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CHAPTER I THE WORLD'S GREATEST CONTEST
The Censorship—The Warship "Audacious"—Mine or Torpedo?—The BattleLine—War by Gasolene Motors—The Boys from Canada—The Audacity of it.
The war of 1914 is not only the greatest war in history but the greatest in the political and economic sciences. Indeed, it is the greatest war of all the sciences, for it involves all the known sciences of earth, ocean, and the skies.
To get the military, the political, and especially the financial flavor of this war, to study its probable duration and its financial consequences, was the object of a trip to England and France from which the writer has recently returned.
One can hear "war news" from the time he leaves the American coast and begins to pick up the line of the British warships—England's far-flung battle line—until he returns to the dock, but thorough investigation would convince a trained news man that most of this war gossip is erroneous.
This war is so vast and wide, from causes so powerful and deep, and will be so far-reaching in its effects that no ill-considered or partial statements concerning it should be made by any responsible writer.
The difficulty of obtaining the exact facts by any ordinary methods is very great. There is a strict supervision of all news, and to insure that by news sources no "aid or comfort" is given to the enemy, a vast amount of pertinent, legitimate, and harmless news and data is necessarily suppressed. The censors are military men and not news men, and act from the standpoint that a million facts had better be suppressed than that a single report should be helpful to the enemy. Only in Russia are reports of news men from the firing line allowed.
One hears abroad continually of the battle of the Marne, of the battle of the Aisne, of the contest at Ypres, and the fight on the Yser, but no outside man has yet been permitted to describe any of these in detail, or to give the strategy, beginning, end, or boundaries of them, or even the distinct casualties therefrom. Indeed, it is doubtful if the official histories, when they are written, can do this, for these are the emphasized portions of one great and continuous battle that went on for more than one hundred days.
To illustrate the strength of the hand on the English war news, it may be noted that there is no mention permitted in the English press of such a ship as the "Audacious." Yet American papers with photographs of the "Audacious" as she sinks in the ocean are sold in London and on the Continent. Outside of London not ten per cent of the people know anything concerning this boat or her finish.
This word "finish" would be disputed in any newspaper or well-informed financial office in London where it is daily declared that although the "Audacious" met with an accident, her guns have been raised and will go aboard another ship of the same size, purchased, or just being finished, and named the "Audacious." Indeed, I was informed on "good authority" that the "Audacious" was afloat, had been towed into Birkenhead and that the repairs to her bottom were nearly finished....