Our diplomacy and the state of our preparations equally show that we intended no aggressive war, while, as for defense, we were ready to do everything that had been put down as our reasonable share. No one of the allied nations had realized or could realize the deadly meaning of the organized effort and preparation carried on by Germany for a generation. No one supposed that we should be required to hold the seas and also to raise an army on the continental scale. What we set out to do was done with extraordinary speed and success. We held the seas and dispatched an expeditionary force of moderate size, which forthwith proved itself to be of the very highest efficiency.
