H.L. Mencken

Springfield News-Leader/February 24, 1929

I

Those who read the newspapers attentively have no doubt noticed of late a great efflorescence of articles on the possibility (or probability) of war between the United States and England. Such articles began to appear in England three or four years ago, usually in the form of violent denunciations of the Yankee Shylock. For a while there was no response from this side, but now the matter begins to be discussed very widely, here as well as in England, and some of the Liberal weeklies have got into a powerful sweat about it, and are demanding that all good men come to the aid of peace.

How much sense is there in this pother? In my judgment, not much. That the English dislike us intensely. I grant you freely, and that they dream of a day when they’ll be able to pull us down, loot our strongbox and regain their old primacy in the world—that may be granted also. But they are a realistic people, and the plain facts do not escape them. Those facts are numerous and complicated, but they may be precipitated into the bald proposition that beating the United States, at the present writing, is a sheer physical impossibility. It simply can’t be done.

That England couldn’t do it alone is admitted by everyone, including even Englishmen. That she couldn’t do it with the usual allies is less obvious, but none the less true. Two things make it so. One is the extraordinary capacity of the United States for long and desperate defense—the vast advantage that lies in our peculiar geographical situation and our economic invulnerability. The other lies in our accompanying capacity to inflict endless and irreparable injury upon British trade and the whole British imperial system. Within six months after such a war started England would suffer greater loss than she suffered in the World War, and most of it would be loss that she could never make up.

II

As everyone knows, the English never tackle a first-rate foe without the aid of great hordes of allies. Their skill at rounding up such allies, in fact, is two-thirds of their skill at war, and they have seldom, in history, launched their actual attack without making sure of odds of at least two to one in their favor. Where would they get help today? From Japan? Perhaps. But where in Europe? 

Where would the cannon-fodder come from for a long war? And where the needed aid, in ships and men, on the sea?

It seems to me highly unlikely that they’re able to do any effective business on the continent. The French, true enough, now incline to them more or less, but the instant the French took any chances the Italians would probably be upon them, not to mention the Germans. It is almost impossible to imagine the Germans helping France and England against the United States. They would have too much to gain by remaining out of it—too much to gain, in the wiping out of their war debt, after France and England had been beaten. The United States could well afford to offer them anything they wanted in that direction. What’s more, it could undoubtedly deliver what it promised—if they stayed out, and so kept France nervous and ineffective.

The Russians would keep out of an Anglo-American war, if only because they couldn’t make up their minds which side they hated the more. Moreover, their help would be of little value if they came in; even in the World War, once the battle of Tannenberg had been fought, they were a liability to the allies rather than an asset. This leaves the smaller countries—Holland, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Belgium. All of them save one stuck to neutrality in the World War, and that one was horribly mauled. Is it possible to imagine them coming into a war that might last twice as long, and be five times as costly? I think not.

III

There remains Japan. That godless and immoral country has long served as a bugaboo for timid Americans, but there is every reason for believing that its prowess has been vastly overrated. Only twice in their history have the Japs ever faced civilized foes, and both times they made frightful exhibitions of themselves, though in each case they won. The first time was in 1904, when the enemy was Russia. The Russians were 7,000 miles from their base, and had only a single-track railroad to bring up supplies; the Japs were but a few hundred miles from their base and had the open sea behind them. Yet it took them more than a year to capture Mukden, and when the job was done at last they were so exhausted that the ensuing peace treaty ran in Russia’s favor almost as much as it ran in their own.

Their second venture against white men was in the autumn of 1914. The job before them then was to capture Tsingtao, on the Chinese coast. It was defended on the sea by a few small boats, most of them converted merchantmen, and on the land by a few thousand men, mainly middle-aged territorials. Against this puny force of Germans the Japs brought up a fleet of cruisers and battleships and a whole division. Yet it took them three months to take the town, and they did so even then only because the Germans had run out of ammunition.

The siege was marked by almost unbelievable grotesquerie. Half a dozen Germans put out of from the port in a small motor boat, fastened a mine to a pile of Japanese cruisers, and blew it up. On the third side small parties beat off the attack of whole Japanese regiments. When, in the end, the town was taken by assault, the Jap soldiers were so exhausted that they fell in their tracks, and many of them had to be carried to hospitals by their defeated enemies. The march-in was marked by a painful episode. A small force of British that had come up refused to salute the Japanese flag! No wonder!

IV

The prowess of the Japs has been persistently exaggerated by American advocates of a large navy. It has served to scare silly opponents, and so get them what they wanted. But it has very little reality. There is not the slightest reason for believing that a Japanese fleet, meeting an American fleet of anything like its strength, could beat it. Or that the Japs, beating a weaker fleet, could land and maintain an army on the Pacific coast.

True enough, it might be easy for them, joining England against us, to seize the Philippines. But could they hold them? It seems highly improbable in the long run we’d be able to dislodge them, and to punish them dreadfully in the process. Moreover, we’d have complete control of Canada three months after the war started, and there would be no way for England to run us out. In the end we could take the Philippines back as a very small return for getting out, or for getting out of one province, or even one city.

For all these reasons—and there are many more—it seems to me highly improbable that the English are seriously contemplating making war on the United States. The French, in their position, might think of it, but the French are full of folly, but the English are very cautions and calculating, especially in war. When the odds are plainly against them, they are for peace. It would be impossible to imagine them taking such chances as the Germans took in 1914. Such gambling in the grand manner is simply not in their nature. They play close to the board.

Why, then, do they rattle the sword now? Why are their papers full of dark hints? Mainly, I believe, because they know how easy it is to scare Americans. They want to keep their control of the sea. They want to make it appear that challenging that control will be very dangerous, not to say fatal. So they talk lugubriously of the war ahead, and their dupes and sycophants on this side of the ocean swallow it all with sad faces. Their aim is to make it appear that any step the United States may take for its proper defense is an act of wanton aggression, almost an act of open war. That aim is beautifully supported by the pacifists and the Anglomaniacs —not infrequently the same persons.

So far, congress refuses to succumb. It has passed the cruiser bill. If it continues along that line there will be no easy Anglo-American war. There will never be such a war so long as the United States can put up a dangerous resistance. It will come when we are weak, and not before.