MERICA, peaceful, isolated and serene in the midst of international intrigues yet not embroiled in them,
suddenly found itself in August, 1914, an international power. Although it did not enter the World War until April 6, 1917, its destiny was fixed when Gavrilo Prinzep on June 28, 1914, shot and killed the heir to the throne of AustriaHungary and Sophia Chotek, his morganatic wife. At first the web of circumstance binding the United States to the rest of the world as the consequence of that deed was gossamer fine. With German rapine in Belgium, the sinking of the unarmed Lusitania, the destruction of American lives and property through German plots and the growth of Teutonic militarism into a cloud that shadowed and menaced civilization, the filaments of the web grew into ropes and cables of steel drawing us irresistibly into the world conflict.
This book tells the story of that web and how America acquitted itself therein. Deeds are more eloquent than words. America's entrance tipped the scales against Germany; but the decision came after England and her great colonies, heroic France, Belgium, Italy and Russia had held the Teutonic coalition to a stalemate on the bloodsoaked fields of Europe.
America's share in the triumph of an idealistic civilization over a militaristic autocracy is told in these pages in narrative form. Every deed that is recited, every sacrifice that is set forth finds its warrant in the official records of the Great War. The reading of this book is urged by the head of the American Expeditionary Forces, General Pershing, as a patriotic privilege and duty upon every American. The examples of those glorious dead whose blood hallows the