THE INVASION
OF AMERICA

A FACT STORY BASED ON THE IN-
EXORABLE MATHEMATICS OF WAR

BY
JULIUS W. MULLER
Author of “The A. B. C. of Preparedness.”

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
1916

Copyright, 1915
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

PREFACE

In January, 1915, Mr. G. T. Viskniskki, manager of The Wheeler Syndicate, asked me: “Assuming that an enemy landed an army on the American coast, what could we actually do with our actual present resources used to their fullest possible extent?”

This story was written as the answer.

I hesitated a long time before I did it. I feared and fear still the dangers to which the possession of military power drives Nations, and which are particularly great in the case of a Republic. The obvious danger that a Nation like ours if powerfully armed may be too easily impelled to war, is great enough. But still more grave is the danger of a deep and fatal change in our National spirit, our ideals and our attitudes toward the world outside of our own borders.

Therefore when I did write the story I did it with no unworthy design, and not for the sake of taking advantage of the popular interest in the subject.

The story was written without any idea of suggesting that any Nation or group of Nations may mean to attack us. It was written with no desire to “scare” the people of the United States into giving thought to the army and navy. I should hold it a sad reflection on our country to assume that it must be aroused by terror or hatred into setting its house in order.

I beg my readers to accept the story in this spirit. There are eight words, uttered by one of the greatest of simple men. They are: “With malice toward none, with charity toward all.” Let that spirit dominate whatever this Nation may do for military Preparedness, and there will be no danger that the Preparedness shall become Bellicosity and curse the land.

As to the story itself, I need say only that I have tried scrupulously to avoid twisting any fact to prove a point; and I have cited no fact, even the most unimportant, without verifying it by reference to the original source. The description of the method of attack by the invading foreign armies is not based on any of the conflicting tales that have come to us from the European scene of war. In fact, the present war has been almost ignored. The foreign army statistics and other facts are based on undoubtedly authoritative official and semi-official publications issued during times of peace, on a study of the great peace maneuvers, and on information possessed by our own military experts.

Similarly, in treating of our own army and its situation I abstained wholly from using any of the tempting material that has been made so freely available since the beginning of the agitation for military preparedness, and have used, instead, the simple and surely unbiassed facts presented to Congress in responsible official reports before the European War centered American interest on our own condition.

The book will demonstrate for itself that the “story element” is not made to depend on invented battles or imagined catastrophes. Facing the fact that war is an iron game, wherein the moves are predicated inexorably on the possession of the material in men and appliances, the fiction takes no liberties save in trying to present a living picture of what such a war, falling on an army so unprepared, will be in such a country as ours.

The technical soundness of the book is left by me to the verdict of technical experts. The story was planned, drafted, written and rewritten with the benefit of unusually authoritative assistance and under technical coöperation rarely granted to books of this nature. My thanks are due to men who gave freely of their knowledge, professional ability and time without even asking that credit should be given to them in return.

The Author.

INTRODUCTION

Let us be safe rather than sorry! Every scene so graphically described by the writer of this book will find its duplicate in the mind of the reader who has kept himself informed of the occurrences in the European fields of war.

In war the law of Nations, conserving the laws of humanity, is superseded by the law of necessity which is invoked and interpreted as to life and property by the belligerent concerned, to excuse every act committed.

Four years of costly and exhausting Civil War found us able to mass on the Mexican border a magnificently trained and virile army to execute our mandate of withdrawal (under the Monroe Doctrine) of a so-called Ruler by Divine Right and his government sustained by foreign arms. From that task the Civil War armies of both sides, trained to look with contempt upon obstacles hitherto regarded as insurmountable, turned and accomplished the construction of trans-Continental railroads that would not otherwise have been built for another generation, thus inaugurating an era of unparalleled national development.

The war in Europe, once ended, will likewise find such virile armies with warships and transport service comparatively unimpaired and aggregating, as to the latter, millions of net tons.

The teaching of history shows that so long as human nature remains unchanged, war cannot be eliminated as a factor in human affairs. Meanwhile, and doubtless for centuries to follow, war is inevitable as a recurrent consequence of the ceaseless operation of an inexorable law of progress toward world unity under that ultimate governmental form that shall approach nearest to the laws of humanity and righteousness.

As our own experience in the Spanish-American war abundantly proves, intervening oceans lost to our command by reason of the insufficient strength of our navy, offer no obstacles to the landing on our shore of a first armed enemy relay sufficient to secure a gateway through which others would rapidly follow. To this we should be able to oppose only an available mobile force—at present little more than double the police force which is deemed somewhat inadequate to preserve order and protect life and property in the City of New York.

This book thus simply stages here in New England, the heart of our industrial efficiency for war or peace, scenes the counterpart of those occurring abroad from day to day, against the actual happening of which in our own land there now intervenes a wholly inadequate navy and but the skeleton of an army, as in the days of the late Thomas Nast.[1]

John A. Johnston,
Brigadier General U. S. Army (Resigned);
President Army League of the U. S.
Washington, D. C. November 1, 1915.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE INVASION OF AMERICA

I
THE BEGINNINGS

“Washington, D. C., March 20.—The President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, has ordered a grand joint maneuver of the fleet, the regular army and the Organized Militia (National Guard) of Divisions 5, 6, 7, and 8, comprising New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.”

No comment from official circles accompanied this dispatch when it was printed in the newspapers. None was needed. Ever since the Great Coalition had been formed, America had faced the probability of war.

In the White House there was a conference of the Cabinet, attended by the Chief of Staff of the United States Army and the Admiral who was President of the General Board of the Navy.

“The regular troops are moving,” reported the Chief of Staff. “Every last man of ’em is on the way east.” He laughed grimly. “I take no credit for it. The trains of the country can do it without changing a schedule. Do you know, gentlemen, that even the smaller roads often handle an excursion crowd as big as this whole army of ours?”[2]

The Secretary of War shrugged his shoulders. “Despite all the talk of recent years, despite all our official reports, I doubt if the people realize it.”

“Make them!” said the President. “Drive it home to them, before war is brought to our coasts.” He turned to the two chiefs of staff. “Give the newspapers a statement about the ‘maneuvers’ that will give the public the cold truth.”

“The fleet,” said the Admiral to the newspaper correspondents an hour later, “is assumed to be an enemy fleet too powerful for opposition. It will attempt to land at least 100,000 fighting forces somewhere on the Atlantic Coast. It is conceded that an actual enemy planning invasion would not come with less than that number. It is conceded also that a sufficiently powerful fleet can transport that number, and more, safely across the ocean. The Navy, further, concedes the landing.”[3]

What Our Harbor Defenses Cannot Prevent

“But our coast defenses, Admiral!” spoke the correspondent of a Boston newspaper. “We’ve been told that those affairs with their monster 12-inch rifled steel cannon and their 12-inch mortar batteries, and mines and things, are as powerful as any in the world, and can stand off any fleet!”

“They are not coast defenses, sir,” answered the Chief of Staff. “They are harbor defenses. They can stop warships from entering our great harbors. They cannot prevent an enemy from landing on the coast out of their range. And on the Atlantic Coast of the United States there are hundreds of miles of utterly undefended beach where any number of men can land as easily as if they were trippers landing for a picnic. All those miles of shore, and all the country behind them, lie as open to invasion,” he held out his hand, “as this.”

“Then what’s the use of them?”

“They furnish a protected harbor within which our own navy could take refuge if defeated or scattered,” said the Admiral. “They make our protected cities absolutely secure against a purely naval attack. No navy could readily pass the defenses, and probably none would venture so close as even to bombard them seriously. Certainly no fleet could bombard the cities behind them.

“Therefore,” he continued, “if an enemy wishes to bring war to us, he must land an army of invasion. Our harbor defenses force him to do that; but—having forced him to bring the army, their function ceases. They cannot prevent him from landing it. We have to do that with OUR army.”

“And could you stop him, or is that a military secret?” asked one of the party. He did it tentatively. He had been a war correspondent with foreign armies, and he did not expect a reply.

31,000 Men—Our Actual Mobile Army

“My dear boy,” answered the Chief of Staff promptly, “there probably isn’t a General Staff in the world that doesn’t know all about us, to the last shoe on the last army mule. We’ve got 88,000 men in the regular army, officers and privates.[4] Of these, you may count out 19,000. They are non-combatants—cooks, hospital staffs, teamsters, armorers, blacksmiths, and all the other odds and ends that an army must have, but can’t use for fighting. Now, cut out another 21,000 men. Those are fighting men, but they’re not here. They’re in Panama, Hawaii, the Philippines, China and Alaska—and we wish that we had about three times as many there, especially in Panama. How much does that leave? Forty-eight thousand? Very well. That’s what we’ve got here at home. But you’ll please count out another 17,000. They’re in the Coast Artillery, and have to man the harbor defenses of which we’ve been talking. Now you’ve got our mobile army—the actual force that we can put into the field and move around. Thirty-one thousand men.”

“A pretty straight tip,” agreed the Washington correspondents when they left the War Department. And as a straight tip they passed it on to their readers. So the Nation read the next morning how their army was being made ready. They read how four companies of one infantry regiment were gathered from Fort Lawton in Washington and another four companies from Fort Missoula in Montana. They read how still four other companies of the same regiment were at Madison Barracks in New York State.[5]

Their fifth Cavalry regiment, they learned, was being assembled like a picture puzzle by sending to Fort Myer, Virginia, for four troops of it, to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, for four more troops and a machine-gun platoon, and to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for the remaining four troops needed to form a full regiment.

There was field artillery whose component units were scattered, guns, horses and men, from the Vermont line to the Rio Grande. There were signal troops in Alaska, Texas, the Philippines and Panama.

This was no such mobilization as that giant mobilization in Europe when a continent had stood still for days and nights while the soldiers moved to their appointed places. So far scattered was the American army, so small were its units, that only a few civilians here and there could have noticed that troops were being moved at all.

More than one un-military citizen, looking over his newspaper that morning, cursed the politics that had maintained the absurd, worthless, wasteful army posts, and cursed himself for having paid no heed in the years when thoughtful men had called on him and his fellows to demand a change.

More than one citizen, when he left his house to go to his accustomed work, looked up at the sky and wondered, with a sinking heart, how soon it would seem black with war.

A Dreadnaught For Every Effective American Ship

It was a peaceful, soft sky, with baby clouds sleeping on its bland, blue arch. It radiated a tranquil warmth of coming spring; and under it the Atlantic Ocean lay equally peaceful, equally soft, equally tranquil.

Yet even as the people of America were taking up the day’s work, under that soft, tranquil sea a message was darting through the encrusted cables that swept away all peace.

Before noon, from sea to sea and from lakes to gulf, from the valley of the Hudson to the sierras of the Rockies, from Jupiter Inlet to the Philippines, ran the silent alarm of the telegraph that the Great Coalition had declared War!

Forty-eight hours later the combined battle-fleet of the four Nations put to sea with its army transports, bound for the American coast.[6]

The United States learned of its departure before its rear-guard had well cleared the land. The news did not come from American spies. It came from the Coalition itself.

War, the Chameleon, as Clausewitz called it, was presenting a new aspect of its unexpected phases. Not a cable had been cut following the declaration of war; and now the submarine cables and the wireless began to bring official news from the enemy—news addressed not to the American government, but to the American people.

It was news that told of an invulnerable fleet carrying more than a thousand rifled cannon of the largest caliber ever borne by ships in all the world. It told of enough battleships alone (and named them) to match the Republic’s fleet with a dreadnaught for every effective American ship of any kind.[7]

“Clever!” said the Secretary of State to the President. “It is Terrorism.”

“Don’t you think that you’d better reconsider your idea of letting this go through?” asked the Secretary of War. “It’s pretty dangerous stuff.”

“It’s the Nation’s War,” answered the President. “Will it demoralize our people to know the truth, even under the guise of terrorism? Do you know in whose hands I’m going to leave that question?”

“I can’t guess,” said the Secretary.

“In the hands of the newspapers,” replied the President.

The newspapers did not require to be told that the purpose of this novel news service from the enemy was Terrorism.

They answered Terrorism by Printing The News.

The Battle That Was Decided Years Before

Then the sea-coast cities began to call to Washington. By telegraph and telephone they demanded protection. It was a chorus from Maine to Georgia. Into the White House thronged the Congressmen.

“Defend us! Defend our people! Defend our towns!” said they.[8]

“We cannot do it!” said the Chief of Staff. “No wit of man can guess at what point of many hundred miles the enemy will strike. He may land on the New Jersey coast to take Philadelphia. He may land on Long Island to march at New York. He may strike at Boston. He may land between Boston and New York, on the Rhode Island or Massachusetts coasts, and keep us guessing whether he’ll turn west to New York or east to Boston. He may even strike for both at once, from there.”

“Then why not put men into each place to protect it?” demanded a Congressman. “Are these great cities to be left wide open?”

“You know how many regulars we’ve got. Do you know how many effective men we’ve pulled together by calling out those eastern divisions of organized militia? Their enrolled strength is 50,000 men. Their actual active strength as shown by attendance figures has been only about 30 per cent. of that; but we were lucky.[9] This danger has brought out all, probably, that were able to come. Still, there are less than 30,000 men; and not quite half of those have had good field training. We need them. We need them so badly that we’re putting them all in the first line. But it’s a little bit like—well, it’s murder.”

“Then you mean to say—!” The Congressman was aghast.

“I mean to say,” answered the Chief of Staff, with a set face, “that the army is going to take what it has, and do its best. But it’s going to do it in its own way. No enemy will dream of landing an invading army unless it is decisively, over-poweringly superior to our own. Now, Congressman, the only way for an inferior army to accomplish anything is to refuse battle until the chances are as favorable as they can be made. The inferior force must retire before a superior. It must force the invader to follow till he is weakened by steadily lengthening lines of communications. His difficulties of food-and ammunition-transport grow. He becomes involved in strange terrain. Last but not least, he gets more and more deeply into a land filled with a hostile population. But if we must defend a specific place at all hazards, then we must stand and give battle—well, it will be only one battle.”

“You mean—?”

“I mean that such a battle is decided already. It was decided years ago—when the country refused to prepare.”

“Good God, man!” The Congressman wiped his forehead with a trembling, fat hand. “I can’t go back and tell my people that.”

“You’d better not,” said the General, grimly.

No Men to Defend the Harbor Works

The unhappy man, and other unhappy men like him, went back to their constituencies knowing that now no campaign oratory would serve. Soften the news they must, and would; but they were the bearers of ill tidings, and they knew what comes to these.

The stricken cities heard. From all the great coast with its piled gold and silver, there arose a cry. Men shook their fists and cursed the machinery of politics that had worked through the blind years to hinder, to deceive and to waste. The Pork Barrel ceased all at once to be the great American joke.

“Throw men into our harbor defenses!” cried the cities of the coast. “Hold them! Hold them!”

“We have seventeen thousand trained regulars and 5,000 militia more or less experienced to handle these complex giants,” answered the Army, implacably. “There are 1,184 guns and mortars to handle. It leaves no men to defend the works. To throw the mobile army or any part of it into the defenses for mere protection is only to lock them up. The mobile army must defend the defenses from outside. If it cannot do it, they fall.”[10]

“Where is the mobile army?” cried the cities. “Send it here!” clamored each city.

There was no reply. Somewhere behind the Atlantic Coast lay the mobile army, silent.

The cities stared to sea. They listened for sounds from the sea. That serving ocean that had made them rich and great, had become suddenly terrible, a secret place where there brooded wrath. Every day great multitudes, stirred by helpless, vague impulse, moved toward the waterfronts and gazed down the harbors. Every rumble of blasts or heavy vehicle, every sudden great noise, startled the cities into a quick: “Listen! Cannons!”

The News the Fleet Sent Back

“Where is the fleet?” The question ran from Maine to Florida, till it, too, became one great clamor, storming at the White House. Again there was no answer.

Days before, the American fleet had steamed out of the eastern end of Long Island Sound. The tall, gray dreadnaughts and armored cruisers, each with its circling, savage brood of destroyers; light cruisers, torpedo boats,

sea-going submarines, hospital ships, auxiliaries and colliers, one by one they had passed into the open sea and vanished.

But though no man knew where it was, from its unknown place it spoke by wireless to Washington, and through Washington to the Nation.

From “somewhere between the Virginia Capes and the northern end of the Bahama Islands” where it lay, it had sent out its feelers across the sea toward the on-coming foe—swift gray feelers whose tall skeleton fire-control tops were white with watching sailors. And so, presently, between the enemy and the American coast there lay a line of relays to catch the news and pass it on to the Nation and its fleet.

More than a hundred miles of sea, said the news, were covered by the advancing fleet. It was a hundred miles of steel forts; and outside of them, dashing back and forth in ceaseless patrol, were the lighter and faster craft, consisting of destroyers and small, swift cruisers.

The scout cruiser Birmingham had spied ships inside even the inner line. But they were not transports. They were still warships. The troop transports were so far within all the protective cordons that the American scouts, lying far along the horizon, could not even sight their masts.

The enemy fleet scarcely made an attempt to attack the spying vessels. It seemed almost that the enormous mass was too insolently sure of its power to trouble about the scouts.

So, with watching cruisers and destroyers hanging to its sides day and night, the invaders’ armada moved westward as steady as a lifeless, wicked machine. Never varying their distances or relative positions, never falling out of line, never altering their speed of 14 knots, the dreadnaughts and battle-cruisers guarded their precious transports, trusting to their outer cordon to keep off all attacks. And the outer cordon held true.

It did not move slowly, majestically, like the armored line. Incessantly it swept back and forth, and in and out, patrolling the sea to a distance so far from the battle-ships that the American scouts rarely could approach nearer than to sight, from their own tops, the tops of the dreadnaughts.

The Message From the Kearsarge

As the enemy covered the sea, so he filled the air. Constantly, all day long, floating and drifting with the soft white clouds far beyond the farthest extent of the cordon, his aeroplanes surveyed the water-world. And all day long, and all night long, the ships’ wireless tore the air.

The American wireless, too, played forth its electric waves of air night and day. From daring scouts to relay-ships, and from relay-ships to hidden fleet and to waiting Nation, went the story out of the far sea. The American millions knew the progress of the coming enemy as if the fleet were an army moving along a populous highway of the land.

The Nation watched the implacable, remorseless advance breathlessly, apprehensively; but behind its apprehension there was hope. “Surely, surely,” men said to each other, “our splendid sailors will get at them!”

Accustomed by its history to expect thrilling deeds of dash and enterprise that should wrest success out of disaster, the United States waited for The Deed.

It came. Out of the far Atlantic came the story. It came from the battle-ship Kearsarge and went to the Chester, it was passed on by the Chester and picked up by the Tacoma, and the Tacoma tossed it into the air and sent it to the coast.

“Engaged,” said the Kearsarge, “have—sunk,” and then there came a break in the message. “Destroyer—light—cruiser—” spoke the wireless again, and stopped. “Armored—cruiser,” spoke the wireless again in half an hour. “Port—beam—disabled—withdrawing—pre-dreadnaught—abaft—starboard—beam—firing—14,000—yards—dreadnaught—port beam—” Again there came an abrupt check to the wireless.

To the men on the fleet “somewhere off the Virginia Capes,” and to the men in newspaper offices from ocean to ocean, it was as if they were witnessing the fight. Indeed, the presses had some of it printed and on the streets before the battle-ship’s story was done.

“Dreadnaught—” started the wireless again. “17,000—yards—am struck—after—gun—upper—turret—am struck—forward—gun—lower—turret—dismounted—am struck—after—gun—lower—turret—”

The air fell silent. It was the last word from the Kearsarge.

The Inevitable Order to an Inferior Fleet

“As a man,” said the Admiral that night to the correspondents who pressed him for an interview, “I am glad that the Kearsarge did it. As Admiral, I can only say that her destruction, old though she was, is a heavy loss to us that would not be balanced even if, besides the ships she sank, she had sunk both the dreadnaughts. We have ordered the fleet to keep itself intact.”

“Does that mean that there are to be no raids?”

“It cannot be done,” answered the Admiral. “With sufficient machinery, heroism can do great deeds to-day, as ever. Without the machinery, it can only go down, singing.[11] The enemy transports are within an inmost line of great ships. At the margin of their zone of fire is another armored line of dreadnaughts. And the outer cordon is at the margin of that zone of fire. Thus one of our raiding ships would have to break through at least thirty miles, every inch of it under fire from half a dozen ships. It cannot be done. This enemy fleet could be broken only by brute force. To attack in force with our inferior fleet would mean simply that we should smash ourselves against him as unavailingly as if we smashed ourselves full speed ahead against a rocky coast.”

“But surely at night our ships can dash in!” insisted the public, reluctant to give up romantic hopes. “Wait—and some night you will see!”

Then there came a wireless relayed from the Conyngham, biggest and swiftest of the American destroyer divisions. She had circled the whole enemy fleet, flying around it through days and nights at the full speed of her thirty knots. Her message told why there could be no raids at night.

There was no night. All the sea, ran the Conyngham’s tale, was lit like a flaming city. The outer cordon played its search-lights far toward each horizon. It played other lights inward, toward its own battle-ships. And the line of battle-ships in turn, kept mighty searchlights, bow and stern, steadily on their transports.

Each transport had its guard, whose bright surveillance never shifted, never wavered, from dusk to dawn. These sentinel dreadnaughts never turned a search-light to sweep the surrounding sea. They held their transports steadily in the white glare.

There was not an inch of ocean within their lines that was not ablaze. A fragment of driftwood could not have floated into that vivid sea without being detected by a hundred eyes.

The Invader Off the Coast

Now the news came fast and faster, as the fleet, and its hovering spies, came nearer.

The Alabama, sister-ship to the Kearsarge, by haphazard fortune got between two enemy scouts and the main fleet, and accomplished by sudden attack what she never could have accomplished by speed. She sank them within twenty minutes, and returned without injury. It was 13-inch guns against 8-inch, and the story was as it always is. The inferior enemy ships went down like pasteboard, under the fire of the turret guns on the American vessel.

On the same day, almost at the same hour, the scout cruiser Birmingham, at the other end of the enemy line, sent report that the destroyer Bainbridge, tiniest of the division, had driven her two 18-inch torpedoes home and sunk an armored cruiser that had fallen out of line to repair some unknown injury to its machinery. The Bainbridge did not tell its own story. The little boat and her men were blasted into nothing within ten minutes by a battle-cruiser that had turned to protect her mate.

These disasters, that might have been appalling to a lesser sea-power, left the great navy of the Coalition unshaken. Steadily, imperturbably, it kept on its way.

So there came the day when coasters and small craft sped wildly into the shelter of Boston and New York Harbors, into Long Island Sound and into the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays. They had seen the enemy.

Next morning, in a gray, transparent, peaceful April dawn, watchers on the coast, gazing across the empty, flat Atlantic, to the immense half-circle of the horizon, saw innumerable tiny objects just sticking up above the rim of the sea. Through the glass they seemed to be little perches of skeleton iron built in the deep ocean.

Set at beautifully precise distances apart, they dotted the sharply outlined edge of water and sky, north and south, far beyond vision.

Innocent and quiet they appeared, as they stood there, growing slowly, very slowly, up out of the far sea.

And the roaring presses, spouting forth extra editions east, west, north and south, told the United States of America:

INVADER APPEARS OFF AMERICAN COAST

II
THE COAST BOMBARDED

Never, even in after years, was it determined whence the news of the enemy ships came first. Almost as easily might a land invaded by locusts have decided what eye first saw the coming cloud, or at what precise spot.

“Warship on horizon. Standing in. Slowly.” It came from the keeper of Peaked Hill Bar Life-Saving Station at the far end of Cape Cod’s sweeping sand-arm. From the crest of the Navesink Highlands, standing steep out of the Atlantic at New York’s harbor entrance, men saw ships. On the high place their eyes commanded a view eighteen miles out to sea. At that extreme distance were the tops of fighting craft, lying safely outside of the zone of fire from the big guns in Sandy Hook’s harbor-defenses.

From his lantern 163 feet high the lighthouse keeper of Barnegat on the New Jersey coast, forty miles south of the Navesink, saw tops above his horizon. “Ships standing off here,” came the word from Cape Ann, north of Boston.

Philadelphia heard from Absecon Light and cried to Washington that the enemy was preparing to land on its coast. Boston cried to Washington for ships and men. New York telegraphed and telegraphed again and sent delegations on a special train.

Washington faced the clamor, the appeals half-beseeching and half-furious, with a great stern aspect, new in a Republic wherein the rulers are the servants who must heed public demands. This coming invasion was unprovoked. The Administration needed no party behind it now; for it knew that this was to be a fight for life, and that only the sword could decide. And it had given the sword to the army and navy without conditions.

“It is the least we can do,” the President had said. “Long ago they warned the Nation. The Nation would not give them the tools they needed. Now that there is nothing left except to do their best, they shall be left to do it in their own way.”

So the word went abroad among the politicians: “The army and navy have the bit in their teeth.” And the politicians, once so powerful, went helplessly to the Departments, to ask what they might tell their people.

“Tell them,” said the Admiral, “that there is nothing to say—yet. Here! We are sending out a bulletin.” He passed it over.

The Sea Strategy an Invader Would Employ

“The enemy fleet,” said the bulletin, “has expanded its line enormously to threaten many far separated points simultaneously, and thus mask its actual design for landing. Our ships and air scouts, and the army air scouts, are trying to penetrate the screen of cruisers, destroyers and enemy air-craft to find the real fleet with the convoys.”

“But is this not a chance for the navy to attack the scattered enemy ships?” asked one.

“Opportunities may occur,” answered the Admiral. “But the business of our fleet is to keep itself in battle formation.”[12]

The sea-coast cities read the bulletin and held their breath. Through their streets thundered their traffic, as in peace. But the exchanges were closed—had closed half an hour after opening, in panic. Even in that short time, a thousand fortunes had been destroyed: and men passing outside had heard from within a vast noise of cries and shrieks as of animals.

The banks were closing. The streets leading to the railroad stations from the financial centers were clogged by slowly moving but madly crowding automobiles and cabs and trucks. Everything on wheels had been pressed into service. On one open truck, guarded by half a dozen men who showed automatic pistols ostentatiously, were bags of gold. The United States sub-Treasuries were being emptied. Men tore at securities in their safe-deposit vaults and stuffed them into valises, and ran. The treasure of the cities was being sent inland.

In front of the newspaper offices stood the citizens. They stood so closely crowded that there was no passage through those parts of the towns. Their throngs were so great that from their outskirts only those could read the announcements who were armed with field glasses. These fortunate ones told the news as it appeared: and it was repeated to the crowds in the side-streets, who packed the roads from house-edge to edge.

All these great crowds were utterly silent. There was no sound from them, except for the voices of those who passed the news on. A man looking from a high window in a newspaper office suddenly stepped back, with a choking in his throat. “It is—it is,” he said, and choked again, “as if they were waiting for the end of the world.”

A Strategical Shelling of the Coast

Incessantly the bulletins spoke. Lighthouses, coast-guards, patrols, harbor defenses, ships, air-scouts wirelessed their reports to Washington, and Washington flung it swiftly through the land.

Nantucket had seen ships. There were ships moving toward the Long Island coast as if to threaten New York. Atlantic City on the southern New Jersey coast, and Rockport in New England sent out warning.

It was a still, warm morning, heavy with the soft, humid air that early spring lays on the cities of the sea. There was no breeze, except for a languorous breathing from the distant

ocean, that stole up the harbors and scarcely moved the air. Suddenly that brooding, heavy air was shaken. One! Two! Three!

Afterward, when men compared the time, they knew that it was heard at the same instant at New York and Boston, and all the stretches of coast between them and beyond. Even in that moment of fear, there were thousands who instinctively looked at their watches and timed it. It was exactly half-past ten when the first shot sounded. Very regularly, almost somnolently, came the far-off shocks through the air. There were half-minute intervals between them, quite exact.

The last boom was heard at eleven. Long before that the bulletins had begun to tell that ships were shelling the coast. Duxbury Beach near Boston was being shelled. Long Branch and Asbury Park were bombarded. Amagansett on Long Island was in flames.

“It has stopped,” said the bulletins, then, “The ships have ceased firing.”

Then there came news from the harbor defenses. Two ships, said Plum Island at the east end of Long Island Sound, had engaged the defenses at long range without effect. A ship had come in east of Coney Island, just outside of the zone of fire from Sandy Hook, reported Fort Hamilton, and dropped shells into Brooklyn’s suburbs.

Now the crowds were silent no longer. Long years afterward, old men told how on that still April morning they were in quiet places on the outskirts of the great cities, and heard from there a great, strange sound as of a vast æolian harp. It was the noise of multitudes, risen.

They stormed their City Halls, roaring for soldiers. They tried to rush their armories, demanding weapons. To Washington flashed the dreaded news of Mobs. “Troops must be sent at once,” said the cities.

The old Chief of Staff, with “the bit in his teeth,” dropped the dispatches on the floor. “Let ’em handle their own mobs,” said he.

Not Enough Men to Guard Even the Water Supply of New York and Boston

“Handle your own mobs!” he said again, to The Boss from New York, who appeared with a flaming face.

But The Boss had the bit in his teeth, too. Those dispatches, and long distance telephone messages from close lieutenants, had filled him with a dread that was bigger than the new-born dread of the old soldier. “I’ve broken bigger men than you!” he roared. “A thousand times bigger! Once and for the last time, are you going to send the army to protect us?”

“Once, and for the last time,” said the General, quietly, “no!”

The Boss looked at him. His eyes glared. Then, all at once, he saw that in the General’s face that gave him a big, new, overwhelming knowledge. He saw that the new word “NO” had been born in Washington; and that he and his henceforth would have to admit that it meant “NO.”

It hit him like a club. Something came from his throat that was not a sob, yet strangely like one. “Then what—then—are we going to everlasting smash?”

“Listen,” said the General, gravely calm as in the beginning. He laid his hand on the politician’s shoulder. “We have swept together the stuff that you and your kind gave us in these past years. Up there,” he pointed north, “in Connecticut, our officers have been fighting to make an army of it—of battalions that have no regiments, of divisions that are not divisions, of riflemen who never learned to shoot and of cavalry that never learned to maneuver. But even if all that mess were not a mess—if all these young men were fit to fight in the battle line this moment, there are not enough of them to guard even the water-supply of New York and Boston.”[13]

“Then you won’t put any men into the city?”

“To defend a city from within is an act of desperation, no matter how big one’s army is,” said the General. “The place to defend a city is as far away from it as you can meet the enemy.”

“But the newspapers say that you haven’t men enough to stop him.” The Boss had dismissed all attempt to bluster. “Isn’t there a chance?”

“Not if he comes in the force we expect—and he will be sure to come so.” The General did not endeavor to soften his statement. He spoke sharp and short, “And remember—the cities are not the United States. Our business is to keep the army in the field for the Union, not for New York or Boston or even Washington.

There is a price to be paid—and perhaps the cities must pay it.”

“And you’ll pay the price, too,” muttered the Chief of Staff, looking northward toward New England from his window after the politician had gone. “You’re paying it now, with sweat and nerves; and you’ll pay it in lives.”

A Militia That Cannot Shoot

There, in Connecticut, lay the army, looking formidable enough. Radiating in beautiful precision from a central point, were miles of tents separated by geometrically straight rows of company streets. Over all the great space, afoot and horseback, in companies and troops, in squadrons and battalions, moved spruce, agile figures in the trim efficient campaign dress of the American soldier. Glossy, bright flags floated everywhere. The sweet bugles sang.

It would have seemed a very harmonious, solidly welded whole, that army, to any layman who could have had a bird’s eye view of its business-like assembly, its great parks of artillery, its full corrals of mounts, its endless rows of tents and equipage and its enormous trains of transport vehicles and ambulances.

But at one end of that great, orderly, formidable camp were hordes of organized militia firing at targets. With the enemy on the coast, these men were still being broken in to shoot—not to become sharp-shooters, but to qualify merely as second-class marksmen that they might at least learn enough about the use of their rifles to be not entirely useless in battle. Ever since the militia of the coast States had come in, small-arms experts of the army had been clutching greedily at every bit of daylight, to teach 14,000 men how to shoot—14,000 men of an armed force that was offered by the States to be the country’s first line of defense.[14]

Into that camp had marched a month before, with flags flying, bands gallantly playing, weapons gleaming, one whole State’s militia organization of which only 700 men had fired regularly in practice during the whole preceding year. Only 525 of even that small number had qualified as shots, and more than a thousand were carried as utterly unqualified. Of that entire State force, only one man had passed through the regular army qualification course with the rifle, and only twelve had qualified at long range practice.[15]

“Brave?” said the hapless General of Brigade who had them under his hands. “Brave? If we gave ’em the order, they would charge an army with their bare hands, sir—and they might as well.”

He fluttered a sheet of paper in his hard, hairy fist. The sheet showed 25,353 organized militia enrolled as “trained men armed with the rifle.” Of these 15,927 men had qualified sufficiently to be fit for firing in battle. There were a thousand men in that command whose records showed that they had not fired their rifles a single time in a year: and the General had reason to believe that many of these never had used weapons except as instruments of parade.[16]

State Artillerymen That Have Never Qualified as Gunners.

A mile away, in the artillery encampment, a field artillery battery of regulars from Fort Sill swept their guns at top speed through passages so tight that it seemed impossible for the flying wheels to clear them. Sharply they wheeled and came to position, just as a militia battery arrived.

The militia guns were hauled by horses that their State had hastily hired or bought. The brutes had hauled trucks in a city; and in trying to wheel, one of them straddled the gun. In a moment the gun-team was around and over the guns in a confusion of chains and leather.

“Do you stable your mounts on top of your guns in the milish?” shouted a regular, gleefully. But he and his fellows helped good-naturedly enough.

“We never had horses till now,” growled one of the militiamen, who was stooping to tug at a trace-chain. It made his face fiery red. “State wouldn’t give us any, and we didn’t have stables, anyway, in our armory. So we couldn’t break in any mounts.”

“Nor you couldn’t break yourselves in, chum, I guess,” spoke another regular. “How the devil did you get gunnery practice? Haul your little gun out by hand to the firing ground?”

The militiamen fumbled at the trace again. “Didn’t fire it,” he said, without looking up.

“All right, milish!” shouted the regular. “Shake! You’re game, all right, you boys! Willing, by gum, to face the Hell that you’re going to get, and not a gunner in your battery. Fine leather-headed citizens you must have, back home.”

“They didn’t think much of artillery at home,” grinned the militiaman. “Thought that infantry was all they needed. They sort of thought we just had a little toy to play with.”

“You ain’t going to be lonely, milish,” grunted the regular, sauntering off. “Tie a necktie around your horses and then go over yonder. You’ll find three other batteries from three other States that never had no horses, never had no mounted drills, and never qualified as gunners.”[17]

Cavalry Without Horses and Undrilled

A grizzled Colonel of Cavalry rode by. Under his shaggy eye-brows he shot a glance at the helpless battery, and swore. He dated back to Indian times, and they said of him in the army that he knew nothing except cavalry tactics and horses. But he knew them; and he was breaking his old heart over the militia cavalry that had come under his command.

Some he had that were good enough to win his full praise; but none of these was full as to quota of men. The Colonel of the best of the regiments was riding at his side. It was an organized force of rich men, each of whom had brought his own mount, trained as carefully as any cavalry horse, and perfectly equipped. “Fine, sir, fine!” said the old Indian fighter. “But oh! Wait till you see what arrived last week. They can ride! Yes, sir, they can ride. Heaven knows how they learned it, for they didn’t ever have a mount except what they hired in livery stables. A rich State, too, and one that did its infantry damned well, damned well, sir. It was supposed to be a regiment of cavalry that we were to get. Do you know what arrived? Two squadrons! And, sir, they came afoot. They served a State that evidently prefers horseless cavalry.”[18]

He chewed his cigar and threw it away. “Look over there!” he continued. “See those chaps? They were among the first to come to us. Yes, sir. The entire cavalry force of that State came out—the entire force, you understand. D’you want to know how many there were? Three troops,—three—troops—confound me, sir. Not a whole squadron. But as these three troops were in three different parts of the State they hadn’t even been drilled to move together in their little three troops as one body. We’re just getting ’em so that they can ride in squadron without smashing into some other troop and crumpling the whole outfit to Hades.”[19]

State Troops Without Medical Supplies, Shoes, Overcoats

Even while the old cavalry leader was swearing, a delegation of civilians, sent to visit the camp officially, was gathered at headquarters. The visitors were haggard and worried: but, with the ever-ready optimism of the extraordinary American race, the most worried one of them all said: “A splendid army. Looks fit to fight for its life. We are sure that you will give a good account of yourselves, General, against any force.”

“Against any force,” echoed another.

The Major-General did not reply. He gazed over the spick and span tents, the spick and span men, the spick and span guns, far and on, and on, over an encampment that stretched out of sight behind distant wooded heights.

In the immediate line of his vision lay the sanitary camp. There, beside his own regulars, lay sanitary troops of the State militia that had come into camp without ambulance companies, without field hospitals, without medical supplies. He thought of one regiment (a regiment on paper, seven companies in reality) that had appeared without even its service outfit of shoes and overcoats. Two whole State divisions, had they gone into action on their own strength, would have had no ambulances at all to carry off their wounded. One division, formed from a State that had done better than most with its militia, arrived for war with two field hospitals short and lacking seven full ambulance companies. Even the richest State of the sea-board groups had left its organized force short, both a field hospital and an ambulance company. Not one of all the militia forces from all the States had ambulances enough.[20]

The soldier looked up at the sky. “Lord! Lord!” he muttered, not impiously. “An extravagant land. As extravagant with its lives as with everything else.”

The One Thing in Which Our Army Would Be Perfect

There was only one thing in which that army was preëminent and perfect. It was in the matter of transport. Even that had been made only since war was declared; but it had been made swiftly, thoroughly, because it demanded only an efficient, swift gathering of vast resources.

Within an hour of the declaration, the army had swept the coast States from New Jersey to Maine clear of everything serviceable that had wheels. Piled on miles of sidings beside the magnificent railroad system lay the rolling stock of a dozen great commercial States. Like mammoth trains along the sides of all the highways, north, south, east and west from the camp, were the requisitioned automobiles and trucks.

This army was going to be able not only to fight on its stomach, as Napoleon said, but it was going to be able to fight on flying feet, too.

So great were its resources in motive power, that although there were motor vehicles making a double line miles long on each of half a dozen roads leading from the camp, there still were thousands of swift cars free to patrol the American coast from the end of Maine to the Virginia Capes.

The army might not be able to withstand a blow; but it could dodge.

It could know, too, in time to dodge. Its own trained intelligence department was supplemented by ten thousand and more untrained observers and watchers, who tried to make up for their lack of technical skill by keen intelligence, alertness, adventurous daring and—unlimited private means.

Queer enough were their reports, often incomprehensible, frequently absurd to the point of tragedy. In a measure, they made a confused trouble for army headquarters; yet on the whole they were invaluable in that time, when the United States was so wofully short of scouts.

The First American to See the Enemy’s Troop Ships

The volunteer scouts spied out the air as they did the roads.

It was a volunteer who soared out in his bi-plane from New Bedford in Massachusetts that morning, when the newspapers announced the approach of the hostile fleet. He had learned to loop the loop for fun, fun being the great object of his gay though strenuous existence.

Fortunate it was, indeed, that rich men had taken up aviation as a sport: for the enemy had come with aeroplanes counted not by scores, but by hundreds. And to oppose them, the American army and navy combined had exactly 23![21]

Now it had happened that the few military airmen, attempting their scouting flights from the south and the west, had encountered unfortunate cloudless conditions, which quite prevented them from evading the far superior forces of hostile airmen. They had, therefore, been beaten back, continually, before they could pierce the screen.

The volunteer, however, sweeping across the mouth of Buzzards Bay and out between the islands of No Man’s Land and Martha’s Vineyard, dipped into one of those drifting, isolated fogs that are born in the waters of Nantucket Shoals. Before a slow, lazy wind, the thick vapors went steaming and trailing out to sea, and he went with them. Occasionally he rose above the bank and looked out, like a man lifting himself from a trench. He had done this about a dozen times, and he was getting into the thin, seaward end of the fog-belt, when he saw ships.

Instantly he went up, up, up. It was a racing one-man biplane. He thanked Heaven for its speed: for even as he was looking down on the ships, little things detached themselves from the decks and arose. They were specks at first, but in a moment they had grown. He watched them grow out of a corner of his eye, but with all his vision, all his concentrated attention, he looked at the fleet.

There, surrounded by war vessels, he saw a long line of immense two-funneled, three funneled and four-funneled steamships; and he knew that he was the first American to see the troop transports of the enemy.

The News the Airman Brought

He was turning in a sharp circle to flee even while he counted them. He was darting toward the coast, even while he still looked sidewise down at them to finish his count. Then, rolling and swooping as he put on the fullest speed of his racing engine, he fled, with five navy planes behind him, coming on the wings of their explosive storm.

He wondered if they were firing at him. All that he knew was that his world just then was only one blur of whistling, strangling, smiting air and deafening roar. He struck a hole in the air and pitched sharply. He swept over the fog bank. It could not help him now. He dared not sink low enough to hide in it. Shining brightly in the bright air, he volleyed straight on as if he were going to dash into the blue wall of sky ahead.

He won. He never knew how far the enemy planes had pursued, or whether they had come near him or not. He knew only that suddenly there was a yellow band of sandy land deep, deep under him, that the next instant trees and hills swept past like little color-prints, and that he came to earth.

Then he reached for a flask. And then he looked to wonder where he had landed. And then he heard the roar of a motor on one side of him, and the roar of a motor on the other. “Hands up!” shouted a man in khaki, leaning from the side of a swaying, drunkenly rolling car. He put up his hands, laughing hysterically.

Fifteen minutes later the telephone bells rang in the forts on Fisher’s Island, Plum Island, in the Narragansett Harbor defenses, and in the headquarters of the field army. It told them that the enemy transports were thirty miles south of Nantucket Island, standing in for Block Island Sound or Long Island.

Unleashing the Submarines

Up from Fisher’s Island under the Connecticut shore mounted an army hydro-aeroplane. It rose 2,000 feet, and circled there,

with such graceful, steady wheelings that despite its constant speed, it seemed to be soaring in lazy spirals like a sleepy gull. Under the two fliers in the machine lay the eastern entrance of Long Island Sound—the watergate to New York, with half-open jaws whose fangs were the guns of Fisher’s Island on the north and Plum Island on the south. Utterly harmless and innocuous seemed those two jaws, for not even the keenest eye could make out from above anything more savage than grassy mounds and daintily graded slopes of earth. Not even the sharpest glass could see within those pretty models in relief the dragons of 12-inch mortars that squatted in hidden pits sixteen in a group, or the sleek, graceful rifled cannon whose secret machinery could swing their thirty-five tons upward in an instant and as instantly withdraw them after they had spat out their half ton of shot.

Between the guarding jaws there was deep water—deep and beautifully green. One of the airmen spoke to the other, who was looking out to sea through his glasses. “There they go,” he said, nodding to indicate the water below.

Both looked. They looked into fifty feet of ocean, but their height made it but as a thick pane of dim green glass.

They saw things moving, deep down. They were sleek and gray, like small whales. But they had snouts longer and sharper than any whale that ever swam. Three of them there were, moving out to sea through the entrance, steadily, at about ten knots an hour.

The Wait for the Enemy to Strike

An hour passed. The men in the hydro-aeroplane descended, and their reliefs went up. They circled for an hour. Sometimes they drifted out to sea till the land was lost behind them.

The forts and the army headquarters caught a wireless from the air. The enemy fleet was approaching Block Island, said the message. The hydro-aeroplane was rushing homeward while it spattered its news into the air, for it was a slow machine, and swifter ones were over the fleet. The enemy had formed in columns, ejaculated the fleeing machines, with destroyers and light cruisers in advance, and the transports, gripped on all sides by armored ships,

were coming on in echelon formation, eight cable lengths, or 4,800 feet, apart.

Simultaneously, almost, all the coast places from Barnegat to the end of New York Harbor’s farthest flung domain signaled and telephoned and wired that the menacing ships had disappeared. To Washington and the waiting American fleet passed the message from sea-scouts that all the enemy screen was withdrawing slowly toward the east—a mighty screen, lying along a hundred miles out to sea, and steadily closing in on its nucleus, to protect its flanks and rear against surprise from the ocean ways.

They were moving fast now—much faster than fourteen knots. There was no feint now. They were sweeping straight at the land. But where would they strike? Would they land at Long Island to march their army to New York, or would they strike at Rhode Island or the southern coast of Massachusetts?

Boston was sure that they would come at Massachusetts. New York roared with the news that its own Long Island coast was the enemy’s object. But though the cities were shaken with panic, there were no mobs now. Noise and fear and medley of advice and demand and anger there were, but no mobs. The cities had handled their mobs with long cordons of silent, stout, unimaginative police and with firemen who brought out clanging engines and hose. It was the best answer to hysteria; for these sudden-born mobs had been born only of hysteria. They became all the more orderly, after it had had its vent. And the real mob, the silent, brooding, dangerous under-world, had not begun to stir.

It would not, now. Before noon there were men in all the armories—militia fragments and volunteers. They were incapable of fighting soldiers; but the mobs were as helpless against them as they, in turn, were helpless against trained armies.

All That Our Submarines Could Accomplish

On a dreadnaught in the van of the convoying fleet, stood the Admiral of the armada. He was speaking with the ship’s Captain, as they paced up and down the bridge. Everywhere enormously long polished black cannon thrust their supple bodies out of turrets. Like the peering heads of serpents, the guns of the secondary batteries looked out from bow to stern. Everywhere stood officers and men at quarters. Without a moment’s pause signals ran up and down, wimpling out their gaudy messages, and everlastingly the wireless sounded its stuttering staccato. Yet there was a placid, strangely peaceful quiet over the whole gray, tall, bristling machine. Except for its appearance, it might have been a pleasure yacht.

“It’s a lovely shore,” the Admiral was saying. “Some beautiful estates and charming people. I was delightfully entertained within five miles of where we shall land. It seems a rough return for hospitality. But one does for one’s country what one would not do—hello!”

The dreadnaught’s circling destroyers were coming at the ship headlong. The Captain leaped to the rail. Before he got there, the ship’s port battery crashed. A signalman pointed at the water fifty yards off. Something like a staring, hooded eye had looked from the sea for a moment.

It was the last thing the signalman saw on earth. The dreadnaught shuddered. While its guns were still firing, it lifted with a jerk as a man would lift if caught by an upward swing under the jaw. A great, queerly muffled explosion shook it. For perhaps a minute it tore along under the impetus of its own speed, but it did not move smoothly. It jolted, like a cart going over a rough road. Then it began to topple. Over and over it leaned, slowly, fast, faster. There was not an outcry. Short calls of command there were from officers, but not a sound from the men.

It was very still now. The wireless had ceased, the engines were shut off, and there was only the roar of steam.

The dreadnaught’s crew was clinging, like men clinging to a steep cliff, holding fast to everything that would give foot-hold or hand-grip on the inclined deck. A signal climbed along the toppling mast. Then, with a thunder of breaking metal, with fire-hose, ammunition cases, instruments, ship’s furniture all volleying into the sea, the ship fell full on her side and went down.

A Maneuver to Escape Undersea Attack

In a hissing, breaking sea that instantly was gray with ashes and multi-colored with oil, swam eight hundred men. None came near them. The dreadnaught’s last signal had been the order to keep off: and the big fleet was weaving in and out at top speed, in a maneuver long since perfected, to escape other attacks from the invisible things.

Far astern raved the guns again. This time the alert destroyers had not missed their aim. A periscope disappeared. Presently, slowly, little spreading disks of oil swam on the surface, and united, and more floated upward and spread.

Not for a moment had the fleet fallen into disorder. Even while the destroyers were picking up what survivors they could find, another dreadnaught hoisted its commander’s flag as Admiral, in place of the one who lay under the bright green water. A speed cone went up: and warships and convoy steamed full speed ahead.

Half an hour later the periscopes of two submarines, outdistanced, bobbed up far behind the fleet. Their gray shapes arose, streaming. The manholes opened and heads came out, blinking into the sunlight and drawing in great breaths of fresh air. They followed the ships toward the coast.

One of them hoisted a wireless apparatus, and began to call. It was a weak call, that had to be repeated again and again. Then Montauk Point heard, over a temporary apparatus, and received, and began to send on to New York; and the bulletins told that submarine M-9 had sunk the Admiral’s flag-ship, that submarine G-3 had sunk a destroyer, and that submarine O-1 had been lost.

“Victory! Victory! VICTORY!” ran the news. They knew that it was not victory, those great, anxious crowds that stopped all traffic that day in all the continent of North America. But for a while they were thrilled, and they cheered, and forgot the slow, implacable grip of irresistible power that was closing in on their eastern sea-coast, not to be stayed, not even to be halted.

The Bombardment of the Coast

The day passed, and the dusk came in. A pleasant evening it was, warm enough to tempt people to stay out-of-doors. Even in the trembling sea-cities there was all the wonted life of such a season. The rich had fled; but the others remained. There was nothing else for them to do. A few months before, had any of them been asked what they would do in case of an invasion, they would have painted a picture of the millions fleeing from their cities with what possessions they could lug. Thus it had been in Europe, as they had read. Thus it would be in America.

But it was not so. There they were, watching and waiting, and clinging to the only hold they knew. And in this soft dusk, there they loitered in their countless miles of streets, and talked, and argued, and prophesied, just as they had done always. And everywhere in the miles fronted by little houses and tenements and tall apartments the children were ushering in the spring by playing ring-around-rosy. Everywhere their thin, clear young voices made the old accustomed music of the towns.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

In the soft dusk, on the Rhode Island and Massachusetts coast there was falling red Hell and ruin.

Out of the tranquil, empty sea it had come. Out there, far out, in the pearl and gray, there had been flashes. There had been roars and whistles and bellows in the high, still air, coming, coming! And the shells had plunged down, everywhere, unending. Streams of iron, streams of fire, streams of screaming, bursting things: things that struck the land and spun into it like beasts biting, and burst, blasting away forests and houses and men in crimson whirlwind: things that plunged into towns and ricocheted, and pulled down walls and towers: things that darted at power plants and darkened the world: and things that burst into towns with fierce fire and set the world a-light.

It was not news that came through the spring night. To the men at the receiving ends of wires it was as if there were coming to them one wild din of terror. Here were telephone messages that broke off in the middle and were never to be resumed on this earth. Here were telegraph dispatches that stopped suddenly and left the wire dead, its far end dangling where a shell had torn down the poles. From hill tops far inland came raving words of burning towns glaring red in the country below. From somewhere unknown, from somebody unknown, came one word over a telephone that instantly went out of commission. It was: “God.”

In the cabin of the new flag-ship sat the new Admiral. The ship was shaking with the explosions from its secondary batteries, but the cabin was orderly and sedate. A shaded light was shining on a chart.

“Another hour of this,” said the Admiral, “and I think the coast will be nicely cleared for the landing.” He selected a cigar from its box, and lit it carefully.

III
THE LANDING

The first American soil on which the invader set foot was not on the mainland. It was a steep-edged, wind-blown bit of New England territory that swims like a ship far out on the Atlantic in the great misty ocean gate between painted Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard and the brown-handed lighthouse of Montauk Point, Long Island.

Unimportant to the world, but famous in American history and legend is this Block Island or Manisees, as the Indians called it, meaning the Isle of God. Here, ever since American liberty was born, there have clung generations of sea-faring, storm-fighting New England men, proud to call themselves Rhode Islanders, though the State to which they belong is so far away that they can only just see its coast.

Block Island’s men and women stood on Mehegan Bluff and Beacon Hill and Clay Head, watching their sky fill with fighting tops and enemy flags, and their sea oppressed by enemy craft. Among those who stood there that day were descendants of men who had fought at sea in every American war. Some were there who could boast that their ancestors had crept into Long Island Sound in little sloops, and even in rowing boats, to harry tall King’s ships.[22]

Strong-hearted, like their forefathers, were these men. They looked out on their beset horizon and doubled their sun-burned hands into fists, longing to get among the foe with ship to ship, gun to gun, and the battle-flag of America shining.

This was no tame population, to be terrified like a driven herd. Smacksmen were these, accustomed to looking unafraid into the black snarl of storm. Swordfishermen were here who went daily, without a second thought, to fight the lithe spearsman of the sea in his own element.

The First Invader

A cruiser rushed at their island. Heavy with turreted guns and broadside batteries, tall with laced iron mast-towers and wide funnels and ponderous cranes, swarthy-gray over all like a Vulcan’s smithy, the enormous thing stopped half a mile out with the guns of the secondary batteries pointing at the land. From under her quarter, around bow and stern, swept destroyers with cocked funnels spitting smoke and with ready, alert men at the lean little guns.

They moved straight for the little harbor, in a long line. On the bridge of the foremost, an officer waved a hand at the crowd of fishermen on the shore, pointed to his guns, and, with a backward motion, to the cruiser.

“Aye! We take the hint, damn ye!” growled an old man. “He means,” he turned to the rest, “that we’d better not make a fuss! Drop that!” He turned sharply to a younger man, who had just joined the group. He had a shot-gun, half concealed under his coat.

“Are we going to take it laying down?” demanded the armed man.

The old man pushed him backward with both hands. “You fool! That thing out there could blow us off the island, men, women and

children, as if we was dead maple-leaves afore a southeastern gale!”

The destroyers had stopped. The crews swung their guns toward the shore.

From the cruiser dropped six ships’ boats, full of blue-jackets. They swung past the destroyers, beached, and formed in a line. There was a click of breech-bolts shot home—so quick that it was as but one sound.

A Lieutenant advanced his men with the swinging navy trot. He pointed to men in the little throng, selecting six of the older ones. “We take the island,” he said in precise English. “Fall in! We hold you responsible for the good order of the rest of your people. There must be no attempt at resistance.”

While he spoke, another detachment of the landing party had been busy among the huddle of boats in the harbor. Some were being made up into a tow. Others were being scuttled at their moorings. A third detachment was knocking holes into the smaller craft hauled up on shore.[23]

The First American to Fall

Three sailors were just driving boat-hooks through the bottom of an up-turned cat-boat, when a tall young fisherman leaped at them with an oaken tiller-handle, and struck one down.

The other two closed on him, but let go again almost instantly at the sound of a sharp order. They tore themselves away and jumped aside.