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.