greatest authorities, we Americans are to-day totally unprepared to
defend ourselves against a first-class foreign power. My story aims to
show this, and high officers in our army and navy, who have assisted me
in the preparation of this book and to whom I am grateful, assure me that
I have set forth the main facts touching our military defencelessness
without exaggeration. C. M.

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY, 1916.




CHAPTER I


I WITNESS THE BLOWING UP OF THE PANAMA CANAL

In my thirty years' service as war correspondent of the London _Times_ I
have looked behind the scenes of various world happenings, and have known
the thrill of personally facing some great historic crises; but there is
nothing in my experience so dramatic, so pregnant with human
consequences, as the catastrophe of April 27, 1921, when the Gatun Locks
of the Panama Canal were destroyed by dynamite.

At that moment I was seated on the shaded, palm-bordered piazza of the
Grand Hotel at Colon, discussing with Rear-Admiral Thomas Q. Allyn of the
United States Navy the increasing chances that America might find herself
plunged into war with Japan. For weeks the clouds had been darkening, and
it was now evident that the time had come when the United States must
either abandon the Monroe Doctrine and the open door in China, or fight