PREFACE
No American who has lived in France or England, as I have these last two years, and has watched them struggling with the problem of organising democracy to resist the impact of war, could help feeling at every minute that some time we might have to meet the same problems. Day after day experiments were being made, some successful, some failures, the lessons of which would be of value to us if ever we had to mobilise. And so—anticipating plenty of time to mature my notes—I set to work gathering the preliminary data for a book on "How Democracies Mobilise." It promised to be a bulky tome, there was so much which seemed noteworthy.
But War is already upon us. And so I have tried to summarise in this short space the main points I had intended to develop at length.
It would be quite impossible to list even the bare names of all those in France and England to whom I am indebted for advice, suggestion and criticism. Whatever clear thinking there is in the book is the fruit of much discussion with people who were in a position to know more than I of the various phases of the problem.
This is especially true of the section dealing with the Censorship and Publicity. More than a year ago I wrote a long chapter on the subject. It has been through the hands of many friends: fellow journalists, British and French politicians and a large number of army men.
In the same way my proposals in regard to the mobilisation of labor industry result not only from my own observations but also from those of many others. The scheme I suggest has met the approval of a number of Labor men here and abroad. It is, I believe, very near what the English would do, if they had to do it all over again.
Many of these subjects are highly controversial. There is room for wide and sincere difference of opinion. But I have found general agreement about them among those men, intimately familiar with the problems, who put the efficient conduct of war before every other consideration.
That is my point of departure. I am not considering the ethics of war, nor the advisability of our participation in the present struggle. I accept the fact that we have decided to fight and I try to show how the experiences of other democracies can teach us the way to do it efficiently.
Arthur Bullard.
26 March, 1917.