Yet those five thousand miles
would not stay in the minds of the enthusiasts. So overwhelming was
their conviction that an eastern front was needed, and so great their
confidence in the valor of the Japanese army, that, mentally, they had
projected that army from Vladivostok to Poland on a magic carpet. In
vain our military authorities argued that to land troops on the rim of
Siberia had as little to do with reaching the Germans, as climbing
from the cellar to the roof of the Woolworth building had to do with
reaching the moon.
The stereotype in this instance was the war on two fronts. Ever since
men had begun to imagine the Great War they had conceived Germany held
between France and Russia. One generation of strategists, and perhaps
two, had lived with that visual image as the starting point of all
their calculations. For nearly four years every battle-map they saw
had deepened the impression that this was the war. When affairs took a
new turn, it was not easy to see them as they were then. They were
seen through the stereotype, and facts which conflicted with it, such
as the distance from Japan to Poland, were incapable of coming vividly
into consciousness.
It is interesting to note that the American authorities dealt with the
new facts more realistically than the French. In part, this was
because (previous to 1914) they had no preconception of a war upon the
continent; in part because the Americans, engrossed in the
mobilization of their forces, had a vision of the western front which
was itself a stereotype that excluded from _their_ consciousness
any very vivid sense of the other theatres of war.
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