stic
public meetings in Germany and France do us, or the daily cablegrams
giving us the assurance of their sympathy and good-will?

These expressions of public opinion did, however, prove that the Old
World realized at last that the yellow danger was of universal interest,
that it was not merely forcing a single country to the wall, casually as
it were, but that it was of deep and immediate concern to every European
nation without exception. They began to look beyond the wisdom of the
pulpit orators who preached about the wonderful growth of culture in
Japan, and to recognize that if the United States did not succeed in
conquering Japan and driving the enemy out of the country, the
victorious Japanese would not hesitate a moment to take the next step
and knock loudly and peremptorily at Europe's door, and this would put
an end once and for all to every single European colonial empire.

But while European authorities on international law were busily parading
their paper wisdom, and wondering how a war without a declaration of war
and without a diplomatic prelude could fit into the political scheme of
the world's history, at least one real item of assistance was at hand.

The American press, it is true, still suffered from the delusion that
our militia--consisting of hundreds of thousands of men--and our
volunteers would be prepared to take the field in three or four weeks,
but the indescribable confusion existing in all the military camps told
a different story. What was needed most were capable officers. The sad
experiences of the Spanish-American campaign were repeated, only on a
greatly magnified scale. We possessed splendid material in the matter of
men and plenty of good-will, but we lacked completely the practical
experience necessary for adapting the military apparatus of our small
force of regular soldiers to the requirements of a great national army.
We felt that we could with the aid of money and common-sense transform a
large group of able-bodied men accustomed to healthy exercise into a
serviceable and even a victorious army, but we made a great mistake. The
commissariat and sanitary service and especially the military
train-corps would have to be created out of nothing. When in June the
governor of one State reported that his infantry regiment was formed and
only waiting for rifles, uniforms and the necessary military wagons, and
when another declared that his two regiments of cavalry and six
batteries wer