ADMINISTRATION AND
THE GREAT WAR'

Bine

ERNEST W. YOUNG, LL.M.

"

Author of "Comments on the Interchurch Report on the
Steel Strike of 1919"

POINT OF VIEW

The following pages attempt to treat of FunctioningGovernmental Functioning at a time of peculiar crisis in the nation's career. They do not assume to be a history of the Great War. They undertake, rather, to select a few of the greater matters which engaged the attention of the Wilson Administration in that notable period, those that came nearest the hearth, the heart-center of the great Republic; those that the history of the future will necessarily select as the chief center of the impulses of the nation's throbs for humanity.

As these touch upon matters of history, perhaps of statecraft, it is proper to add that it is not only war-time orders of the President of the mightiest republic of recorded time, or the thrilling utterance of eloquent lips; not the laws of Congress or the decrees of a great and orderly Senate; nor yet the surge and urge of irresistible armiesnot these alone constitute history. They are a part. No less a part thereof are the din and uproar and tumult in the busy places of trade or where crowds gather to hear their spokesmen—or the spokesmen of their opponents; the shout and noise and clash of opposing social and economic forces; the ringing of bells, the blasts of whistles, the toot of horns, the "confusion worse confounded" in the celebration of victory or the signing of an armistice, yet order in it all these constitute an essential part of history.

But chief of all and center of all is that place where the child is taught its mother's tongue and lisps its early prayers; where father and son, mother and daughter are accustomed to meet on common ground; where tears are shed and griefs are shared, where fond love first finds its joys;