Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 164, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1917 — United States Easy Prey But For the Allies. [ARTICLE]

United States Easy Prey But For the Allies.

Pittsburg, Pa., July 27.—“ We are not yet awake,” asserted Col. Theodore Roosevelt last night in an address in which he deplored lack of preparedness both for the present war and for possible future wars. “I would gladly refrain from pointing out shortcomings of the present and the immediate past if there were any indications that we intended to provide for the future. But there is no such indication. And yet now is the time to formulate our permanent policy ; now, when the lemons of war are vivid before our eyes. “The prime fact to member is our utter helplessness at this moment, six months after we really, four months after we nominally, went to war. The actual event has shown that if we had not been shielded by our allies, a single small German army of a couple of corps, or a similar small army of any old world military power, would have conquered us out of hand. “When I say conquered, I mean conquered. Such an army could have been ferried across the ocean in thirty days. In that time.we could not have assembled, out of the whole country, an amry force of trained sqldiers to meet it, and we had not even a single aeroplane or a single battery of artillery with which to meet the hostile flying squadron and artillery. We would have been as easy a prey as Belgium, and we would have been as completely conquered. “We have baen saved because, and only because, for their own purposes, our allies, the British and French, had to protect us. But next time we may have no allies.” The Colonel was the speaker at the evening meeting of the national convention of Moose.