians to do more at present than to maintain their positions and to hold a certain number of the enemy on their fronts. The efforts of M Kerensky may result in far more satisfactory results, but it is safest not to go beyond this sober judgment. The Professor does not hesitate to draw from it the conclusion that “an American Army in France is necessary.” He is satisfied that its presence there and the energetic prosecution of the war on the other fronts will exercise’ a great and healthy influence upon the Russian Army and people. The peasantry, he assures us, who furnish the great bulk of the Army, are not pacifists. If they and many other Russians sde that the other Allies, including the Americans, refuse to listen to talk of a premature peace and to daily with what he calls “the abstract, “unpractical, political programme of pacifist visionaries,” the Russian masses, he believes, will rally to the common policy. The processions and prayers “for Russia in the present days of trial’” which thousands took part in in Petrograd on Sunday, may indicate that a new and very potent factor is entering into the Russian situation.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/general-pershings-army-zb85fx3gx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_January%2010,%202018&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_2767664_118


General Pershing’s Army

The meeting between the American General in command of the transports and the French officers on the quay was of a most friendly character

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