Washington's Nine Months at War

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Excerpt from Washington's Nine Months at War: Great Efforts Disappointing Results Why? The London Times of Nov. 7th, 1917, reviews "Deductions from the World War, " recently published in Germany by Lieutenant-General Baron von Freytag Loringhoven, who was Quartermaster-General in the field when Falkenhayn was Chief of the General Staff and who is now stationed in Berlin as Deputy Chief of the General Staff. The author is described as a "moderate" among Prussian militarists, a master of military history, a writer of great clearness and far from being a typical Pan-Germanist or even a Bernhardi. General von Freytag argues that before the war Germany's armaments were inadequate and that in the future, recognizing that "facts are facts, " still larger expenditures must in spite of all difficulties be made. He proposes giving at least partial military training to those who in the past had been rejected but who in this war have been found fit for service. "Only so can we arrive at a real peoples" army, in which every one has gone through the school of the standing army. It may be asked what is the use of all this. Will not the general exhaustion of Europe after the world conflagration of a certainty put the danger of a new war, to begin with, in the background, and does not this terrible murder of peoples point inevitably to the necessity of disarmament to pave the way to permanent peace? The reply to this is that nobody can undertake to guarantee a long period of peace, and that a lasting peace is guaranteed only by strong armaments. Moreover, world power is inconceivable without striving for expression of power in the world, and consequently for sea power. But that involves the constant existence of a large number of points of friction. Hence arises the necessity for adequate armaments on land and sea. "The world war affords incontrovertible proof that Germany must for all time maintain her claim to sea power. "The fact that precisely the President of the United States of North America has advocated the brotherhood of the peoples surely ought to frighten us. America's behavior in the war has shown that pacificism, as represented in America, is only business pacifism, and so at bottom nothing else than crass materialism. This truth is not altered by the fact that it is wrapped in a hazy garment of idealism and so seeks to hide its real meaning from the innocent. Nor is the truth altered by the appeal to democratic tendencies, for precisely this war is showing that those who at present hold power in the great democracies have risked in irresponsible fashion the future of the peoples entrusted to their leadership." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.