Moreover, that any nation in the twentieth century should lust for world dominion and should set out to gain it seemed to the average American mind so impossible, so insane a purpose that it was loath to believe the truth. More and more evidence had to be accumulated and pressed home, more and more proof of the satanic methods by which the Germans were seeking to gain both their immediate and their ultimate ends had to be shown the American people before they could realize the full truth and the full significance of the German purpose. Not until that purpose ceased to stagger their belief did the sense of obligation begin to stir their spirits. Hardly less universal and profound than the political conviction that this nation should stay out of European entanglements and let Europe settle her own quarrels in her own way was the moral and intellectual conviction that war is a wasteful and wicked means of bringing about any desired result. For more than a generation this belief had been growing and striking deep root in the minds and hearts of the American people. The nation that sprang to arms in April, 1917, was a nation that loathed war from the bottom of its heart. So powerful and so universal were these convictions, that the country should be kept aloof from European dissensions and that war should be considered only as a last resort in a righteous cause, that no leader could have put the country wholeheartedly into the war until the masses of the people were convinced that the moment had come when they must enter it. And they were not, in their millions, thus convinced until the events near the end of 1916 and early in 1917 had shown them the path they must take. Then it was--and until then it would not have been--a united and determined country that took up the cross of war and faced the ascent of Calvary--how completely and closely united and how sternly determined the pages of this book will try to show. PART ONE THE FIGHTING FORCES SECTION I. ON LAND. CHAPTER I THE MAKING OF THE ARMY