"There is little I can do here, except to try to speed up the war; the failure to begin work on the cargo ships with the utmost energy ten months ago was a grave misfortune."--_December 23, 1917._ "The work of preparation here goes on slowly. I do my best to speed it up; but I can only talk or write; and it is only the doers who really count. The trouble is fundamental and twofold. The administration has no conception of war needs or what war means; and the American army has been so handled in time of peace that the bulk of the men high up were sure to break down in the event of war."--_January 6, 1918._ "Over here Senator Chamberlain's committee has forced some real improvements in the work of the war department and the shipping board. It is of course a wicked thing that a year was wasted in delay and inefficiency. Substantially we are, as regards the war, repeating what was done in 1812-15; there was then a complete breakdown in the governmental work due to the pacifist theories which had previously obtained, to inefficiency in the public servants at Washington, and above all to the absolute failure to prepare in advance. Yet there was much individual energy, resourcefulness, and courage; much work by good shipwrights; fine fighting of an individual and non-coherent kind by ship captains and by occasional generals."--_March 10, 1918._ "How I hate making speeches at such time as this, with you boys all at the front! And I am not sure they do much good. But _someone_ has to try to get things hurried up."--_March 14, 1918._ "Wood testified fearlessly before the Senate committee, and the country has been impressed and shocked by his telling (what of course all well informed people already knew) that we had none of our own airplanes or field guns and very few of our own machine guns at the front."--_March 31, 1918._ "The great German drive has partially awakened our people to the knowledge that we really are in a war. They still tend to complacency about the 'enormous work that has been accomplished'--in building home camps and the like--but there really is an effort being made to hurry troops over, and tardily, to hasten the building of ships, guns, and airplanes. "My own unimportant activities are, of course, steadily directed toward endeavoring to speed up the war, by heartily backing everything that is done zealously and efficiently, and by calling sharp attention to luke-warmness and inefficiency when they become so marked as to be dangerous."--_April 7, 1918._ "Of course, we are gravely concerned over the way the British have been pushed back; and our people are really concerned over the fact that after over a year of formal participation in the war our army overseas is too small to be of great use."--_April 14, 1918._