The causes and meaning of the great war . o that they couldbuy here or elsewhere what they needed. (2) Wecould supply them with munitions for their armies,raw materials for their civilian workers, and food forboth. (3) We could build merchant ships of suf-ficient tonnage to help carry these supplies acrossthe ocean. (4) With our navy we could assist infighting the submarine menace. Of all these pressing problems, that of supplyingsufficient ship tonnage to insure transportationacross the sea was the most important, for withoutits solution the other problems could not be solved. 135. The Huge T
The causes and meaning of the great war . o that they couldbuy here or elsewhere what they needed. (2) Wecould supply them with munitions for their armies,raw materials for their civilian workers, and food forboth. (3) We could build merchant ships of suf-ficient tonnage to help carry these supplies acrossthe ocean. (4) With our navy we could assist infighting the submarine menace. Of all these pressing problems, that of supplyingsufficient ship tonnage to insure transportationacross the sea was the most important, for withoutits solution the other problems could not be solved. 135. The Huge Task of Providing an AdequateArmy and Navy.—An increase in the supply offood, ships, munitions, and other material needswas an immediate result of our entering upon thewar. The huge task, of providing an adequatearmy and navy required more time. 136. Pressing Need of a Large Navy; Its RapidIncrease.—Even before the declaration of war,President Wilson had ordered the navy to be in-creased as rapidly as possible to the full war strength. From a photograph, copyright by Western Newspaper UnionADMIRAL SIMS 108 THE CAUSES AND MEANING Germanyscornfullylaughs atAmericanpreparations of 93,000. Now that we were a belligerent nation,a powerful navy was an absolute necessity, for itwas our first line of defense. It was far was required, as already seen, to help in destroy-ing the German submarines; also to assist in fight-ing the German high-seas fleet, if it should steamout from its hiding-place; and to act as convoysin guarding ships which transported Americansoldiers across the Atlantic. By midsummer of1918, the number of men in our navy was morethan three times as great as it had been whenwe entered the war, and the number of vessels inthe American naval service had increased fourfold. 137. Is It too Late for Our Country to RenderEfficient Service on the Far-A way Battle Front? —The most important question of all, however, whenwe entered the war in April, 1917, was this:
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectworldwar19141918
