The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-08-26
The Book World

WE want no war" cried leaders OF the
w United States Senate Saturday as that
august body passed the compromise neutrality
bill, II to g. Today other Senators still criti-
cised the bill for not going far enough and ad-
mitted that the ground work is being laid right
now to drag America into the impending conflict
which Europe seems to regard as inevitable.
Required reading for every one who can un-
derstand the English language should be Wal
ter Mills Road to War: America I9l4-19l7"
(Houghton Miflin So. For in this magnificent
book is the story Of a peace loving democracy
which went insane and plunged itself into the
maelstrom of bloody conflict more than 5000
miles from these shores.
Road to War is actually one Of the great
est books since the war, written clearly and with
such evident fairness that the reader can not
help but see the whole picture in its true light
How the propaganda artists of the Allied
powers whipped the United States into madness
with lies, lies and lies is deity told in Mr.
Mills book America from the outset, he writes,
was intensely pro-Ally Germany, he insists,
was convicted by the world on the sllimpiest sort
Of evidence, and when the British navy, on Aug
5, dredged up and cut the German cables no.
body in the United States seemed to care about
the fact that the Germans side Of the story was
missing.
MR.. MILLS goes into the atrocity stories,
1V1 pointing out that before the end of Au-
gust, 1914, American newspapers were begin
ming to register indignant protest"
The reader gets picture of Ambassador
Myron Herrick that reveals the idiocy of Ameri-
can diplomacy; an ambassador of neutral ma
tion so blindly partisan that he sent young
Americans to their deaths and then boosted
about their influence on sentiment"
Rejoicing by Americans that it was not their
war disguised Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Mills
recalls. How T. R. sadly told Sir Edward Grey
that the bulk OF our people do not understand
foreign policy" is enough to make one grit his
teeth at the blindness of that old f1re-eater.
The reader begins to see how the plot was
forming when in 1915 the Allies were reaching
the end OF their money rope. Then came the great
patriotic firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. with its
S5O0,000 900 Anglo French loan. Americas econ
omy and the Allies economy became one and
the same thing, from then on, Mr. Mills aptly
points out, and American neutrality eff it ever
had been neutrality actually was at an end.
IRON there on, Mr.. Mills paints the slow but
Il sure process of dragging the United States
INTO the battle Ee describes Henry Fords Peace
snip haSco, the submarine warfare the sinking
OF the Lusltanla, the celebrated Bryce report
the resignation of William Jennings Bryan from
the Cabinet, the Mexican expedition, the sink
ing OF the steamer Sussex the issuing of the
motion picture, The Battle Cry of Peace" the
revelation OF German plots against the United
States (patrioticaly barred by British Ambassa-
DOR Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the preparedness pa
rades and the establishing of the war zone in all
European waters by Germany
That was the end and with the sinking of the
Laconla America was practically at war right
then. How clergymen pleaded for war is deftly
related by the author
And through it all, he says, only one man in
the United States had a clear vision of what It
meant. 1t was Woodrow Wilson, powerless to
check the headlong plunge, but who fought to
the last against overwhelming odds, and who
after giving CONGRESS- his meSSa 90 for u,or hrol>o
down and wept before Secretary Tumulty. saw
ing: My message today was message of death
for our young men"
Road to War; is tremendous story; it de-
serves reading by every American who cherishes
GEAR VISION. 1t is the most powerful argument
in America today for proper neutrality IepisIa-
ton.
Read it!
Houghton, Mif1in Co., 2 Park-st Boston. Mass