Read Ebook: The Invasion of America: a fact story based on the inexorable mathematics of war by Muller J W Julius Washington

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Ebook has 1218 lines and 68635 words, and 25 pages

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.

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.

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 to match the Republic's fleet with a dreadnaught for every effective American ship of any kind.

"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.

"Defend us! Defend our people! Defend our towns!" said they.

"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. 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.

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."

"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!"

"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 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.

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.

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--"

"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. 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!"

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