The United States projected as an indispensable bulwark in this scheme by being practically the treasury and storehouse of the Allies. It had already poured out money and supplies at their call with lavish hand. Each had sent a mission to the United States to present its case and needs. The Government heard them, and the resources of the United States were freely drawn upon to meet their necessities. Each mission, however, had confined its requests largely or solely to its own requirements. Each clamored for men, ships, money, food, munitions, or whatever other war essential it wanted. A lack of coordinated plans and predetermined objectives weakened the scope of America's assistance on account of the scattered and piecemeal methods by which it was obtained. Consequently the United States, while providing for its own war necessities, determined that it must have a voice in arbitrating on the further needs of the Allied nations by weighing them side by side at the war conference, so that its resources could be distributed among them in pursuance of a coordinated plan aiming at achieving collective, not individual, advantage. Germany had pointed the way in showing the success to be obtained by combined effort. Germany and her three partners were one. The Allies were many and, so far, had been disjointed. The entry of the United States became the occasion for making an endeavor to coalesce the Allies to a closely knit _bloc_ on the Teutonic method. Great Britain, momentarily disheartened by the checks the Allied cause had sustained owing to a division of command and organization, was braced by the appearance of the American mission at the Allied conference. Said the London "Times": "In several points, of late, things have not been going too well for the Allies, but none of their reverses or disappointments matters if only the great war power of the United States, military and economic, is rightly directed to the common end." "The gain to the Allied cause of the alert American intellect and American freedom from convention," the "Daily Graphic" said, "should be of priceless value. Seeing that the guiding principle of the American delegates is to discover how the resources of their country can give the greatest results in bringing about the defeat of Germany, the unanimity of the conference is assured." "Americans," remarked J. L. Garvin in the London "Observer," "have less jaded brain cells and more open minds. They are not involved in any past mistakes or shortcomings. They are uncommitted to any set theory and are relatively free from local European feelings. Their moral compass, so to speak, is less exposed to magnetic aberrations and is more likely to point true. They are in Europe only to win the war in Europe. They want to get to the bottom of the problem. They will have all conceivable data for getting to the bottom of it."