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VILenin said:So, it begins... The ascension of the proletariat is at hand!
Do not be so hasty in your assumptions - Russia may yet save itself.
Sir Humphrey said:
Vincent Julien said:
Well gentlemen, I hope that this screenshot is of some value.
The Russian Army is able to hold its own. Just.
Lord E said:Damn Germans destroying all your nice work to try to rescue the Russians from the revolution, well one can only hope that Lenin will take revenge and kick the Kaiser’s backside
That's my job, surely?
KofK said:
We shall have to see how events develop. It may not be necessary. If the war with Germany rages for years to come then there may be no opportunity for any intervention in Russia at all, for every division would be needed to fight the main enemy.
Sir Humphrey said:Have some knock off the Lenin person, whoever he is.
We could have every prominent figure of the left killed off - that wouldn't start a civil war, would it?
Kurt_Steiner said:
Well, there was a 95% chance of them opting for that decision - it turned out to be no surprise that the historical path was chosen by the German AI. It may prove to be crucial, if I remember the coding written by our own venerable Mr. T correctly.
Vincent Julien, VILenin, thank you for your assertive demands - they demonstrate interest that I appreciate very much. At present I am endulging in my twin passions - essay writing and drinking. I may be able to put something together very soon. I may not.
Allenby said:I may be able to put something together very soon. I may not.
- Pft, do not be a tease
, update already !
Can't you combine your passions with updating? Y'know, drinking while writing an update in essay format?
Very appropiate. Now the AAr is talking about the Russian Revolution, Lenin appears
It seems as if the Russians are doing slightly better than they did historically. All those rivers that they're hiding behind must be worth something! Although I'm amazed that Konigsberg is so slightly defended by the Germans.
Vincent Julien said:
Yes, funny that - not that I think the Russian AI would be clever enough to exploit it and attack Konigsberg, anyway.
Anyway folks, I have put together an update which ought to satisfy your demands for a few weeks whilst I diminish my workload.
LXXXI – America Gears Up; British Mission to Washington
From the moment the United States declared hostilities against Germany on 31st January 1917, President Roosevelt was eager to wage war as enthusiastically as possible. For Roosevelt, the war presented the United States’ sternest test since the struggle for independence, and a trial of her national character. His determination to take the war through to a completely successful conclusion was demonstrated by his first public speech after the declaration of war in Baltimore on 4th February, when he declared forcefully that it would be “a betrayal of this country and of mankind to accept any peace except the peace of overwhelming victory, a peace based on the complete overthrow of the Prussianised Germany of the Hohenzollerns.” The speech was made to foster national unity and to mobilise the populace for the war effort – the President therefore thought it appropriate to issue a number of concomitant warnings, firstly against pacifists, who he denounced as “evil enemies” comparable with the ‘Copperheads’ of the Civil War era, and then against German-American and Irish-American sympathisers for the Central Powers, who he declared to be traitors. Roosevelt took an uncompromising line with those who would hamper or contribute nothing to the American nation in arms, and did not rule out the possibility of government censorship and anti-sedition legislation. In London, Lloyd George met the news of the United States’ entry into the war with delight, and utilising his sense of drama, invited prominent American journalists to 10 Downing Street where he addressed them at a conference. To the assembled press, the Prime Minister eloquently welcomed the United States’ declaration of war on Germany, talking in language that Roosevelt was well disposed to hear:
“America has at one bound become a world power in a sense she never was before. She waited until she found a cause worthy of her traditions…Once that conviction was reached, the great Republic of the West has leaped into the arena, and she stands now side by side with the European democracies who, bruised and bleeding after three years of grim conflict, are still fighting the most savage foe that ever menaced the freedom of the world.”
The President was in full agreement with the Prime Minister, and remarked to Lodge how he looked forward to working with the ‘curious Welshman’. Roosevelt was prepared to put America’s indelible stamp on the world and was set to mass mobilise the United States’ vast resources for that end.
President Roosevelt addresses the people of Baltimore on 4th February 1917
The administration headed by Roosevelt was characterised by personalities that the President trusted, as well as those who inspired the trust of the Republican Party, an important consideration given Roosevelt’s recent reacquaintance with the GOP. Warren G. Harding, the Vice President, was an unremarkable former Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio and Senator. The Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, was a former Governor of New York and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Having been persuaded not to run as a presidential candidate in 1916, receiving the State Secretaryship was appropriate compensation, although given the primacy of foreign affairs in Roosevelt’s agenda, Hughes’ room for manoeuvre was severely cramped. The man that Roosevelt expected to work with most regularly was the Secretary for War, Elihu Root, who had previously held the post between 1899 and 1904. An experienced administrator, Root was one of the most prominent members of Roosevelt’s first administration, serving as Secretary of State between 1904 and 1909. Now approaching his seventy-second birthday, many newspapermen felt that Root was too old for the mammoth task ahead of him, but Roosevelt was certain that his administrative experience would serve the United States Army well. At the Treasury, Roosevelt appointed his colleague George W. Perkins, a former partner of J.P. Morgan and benefactor of the Progressive Party before Roosevelt’s defection back to the Republicans. The Secretary of the Interior was George B. Cortelyou, Postmaster General and Secretary of the Treasury in Roosevelt’s last presidential administration. The President expected his appointees to provide valuable support through the United States’ first months at war, yet Roosevelt knew as well as those who he had appointed that the administration would be dominated, above all, by one person – the President himself.
Prominent members of the administration: (l to r) Hughes, Root and Perkins
One of the first tasks to which Roosevelt committed the administration was in affirming the United States’ position within the alliance by pressing for a declaration of war on Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. Not only would this demonstrate to the United States’ partners that she was serious about fighting the war, but the President reasoned that it would increase the United States’ scope for activity and enhance her bargaining position. Thus, any peace concluded with Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria or the Ottoman Empire would have to take the opinion of the United States into account. Debate in Congress on this issue was livelier than had been the case regarding the declaration of war on Germany, as many members asked what Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria or the Ottoman Empire had done to warrant the belligerency of the United States. Yet the arguments for full American participation on the Allied side carried the day, and by late-February, the United States was at war with the Dual Monarchy, the Ottomans and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Now the foe of all members of the Central Powers, the United States was expected to join the fray, yet she was wholly unprepared for the conflict ahead of her. At just 70,000 strong, the United States Army was numerically the equal of the Argentine Army. Its equipment was obsolete and ill supplied, possessing just four hundred outdated artillery pieces that could sustain a bombardment on the western front for a few minutes. The U.S. Army had 1,500 machine guns of four differing calibres and 285,000 Springfield rifles, for which there existed only enough ammunition for a single three-battalion attack. With no poison gas, mortars, rifle grenades, hand grenades, flame throwers, heavy howitzers or tanks, and with just fifty-five obsolete aircraft, the United States Army remained a poorly equipped nineteenth century force. The tools at the American government’s immediate disposal did not meet the President’s lofty aspirations. In strategic outlook, Roosevelt was already a decisive ‘westerner’, believing in the primacy of the western front as a theatre for fighting the German Army, and the relatively small value of fighting elsewhere. Roosevelt was keen that the United States should eventually assume the bulk of the fighting done by the Allies on the western front, driving back the German Army by weight of numbers and superiority of equipment.
American troops parade in New York
Roosevelt and Root envisaged the deployment in France of a huge, independent American Army numbering approximately five million men, based on several army commands. The force would be spearheaded by regular divisions and National Guard units, followed by newly raised ‘National Army’ divisions composed of both volunteers and conscripts. Within six months, Root hoped to have nearly six divisions deployed in France, undergoing training in western front combat. Within a year, the Secretary for War believed that two fully fledged U.S. Army commands could be holding a respectable length of the front line in France. Such a rapid expansion of the army required plentiful equipment. Inevitably, the U.S. Army was compelled to rely on British and French equipment, much of it ironically being built in American factories. Yet the mammoth demands of the projected U.S. Army would require a considerable conversion of peacetime American industries into the wartime production. Root recommended the establishment of a War Production Committee to regulate the usage of materials and the production of war materiel. The concept of this body suited Roosevelt’s mobilisation of the war effort perfectly, and it was eventually established on 1st April by executive order. With a small regular army, finding officers for the vast force needed by Roosevelt was no easy task – the same was true of staff officers, and Root wrote to his British counterpart, Derby, asking that British Army staff courses be opened for American students. Senior officers to command the growing number of regiments, brigades and divisions were in short supply, and those who did hold senior rank were unfamiliar in the command of large bodies of troops. Root wanted to ensure that the army’s senior officers were well versed in the command of every type of unit from a division to an army and drew up a shortlist of officers who would receive the first commands. It was no surprise that the man selected by President Roosevelt to be the commander of the ‘American Expeditionary Force’ was Major-General Leonard Wood. Fifty-six years of age, Wood was a distinguished medical officer who had served in the Indian Wars as a young man. In the Spanish-American War, Wood commanded the 1st Volunteer Cavalry Regiment – the “Rough Riders” – with Roosevelt his second in command. The exploits of the regiment at the battle of San Juan Hill established the reputation of both men, and while Roosevelt went on to become the country’s President, Wood assumed the governorship of Cuba, returning to the United States in 1902. Between 1910 and 1914, Wood served as Army Chief of Staff, instituting a number of reforms, before being replaced by Brigadier-General John Pershing. Wood gained prominence after 1915 as the front man of the Preparedness Movement, thereby confirming his credentials as a political general and cementing his friendship with Roosevelt, who made ‘preparedness’ the keynote of his 1916 presidential campaign. With Roosevelt now in the White House and the United States involved in the largest war in its history, it was almost inevitable that the man chosen to lead the army in France was Wood, the officer most known to the American public. Other officers were prepared to assume high command, including Major-General Robert Bullard, a protégé of Wood, and Pershing, an officer who had won Roosevelt’s admiration with his distinguished service in the Philippines. An important administrative change was made with the appointment of Major-General Tasker Bliss as Acting Chief of Staff in February 1917, a move necessitated by the impending retirement of Major-General Hugh Scott, who had held the post since 1914. A key appointment, Bliss would have a heavy responsibility in overseeing the army’s expansion, and both Roosevelt and Root believed that Scott’s talents were best employed in the training of new infantry divisions.
Major-General Wood, appointed to command the American Expeditionary Force
In a well timed speech to the American Luncheon Club at Claridge’s Hotel, London on 1st March, Lloyd George encouraged American participation in the war by announcing that the conflict was not a dynastic struggle and could be assured of being a ‘great fight for human liberty’ due to the American declarations of war. Speaking in optimistic terms, the Prime Minister, echoing President Roosevelt, declared that the Allies would fight for a ‘genuine peace’ and would not seek to compromise. Given a standing ovation at the end of address, Lloyd George’s speech was widely reported in the American press – in what could be regarded as a coup, the Prime Minister had established himself as the best known Allied politician in the United States. This could only benefit the highly publicised British mission to America, which arrived in New York on 5th March. Undoubtedly the most prominent members were Lord Kitchener and Arthur Balfour, former Prime Minister and the Minister of Munitions and Lord Privy Seal. Having sent Kitchener to the United States in order to engineer his departure from the War Office, Lloyd George realised the public relations potential that could be extracted from the mission’s activities in America. Believing that Kitchener was too aloof to be well regarded by the American public, the Prime Minister asked Arthur Balfour to attend the mission too. Balfour accepted, and Lloyd George was confident that the former Prime Minister’s gravitas and personal charm would serve the mission well. Leading a team of soldiers, sailors, economists, financiers, diplomats and experts on transport, trade and munitions, Kitchener and Balfour were taken by train to Washington D.C. on 6th March, where they were greeted at the station by cheering crowds, and driven to their accommodation past buildings bedecked with the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. They were not suited to each other, but would be compelled to cooperate. Kitchener suspected that Balfour had been party to the intrigues that had resulted in his resignation from the War Office. Balfour had no respect for the Field Marshal, saying privately in a scathing comment that he “is only great when he has little things to accomplish.” Nevertheless, both were motivated by dutiful service to Britain and were determined that the mission’s time in the United States should be successful.
Kitchener and Roosevelt emerge from a meeting on army mobilisation
On the morning of 7th March, Balfour and Kitchener met Roosevelt at the White House. They were to have several meetings with Roosevelt over the next few weeks, and the affable President enjoyed the company of both, although he took particular pleasure in discussing old colonial campaigns with Kitchener. The President and the Field Marshal discussed the Sudan, South Africa and Cuba at great length, and Roosevelt gave a detailed recollection of the Rough Riders’ charge at San Juan Hill. Over more contemporary matters, Roosevelt and Root listened to the insight Kitchener offered on recruitment and conscription, although they formed their own judgements on his recommendations. Balfour and Roosevelt were able to talk extensively about the war effort, the production of materiel and war aims. To the President, Balfour revealed the secret agreements that Britain had made with her allies regarding the Ottoman Empire. Ambivalent about the fate of Turkey, an autocracy he viewed with even less taste than Russia’s vanished Tsarist system, he accepted the projected carve up of the Middle East both as an expediency of alliance politics and an opportunity to bring western principles of government to a region that had long been under the neglected sway of Ottoman rule. Both Balfour and Kitchener, aged nearly sixty-nine and sixty-seven respectively, declined the President’s offer to go hiking, although they were able to ingratiate themselves with Roosevelt’s social circle and senior members of the administration, attending a number of banquets held in their honour. At one such occasion, Kitchener was sat next to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the thirty-three year old wife of a prominent Republican Congressman. An onlooker noted that ‘K got along splendidly with the President’s pretty daughter all evening, laughing and joking etc.’ A bachelor who found relationships with women difficult, Kitchener surprised others by his jovial behaviour, helping somewhat to soften his austere image. Even so, Kitchener was able to give a number of robust press conferences, strikingly uniformed in khaki and impressing journalists with his imperturbable calm. Balfour earned the hostility of Irish Americans who knew him as ‘Bloody Balfour’ from his tenure as Chief Secretary of Ireland between 1887 and 1891. He addressed a joint session of Congress, the first British parliamentarian to do so since Charles Stewart Parnell in 1880, and was very well received – Roosevelt himself came down into the chamber to shake his hand at the conclusion of the speech. Congress also made a spectacular gesture of appreciation to Kitchener by granting him the honorary rank of Major-General in the United States Army, a reward he received just before he reviewed West Point cadets and a number of regiments from the regular army. Meanwhile, Balfour toured New York, and was shown the city’s great skyscrapers, and when told that one was entirely fireproof, an unimpressed Balfour merely remarked ‘what a pity.’ Otherwise, Balfour enthralled those he encountered, and with joy the former Prime Minister could regard the visit as a great success. This was confirmed in financial terms when Perkins, the Treasury Secretary, sanctioned another huge British loan with J.P. Morgan, ensuring that Bonar Law, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would be saved from having to raise taxes to meet the growing cost of the war. After four weeks, the British mission departed after a short stay in Canada, although Kitchener was asked by Root to remain in America to act as a source of independent advice regarding the United States Army’s mobilisation and expansion. Feeling liberated by his work in America, Kitchener accepted; eager that Kitchener should not return, Lloyd George also accepted the arrangement.
A Punch cartoon – the American eagle swoops in from the west
By early April, Anglo-American relations were at an unprecedented high, and the United States had committed herself fully to the Allied cause. Seizing 400,000 tonnes of German shipping in American ports and beginning a massive state prompted ship building programme, Roosevelt had asserted his desire not only to raise the army necessary to defeat the Central Powers, but to transport it to Europe independently of her allies. The President had taken the first steps towards making the United States the world’s pre-eminent power.
From the moment the United States declared hostilities against Germany on 31st January 1917, President Roosevelt was eager to wage war as enthusiastically as possible. For Roosevelt, the war presented the United States’ sternest test since the struggle for independence, and a trial of her national character. His determination to take the war through to a completely successful conclusion was demonstrated by his first public speech after the declaration of war in Baltimore on 4th February, when he declared forcefully that it would be “a betrayal of this country and of mankind to accept any peace except the peace of overwhelming victory, a peace based on the complete overthrow of the Prussianised Germany of the Hohenzollerns.” The speech was made to foster national unity and to mobilise the populace for the war effort – the President therefore thought it appropriate to issue a number of concomitant warnings, firstly against pacifists, who he denounced as “evil enemies” comparable with the ‘Copperheads’ of the Civil War era, and then against German-American and Irish-American sympathisers for the Central Powers, who he declared to be traitors. Roosevelt took an uncompromising line with those who would hamper or contribute nothing to the American nation in arms, and did not rule out the possibility of government censorship and anti-sedition legislation. In London, Lloyd George met the news of the United States’ entry into the war with delight, and utilising his sense of drama, invited prominent American journalists to 10 Downing Street where he addressed them at a conference. To the assembled press, the Prime Minister eloquently welcomed the United States’ declaration of war on Germany, talking in language that Roosevelt was well disposed to hear:
“America has at one bound become a world power in a sense she never was before. She waited until she found a cause worthy of her traditions…Once that conviction was reached, the great Republic of the West has leaped into the arena, and she stands now side by side with the European democracies who, bruised and bleeding after three years of grim conflict, are still fighting the most savage foe that ever menaced the freedom of the world.”
The President was in full agreement with the Prime Minister, and remarked to Lodge how he looked forward to working with the ‘curious Welshman’. Roosevelt was prepared to put America’s indelible stamp on the world and was set to mass mobilise the United States’ vast resources for that end.
President Roosevelt addresses the people of Baltimore on 4th February 1917
The administration headed by Roosevelt was characterised by personalities that the President trusted, as well as those who inspired the trust of the Republican Party, an important consideration given Roosevelt’s recent reacquaintance with the GOP. Warren G. Harding, the Vice President, was an unremarkable former Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio and Senator. The Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, was a former Governor of New York and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Having been persuaded not to run as a presidential candidate in 1916, receiving the State Secretaryship was appropriate compensation, although given the primacy of foreign affairs in Roosevelt’s agenda, Hughes’ room for manoeuvre was severely cramped. The man that Roosevelt expected to work with most regularly was the Secretary for War, Elihu Root, who had previously held the post between 1899 and 1904. An experienced administrator, Root was one of the most prominent members of Roosevelt’s first administration, serving as Secretary of State between 1904 and 1909. Now approaching his seventy-second birthday, many newspapermen felt that Root was too old for the mammoth task ahead of him, but Roosevelt was certain that his administrative experience would serve the United States Army well. At the Treasury, Roosevelt appointed his colleague George W. Perkins, a former partner of J.P. Morgan and benefactor of the Progressive Party before Roosevelt’s defection back to the Republicans. The Secretary of the Interior was George B. Cortelyou, Postmaster General and Secretary of the Treasury in Roosevelt’s last presidential administration. The President expected his appointees to provide valuable support through the United States’ first months at war, yet Roosevelt knew as well as those who he had appointed that the administration would be dominated, above all, by one person – the President himself.
Prominent members of the administration: (l to r) Hughes, Root and Perkins
One of the first tasks to which Roosevelt committed the administration was in affirming the United States’ position within the alliance by pressing for a declaration of war on Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. Not only would this demonstrate to the United States’ partners that she was serious about fighting the war, but the President reasoned that it would increase the United States’ scope for activity and enhance her bargaining position. Thus, any peace concluded with Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria or the Ottoman Empire would have to take the opinion of the United States into account. Debate in Congress on this issue was livelier than had been the case regarding the declaration of war on Germany, as many members asked what Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria or the Ottoman Empire had done to warrant the belligerency of the United States. Yet the arguments for full American participation on the Allied side carried the day, and by late-February, the United States was at war with the Dual Monarchy, the Ottomans and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Now the foe of all members of the Central Powers, the United States was expected to join the fray, yet she was wholly unprepared for the conflict ahead of her. At just 70,000 strong, the United States Army was numerically the equal of the Argentine Army. Its equipment was obsolete and ill supplied, possessing just four hundred outdated artillery pieces that could sustain a bombardment on the western front for a few minutes. The U.S. Army had 1,500 machine guns of four differing calibres and 285,000 Springfield rifles, for which there existed only enough ammunition for a single three-battalion attack. With no poison gas, mortars, rifle grenades, hand grenades, flame throwers, heavy howitzers or tanks, and with just fifty-five obsolete aircraft, the United States Army remained a poorly equipped nineteenth century force. The tools at the American government’s immediate disposal did not meet the President’s lofty aspirations. In strategic outlook, Roosevelt was already a decisive ‘westerner’, believing in the primacy of the western front as a theatre for fighting the German Army, and the relatively small value of fighting elsewhere. Roosevelt was keen that the United States should eventually assume the bulk of the fighting done by the Allies on the western front, driving back the German Army by weight of numbers and superiority of equipment.
American troops parade in New York
Roosevelt and Root envisaged the deployment in France of a huge, independent American Army numbering approximately five million men, based on several army commands. The force would be spearheaded by regular divisions and National Guard units, followed by newly raised ‘National Army’ divisions composed of both volunteers and conscripts. Within six months, Root hoped to have nearly six divisions deployed in France, undergoing training in western front combat. Within a year, the Secretary for War believed that two fully fledged U.S. Army commands could be holding a respectable length of the front line in France. Such a rapid expansion of the army required plentiful equipment. Inevitably, the U.S. Army was compelled to rely on British and French equipment, much of it ironically being built in American factories. Yet the mammoth demands of the projected U.S. Army would require a considerable conversion of peacetime American industries into the wartime production. Root recommended the establishment of a War Production Committee to regulate the usage of materials and the production of war materiel. The concept of this body suited Roosevelt’s mobilisation of the war effort perfectly, and it was eventually established on 1st April by executive order. With a small regular army, finding officers for the vast force needed by Roosevelt was no easy task – the same was true of staff officers, and Root wrote to his British counterpart, Derby, asking that British Army staff courses be opened for American students. Senior officers to command the growing number of regiments, brigades and divisions were in short supply, and those who did hold senior rank were unfamiliar in the command of large bodies of troops. Root wanted to ensure that the army’s senior officers were well versed in the command of every type of unit from a division to an army and drew up a shortlist of officers who would receive the first commands. It was no surprise that the man selected by President Roosevelt to be the commander of the ‘American Expeditionary Force’ was Major-General Leonard Wood. Fifty-six years of age, Wood was a distinguished medical officer who had served in the Indian Wars as a young man. In the Spanish-American War, Wood commanded the 1st Volunteer Cavalry Regiment – the “Rough Riders” – with Roosevelt his second in command. The exploits of the regiment at the battle of San Juan Hill established the reputation of both men, and while Roosevelt went on to become the country’s President, Wood assumed the governorship of Cuba, returning to the United States in 1902. Between 1910 and 1914, Wood served as Army Chief of Staff, instituting a number of reforms, before being replaced by Brigadier-General John Pershing. Wood gained prominence after 1915 as the front man of the Preparedness Movement, thereby confirming his credentials as a political general and cementing his friendship with Roosevelt, who made ‘preparedness’ the keynote of his 1916 presidential campaign. With Roosevelt now in the White House and the United States involved in the largest war in its history, it was almost inevitable that the man chosen to lead the army in France was Wood, the officer most known to the American public. Other officers were prepared to assume high command, including Major-General Robert Bullard, a protégé of Wood, and Pershing, an officer who had won Roosevelt’s admiration with his distinguished service in the Philippines. An important administrative change was made with the appointment of Major-General Tasker Bliss as Acting Chief of Staff in February 1917, a move necessitated by the impending retirement of Major-General Hugh Scott, who had held the post since 1914. A key appointment, Bliss would have a heavy responsibility in overseeing the army’s expansion, and both Roosevelt and Root believed that Scott’s talents were best employed in the training of new infantry divisions.
Major-General Wood, appointed to command the American Expeditionary Force
In a well timed speech to the American Luncheon Club at Claridge’s Hotel, London on 1st March, Lloyd George encouraged American participation in the war by announcing that the conflict was not a dynastic struggle and could be assured of being a ‘great fight for human liberty’ due to the American declarations of war. Speaking in optimistic terms, the Prime Minister, echoing President Roosevelt, declared that the Allies would fight for a ‘genuine peace’ and would not seek to compromise. Given a standing ovation at the end of address, Lloyd George’s speech was widely reported in the American press – in what could be regarded as a coup, the Prime Minister had established himself as the best known Allied politician in the United States. This could only benefit the highly publicised British mission to America, which arrived in New York on 5th March. Undoubtedly the most prominent members were Lord Kitchener and Arthur Balfour, former Prime Minister and the Minister of Munitions and Lord Privy Seal. Having sent Kitchener to the United States in order to engineer his departure from the War Office, Lloyd George realised the public relations potential that could be extracted from the mission’s activities in America. Believing that Kitchener was too aloof to be well regarded by the American public, the Prime Minister asked Arthur Balfour to attend the mission too. Balfour accepted, and Lloyd George was confident that the former Prime Minister’s gravitas and personal charm would serve the mission well. Leading a team of soldiers, sailors, economists, financiers, diplomats and experts on transport, trade and munitions, Kitchener and Balfour were taken by train to Washington D.C. on 6th March, where they were greeted at the station by cheering crowds, and driven to their accommodation past buildings bedecked with the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. They were not suited to each other, but would be compelled to cooperate. Kitchener suspected that Balfour had been party to the intrigues that had resulted in his resignation from the War Office. Balfour had no respect for the Field Marshal, saying privately in a scathing comment that he “is only great when he has little things to accomplish.” Nevertheless, both were motivated by dutiful service to Britain and were determined that the mission’s time in the United States should be successful.
Kitchener and Roosevelt emerge from a meeting on army mobilisation
On the morning of 7th March, Balfour and Kitchener met Roosevelt at the White House. They were to have several meetings with Roosevelt over the next few weeks, and the affable President enjoyed the company of both, although he took particular pleasure in discussing old colonial campaigns with Kitchener. The President and the Field Marshal discussed the Sudan, South Africa and Cuba at great length, and Roosevelt gave a detailed recollection of the Rough Riders’ charge at San Juan Hill. Over more contemporary matters, Roosevelt and Root listened to the insight Kitchener offered on recruitment and conscription, although they formed their own judgements on his recommendations. Balfour and Roosevelt were able to talk extensively about the war effort, the production of materiel and war aims. To the President, Balfour revealed the secret agreements that Britain had made with her allies regarding the Ottoman Empire. Ambivalent about the fate of Turkey, an autocracy he viewed with even less taste than Russia’s vanished Tsarist system, he accepted the projected carve up of the Middle East both as an expediency of alliance politics and an opportunity to bring western principles of government to a region that had long been under the neglected sway of Ottoman rule. Both Balfour and Kitchener, aged nearly sixty-nine and sixty-seven respectively, declined the President’s offer to go hiking, although they were able to ingratiate themselves with Roosevelt’s social circle and senior members of the administration, attending a number of banquets held in their honour. At one such occasion, Kitchener was sat next to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the thirty-three year old wife of a prominent Republican Congressman. An onlooker noted that ‘K got along splendidly with the President’s pretty daughter all evening, laughing and joking etc.’ A bachelor who found relationships with women difficult, Kitchener surprised others by his jovial behaviour, helping somewhat to soften his austere image. Even so, Kitchener was able to give a number of robust press conferences, strikingly uniformed in khaki and impressing journalists with his imperturbable calm. Balfour earned the hostility of Irish Americans who knew him as ‘Bloody Balfour’ from his tenure as Chief Secretary of Ireland between 1887 and 1891. He addressed a joint session of Congress, the first British parliamentarian to do so since Charles Stewart Parnell in 1880, and was very well received – Roosevelt himself came down into the chamber to shake his hand at the conclusion of the speech. Congress also made a spectacular gesture of appreciation to Kitchener by granting him the honorary rank of Major-General in the United States Army, a reward he received just before he reviewed West Point cadets and a number of regiments from the regular army. Meanwhile, Balfour toured New York, and was shown the city’s great skyscrapers, and when told that one was entirely fireproof, an unimpressed Balfour merely remarked ‘what a pity.’ Otherwise, Balfour enthralled those he encountered, and with joy the former Prime Minister could regard the visit as a great success. This was confirmed in financial terms when Perkins, the Treasury Secretary, sanctioned another huge British loan with J.P. Morgan, ensuring that Bonar Law, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would be saved from having to raise taxes to meet the growing cost of the war. After four weeks, the British mission departed after a short stay in Canada, although Kitchener was asked by Root to remain in America to act as a source of independent advice regarding the United States Army’s mobilisation and expansion. Feeling liberated by his work in America, Kitchener accepted; eager that Kitchener should not return, Lloyd George also accepted the arrangement.
A Punch cartoon – the American eagle swoops in from the west
By early April, Anglo-American relations were at an unprecedented high, and the United States had committed herself fully to the Allied cause. Seizing 400,000 tonnes of German shipping in American ports and beginning a massive state prompted ship building programme, Roosevelt had asserted his desire not only to raise the army necessary to defeat the Central Powers, but to transport it to Europe independently of her allies. The President had taken the first steps towards making the United States the world’s pre-eminent power.
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Great update, and interesting apprisal of the US capabilities. Best way to cement the alliance would be for Kitchener to marry the Presidents daughter.
Pure class. Excellent.
Nothing like good 'ole dynasticism, eh? Nice to see the US gearing up for action. Does the AI actually manage do get troops to Europe or do you have to "help" out? Another good one, Allenby.
Nice to see the US gearing up for action. Does the AI actually manage do get troops to Europe or do you have to "help" out? Another good one, Allenby. 
Great update Allenby, nice to see how the US prepeares for war, will be interesting to see if they are able to get hat large forces to Europe that quick, but if they are able to do it, it will surly aid the Allies a lot in France
It results scaring to see Teddy Rooselvet side by side with Kitchener... And quite impressive, too. Ah, the wonders of modern technology.
Wonderful update, Allenby. Great work, as usual!
And quite impressive, too. Ah, the wonders of modern technology.Wonderful update, Allenby. Great work, as usual!
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If they manage to conclude peace with the Russians soon they just as well might. But time is getting scarse indeed.Vincent Julien said:
I wonder how long would took Allenb... er..., the USA, to enlist their troops and to send them to Europe .
.
If Britain does think about getting onvolved in Russia, http://www.fulltable.com/CCC/wsc/03.jpg . haha.
As I interpret the last chapter the AI is on it's own regarding shipping troops to Europe.Kurt_Steiner said:I wonder how long would took Allenb... er..., the USA, to enlist their troops and to send them to Europe