cial statement was issued by the Press Bureau at noon to-day:

The enemy has forced a crossing of the Connecticut River at both Saybrook and Middletown. Our troops are being forced northward, and before further resistance will be possible, they will have to join with the New England militia. The hostile invading force numbers in the neighborhood of 150,000 men, with an overwhelming superiority in artillery and equipment. Transports with heavy reinforcements are reported to be approaching. The New York municipal authorities have been notified that a successful defense of that city seems impossible.

All of this is pure speculation, to be sure. Nevertheless, the speculation has a basis in facts which cannot be disputed. I have shown the manuscript of this chapter to several military experts and all agreed that under the conditions which I have imagined, with the city's fate hanging on a bare 50,000 men, and an unorganized, unofficered, and poorly equipped

force of volunteers, capture would be inevitable. They agreed that defense by citizens, under modern methods of warfare, would be hopeless, and pointed to the German operations in Belgium as proof of this. They agreed that a tremendous indemnity would doubtless be demanded, some placing it as high as $1,000,000,000, others still higher. None of them suggested that there was absurdity in the speculative treatment of the facts of our preparedness, and they were of one mind that if the events imagined should occur, the nation would face the immediate necessity of deciding whether it would pay an enormous monetary price for peace or whether it would enter into a long war to retake all that might be lost before hundreds of thousands of men and officers could be armed, trained, equipped, and put into the field.

Among the men with whom I discussed this chapter was Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War. After a close study of the manuscript Mr. Stimson permitted me to quote him as follows:

I have read "An Attack on New York." There is nothing said in it which is outside the bounds of modern military possibility. The facts with reference to our possible defensive force are accurately stated and the speculative treatment of them is logical.

The facts of our military preparedness, as they apply to the possibility of an attack on the Atlantic Coast, have an even more alarming bearing on any speculation touching the safety of our Pacific Slope.

Our General Staff and our War College have taken problem after problem, worked each one forward, backward, and sideways, conjured up every conceivable proposition touching attack and means of defense. In each case, eventually, the solution has been the same.

We cannot defend the Pacific Slope against a trained hostile force as small as 100,000 men.

It matters very little at what point the empire west of the Rockies might be invaded. In the opinion of military experts who have worked on the problems of the military defense of that portion of our territory, a suc