The facts given in this chapter have been gathered from many authoritative sources. It would be very comforting if these facts were known only to the American people, but unfortunately they are already known to the military authorities of all the other nations. Other nations are all very well aware of our unpreparedness; therefore, I am giving out no national secrets. English, German, French, Russian, and Japanese navy and military experts know exactly the men and equipment we possess. It is the American people only who are not aware of the truth about our unpreparedness. This ignorance is largely due to the beguilers who have set the face of a great mass of our people against armaments, and have made them turn deaf ears to every voice that tries to rouse them to their danger. Our ship of state has been drifting down stream like a raft. The only reason the raft has not been wrecked lies in the fact that we have been fortunate enough to have a pretty clear stream to ourselves all the while, with no breakers and no cataracts in sight. But there are breakers and rapids and cataracts down stream, and we are at last nearing them rapidly. Even as long ago as 1880, General Emory Upton spoke thus prophetically: * * * * * "_In time of war the civilian as much as the soldier is responsible for defeat and disaster. Battles are not lost alone on the field; they may be lost beneath the Dome of the Capitol, they may be lost in the Cabinet, or they may be lost in the private office of the Secretary of War. Wherever they may be lost, it is the people who suffer and the soldiers who die, with the knowledge and the conviction that our military policy is a crime against life, a crime against property, and a crime against liberty. The author has availed himself of his privilege as a citizen to expose to our people a system which, if not abandoned, may sooner or later prove fatal. The time when some one should do this has arrived._" * * * * * In 1912, Admiral Kane said: "They told me in London, 'You are living in a fool's paradise. Some day you will wake up with a fight on your hands, and you won't be ready for it.'" Not only must the United States solve the great problem of shaping a military policy that will enable us to establish an adequate force for national defense in time of war, to build up and man our Navy, construct and man coast fortifications, and enlist, arm, and train an adequate army, but also there must be faced the far more difficult problem of enlisting the co-operation of the American people in the enterprise.