AMERICA AT WAR

Evening Star, Issue 16629, 11 January 1918, Page 6

AMERICA AT WAR

SIR EDWARD MORRIS’S ACCOUNT. DAILY AIR “SERVICE” TO BERLIN IN 1918. Overflowing with Enthusiasm over the United States’ prodigious preparations for “ Nanning the Kaiser ” —the Americans’ slang definition of their determination to smash Hohenzollernisni—the Right Hon. Sir Edward Morris, the veteran Prime Minister of Newfoundland (on whom a barony has been conferred, according to this week’s cables), readied London at the end of October. Graphic as have been many of the accounts sent to England relative to American plans in the fields of finance, food, shipping, and military and naval organisation, Sir Edward Morris declares (saj'-s the ‘ Daily Mail ’) that until one has been on the spot it is impossible to grasp the magnitude of the effort the United States is getting ready to make in Democracy’s cause. He describes it as heartening beyond words. President Wilson is clothed with a mandats which practically has no limits. The country demands of him only that he mobilise every resource and asset it possesses—human and ..physical—to attain the end on which every American patriot has now set his heart; to rid the universe for all time of the curse of the Prussian sword. Sir Edward Morris said to a ‘ Mail ’ representative : I am straight from an extended soin the United States, where, at VVashington and New York, I enjoyed special opportunities for watching the Americans at the work of gearing up their war machine. Before dwelling on some aspects of that organisation, which in many respects is going to be the most powerful thing of its kind the world has ever known, I would like to emphasise for the benefit of people in this country what America’s real war aims are: To begin with, they are absolutely concrete. Thev are made concrete in order that the simplest mind in the country might know exactly why the nation is fighting. TO BANISH KAISERISM. “ The United States is only secondarily concerned with the general war aims o‘f the Allies. She favors, of course, the liberation of Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine. She stands, as Britain stands, for the rights and liberties of small nation?. She is out, as the rest of us are, to vindicate the elementary principles of humanity and international law. But all of these aims are more or less incidental to the Americans’ real aim. That aim is to banish Kaiserism from the face of the earth for all time to come. Until it the American people will not rest content. They know that_ nothing short of such a result can or will, in President Wilson’s words, ‘ make the world safe for Democracy.’ “American mothers are sending their sons to Franca in order that the yoke of Prussian militarism may not only be lifted from the neck of the German people, but Riso that it may be broken and crushed to pieces so effectively that it can never be reassembled and pressed down on tho neck of any other people. “ That is America’s war aim in a nutshell There is no diplomatic beating about ttm bush. The Americans are intent on ‘ banning the Kaiser ’ and all his works. AIR ATTACK IN 1918. “ One day at Washington I watched the manoeuvring of three big Italian warplanes. They were circling round the tall Washington Monument alter a hundredmile flight from an army aerodrome in a neighboring State. A distinguished United States senator, meditating on, the war in the air, of which those graceful Italian machines were harbingers, said: ‘Air supremacy will belong th the United States before the war is oyer.’ I would like to tell people in Britain why the senator’s statement is no idle boast. It is manifestly nothing but a pledge of future events, because the Americans are arranging to put in almost their best ‘ licks ’ on the air campaign. They have already appropriated nearly £200,000,000 for it. They are training 100,000 youths to be airmen. They are ready to build machines literally by the tens of thousands. The best engineering brains of the country have buried ,the competitive hatchet and evolved the Liberty engine, from which great mechanical results are hoped for. “ This time next year at tho outside—probably long before that—the Americans, as they put it to me, are going to run a day-and-night air service to Berlin. They are going to drop bombs in Germany from the sky at something approximating the rate at which Haig and Retain are now dropping shells over the German lines in Flanders and Prance. Do people in these islands realise that the money America is spending on aircraft and air preparations alone exceed the sum total of our old Imperial pre-war Budget for tho militaxv, naval, and Civil services combined? And does anybody hereabouts know that the Air Bill appropriating this ‘ billion dollars was passed by the United States Senate after just three hours of debate? THE MONEY-SPENDERS.

“I know that Americans’ reputation in Europe with those who do not know them is that of money-grubbers. Well, they ar o doing their best to become the biggest money-spenders in human history. I cannot adequately picture the scenes of enthusiasm which accompanied the launching of the first Liberty Loan. I was in Wall street that day. v The fervid competition of bankers ana brokers and of all classes of the financial community to make the loan a triumph was something splendid. I was in England last February, during the Victory War Loan campaign, but never saw anywhere anything at all approaching the War Loan spirit which the Americans ■revealed.”