Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1919-01-04

War certainly held the center of the stage in 1918, and the promise of the American Executive that force with out limit" would be exerted by this country in the great battle for free dom was brilliantly fulfilled. So inn mersed were the American people in the conflict that war may be said to have become their chief, indeed almost their only business. Every energy was bent to the purpose either of fas- hioning the weapons of warfare or of providing men to use them, of supply ing needs of the fighting forces and of the vastly larger number of those who merely aided these forces, the while that supplies of food for our own men and our allies abroad were forthcoming without stint, except where American men, women and children, on the mere request of our government, forbore to eat their nor maj foods in order that our army and our allies, armies and civilian popul- ations should have enough. Thus it was that ordinary civilian trade took, as it were, a back seat, that many non warlike occuptions were curtailed or entirely suspended, and that every one could feel that whether on the battle field, in the office, in the factory or on the farm, all were engaged in a common cause and for common end. Ehen just as the mighty machine that had been built up for war purposes be-
 ran to function powerfully and victor
 ously, the enemy's collapse came, and the remainder of the year was given over to the process of demoblizing. the industries single-mindedly devoted to war were directed back to peaceful lines, and the processes of unharness- ing trade and of unfixing prices went forward with as much if not greater speed than had the work of diverting peaceful energies to war-like pur- poses. These readjustments, which at the time of writing are still in process, with the unsettlement insep- arable therefrom, and the uncertain ty prevailing as to future price levels, now that the great urge of govern ment buying was removed, gave a 4uieter tone to wholesale trade and industry in the closing months, while the influenza epidemic early and nat ural conservatism bred by displace- ment of many thousands of workers, operated to hold down retail trade, which was only partly recouped by an excellent holiday demand in the clos ing weeks of the year.
 The statement was frequently made in 1917 that, great as had been our work of organization for war, there was very little of surface indications to show it, and that one might almost imagine that no war was being waged. - This was emphatically not the case in 1918. War in many of its grim phases was brought home to us by the sending of two million men abroad and the gathering of another two mil lion in American camps, by the vot- ing by Congress of an army without limit, by the stripping of our indus tries of its best men, by the exten- sion of the draft ages to include all males from eighteen to forty-five, by the operations of the German submar- inc murderers on our coast, by the growing list of casualties, by the mounting up of war costs to almost unbelievable heights. In 1918, too, all the early delusions as to the causes and nature of the war were dissinat- ed, and its true character as life and death struggle of decency and civiliz- ation against all that was abhorrent and decadent became manifest That the sending over of our armies to France was not merely a question of numbers carried but also of quality of fighting material sent, was proved by the splendid work of our soldiers, who, our friends the allies admit, ar rived just in time to turn the scale of the conflict and to block the way of the Germans to the channel ports and to Paris, and later, in conjunction with our allies, under the supreme com mand of the brilliant French Marshal Foch, broke the German lines, eXpel- led the invader from northern France and from Belgium and finally, by the terms of the armistice asked for by the beaten foe, established the Allied line far within the enemies border, constituting a new "Watch on the Rhine" pending final peace settle ment. It will probably be the yer dict that our full strength had not .s5 been put forth when the collapse the boasted efficient Teutonic com- nation was registered in the Ger n surrender and revolt and the fin a! abdication of power by the self styled War Lord and his confederates Thus this latest and greatest crusade was won, peace returned to the earth, and the preparations for the confer ence at Versailles gave peculiar em-- phasis to the Christmas season and were fraught with favorable auguries