The Logan Republican. [volume] (Logan, Utah) 1902-1924, 1917-06-02
BY BURTON J. HENDRICK.
In Every Week.

ant acts. in his preparations for wal
against Germany. are the two ap
pointments he has made for the tive
departments that will supply tn,
most needed OF all war munitions
bread and boats. He has made Mr.
Herbert c. Hoover food controller
and grand victualer to the nation
and General George Geothals the
great American boat builder in chief
The feeder of peoples and the builder
of boats have not hitherto figured as
the greatest factors in warfare; at
this present moment. however, that
is precisely the position they accupy.
At some time in the future we may
send millions of fighting men to
Europe, possibly our great dread
nought fleet will be ranged alongside
of England's in a sea battle the mag
multitude of which the most extrava-
CANT Imagination can hardly compre-
bend. At the present time, however,
and for a year to come, the one ap-
palling aspect on the landscape is
the wide-openlng gullet of the allied
nations waiting to be fed.
Biggest Feeding Contract
In History.
If we can satisfy that huge appe.
tite for year, the battle for clviliz-
alton will be won. This feeding con-
tract, the greatest in history, is the
responsibility of Mr. Hoover and Mr..
Goethals-Hoover to garner in tho
food from thousand places, and
Goethals to ship 1t to the millions of
hungry mouths.
"The road to victory, the guaranty
of victory" said Lloyd-George, in his
recent speech welcoming American
participation in the war. the abso-
Lutte assurance of victory, has to be
found in one word. ships and sec
ond word. ships and a third word,
Ships"
This war, from the American
standpoint, is to be bread-and-boat
war-at least for the first year
Americans should clearly under
stand this fact. and precisely. why II
is so. Whenever one discusses the
European war, he always reaches one
fundamental fact, from whatever |
point of view he begins. This fact |
is the great English dreadnought
fleet.
Nelson's storm-tossed ships
wrote Captain Mahan. describing a
similar situation that prevailed about !
a hundred years ago, stood between
Napoleon and the domination Of
mankind" The great Corsican could
win wonderful military victories
Austerlitz. Wagram, Jena. far great
err than anything the present German
staff has accomplished; but Eng
lands domination Deer the seas made
them nothing more permanently sig
nificant than grandiose sporting |
events. So long as these ships held [
the French empire in strangle- I
hold. shattered all French commerce S
ports, and gradually reduced the I
French population TO starvation and I
other privations, this titanic strug- q
gle could have only single end, 6
Sea Power VIII 5
Decide the War. !
More than any other man. the
great American historian. Mahan. has C
developed the idea that sea power b
always decides the fate of great in |
ternational conflicts. So closely is c
his name associated with this con- I
ception that, in Europe, the idea is [
known as "Mahanism." 1
At the beginning OF the war the /
Kaiser declared that he would dem /
Onstrate that Mahanism, or SEQ pow /
er is the determining factor in war. I
was fallacy. The fate Of mankind. I
he said. would be decided, not on c
the sea, but on the battleflelds Of I
France, But even Germany now ac- /
knowledges that Captain Mahaa was Q
eternally right: that Germany can c
win the war in only enc way. and that /
IS by making her sea power superior I
10 that of the Allies. The Kaiser J
has resorted to the old device that I
he had dismissed as not all-sufficient q
that of blockade. II he can do to /
England what England has already S
done to him-isolate the island from I
all association with the rest OF the {
can undoubtedly win in Q
the present conflict. Such a calami- 9
ty would injure England much more I
than 1t has injured Germany; for in
a few months her food supply would [
disappear and surrender become in d
eyitable. \