In a follow up to an article last year, about the occasion in 1904 when Parliament came close to fully-adopting the metric system, we consider one of the possible consequences of this failure.
A metric campaign leaflet, produced by the World Trade Club in 1919, presents evidence in support of a hypothesis that the First World War would have been 2 years shorter if the UK and USA had both been on the same measurement system as the rest of the Allies at the time, i.e. metric.
It is a horrifying thought that millions of lives might have been lost as a direct result of the failure of efforts at the turn of the 20th century to adopt the metric system in the UK and the USA.
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The evidence presented in the leaflet, Keep The World War Won, is thought-provoking, although largely anecdotal. It attributes what it calls the “much-vaunted efficiency of the German military forces” to metric standardisation throughout its educational, industrial, commercial and military structure.
The Allies, on the contrary, it states, had at first no such standardisation and interchangeable uniformity.
The metric standards of France, Italy, Russia, Rumania, Greece, Belgium, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, and the rest – 23 fighting allies and 7 who had broken off diplomatic relations with Germany, including the nations of Central and South America; that is to say, some 30 of the allies – were not interchangeable with the British and American weights and measures. Even British and American measures were not interchangeable with the result that great and grave difficulties, long costly delays, interfered with their co-ordination and efficiency promptly to aid their allies.
We know that the German Kaiser counted upon this confusion for 2 years’ delay in the war preparations of the allies. We know that he expected to crush France and gain world power before the allies, thus handicapped, were really ready to fight.
All of this begs the question, “Would the First World War have even happened at all, if the UK and the USA were fully-metric countries before 1914?”
The leaflet considers this possibility, citing President F.O. Wells of the Greenfield, (Mass., USA) Tap, Die, Machine Tool Co.,
… the German Kaiser would not have dared declare war if America and Britannia had been standardized on metrics when the Germans adopted the system exclusively in 1871. In that event they could instantly have co-operated with one another and with all their allies, co-ordinating the supplies and munitions from every part of the world. President Wells insists that this lack of standardization and of coordination lengthened the war 2 years.
The leaflet continues,
The French Minister of War, Millerand, said that Kitchener’s volunteers promptly arrived in France, splendid battalions, but unarmed – there was plenty of ammunition for them, but their guns were not standardized to use it.
Joseph P. Colter, who acted as Hoover’s representative, and Dwight W. Morrow, member of J.P. Morgan Co., with a distinguished service record during the war, say in June Atlantic Monthly, page 804: “Allies each had individual types of munitions … The lesson of co-operation was forced upon them, but not until the third and fourth years did they finally admit that not only all their strength, but the joint use of all their strength, was essential.”
The World Trade Club
The leaflet, Keep The World War Won, was one of a number of campaign leaflets produced by a San Fransisco-based organisation called The World Trade Club.
The US Metric Study Interim Report, published in 1971, describes the World Trade Club as, “not a club at all but was, rather, the cloak for a publicity campaign whose sole purpose was to secure legislation adopting the metric system in the U.S.”.
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A letter accompanying the leaflet urged readers to lobby “Legislators of U.S. America and Britannia” to “secure the early world-wide use of meter-liter-gram”, by filling in the supplied postcards.
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The leaflet itself, printed only one year after the war, has an anti-German tone and contains a number of dubious assertions, such as its claim that imperial weights and measures were “Forced Upon Us by Germans”. Presumably, this was done in an attempt to exploit anti-German sentiment in the wake of the devastation of the war.
The leaflet’s front page also asserts that James Watt “thought his greatest work the Watt Measuring System, whose 3 principal units became METER-LITER-GRAM”. Whilst James Watt is on record as proposing the adoption of a universal decimal-based pound, and was in favour of the foot being redefined such that one cubic foot of water would have a mass of exactly 1000 ounces, it is a stretch to claim that he invented the “meter-liter-gram” system.
If the producers of the leaflet were keen to emphasise the anglosphere influence in the development of the metric system, it is unfortunate that they didn’t concentrate more on British scientists’ contributions to the electromagnetic units of the metric system, or their role in producing the prototype kilogram. It would seem that they were also unaware of John Wilkins’ significant contribution in practically inventing the “meter-liter-gram” system himself, in 1668.
Nonetheless, it is noteable that, whatever period of history is researched, there seems to have been no shortage of effort being made to persuade legislators to adopt a universal decimal system of weights and measures.
On the consequences of failing to fully adopt the metric system before the First World War, it would be interesting to know if this has ever been the subject of an authoritative study.
References
U.S. Metric Study Interim Report
https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/metric-si/us-metric-study-report
A History Of The Metric System Controversy In The United States
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nbsspecialpublication345-10.pdf
Further reading
House of Lords votes in favour of full adoption of the metric system
https://metricviews.uk/2024/02/23/house-of-lords-votes-in-favour-of-full-adoption-of-the-metric-system/
Metric Views 
A system based on litres, metres and grams is nothing more than FFU with different unit names and not really worth the effort or money to change to. The countries that have the best system are those that actually adopted SI, but in reality they don’t use it properly. SI is coherent and consistent only when each feature to be measured uses one unit and scaling prefixes to bring numbers into a functional range.
Metric among the masses is no different than FFU, in that units used are restricted to litres for volume, grams, kilograms and tonnes for weight (not mass), centimetres, metres and kilometres for distance. Grams, kilograms, centimetres, metres, kilometres, etc are treated as separate units just as they are in FFU instead of a single unit of gram and metre with prefixes applied for proper scaling. The prefixes of mega, giga, tera, etc as well as milli, micro, nano, pico, etc are never used and highly resisted even among standard metric users.
If I said the distance between the moon and earth was 384 Mm and between the sun and earth was 149.5 Gm, even among supposed metric users, I would be asked to convert that to kilometres.
Those countries that metricated before SI in 1960 are still not using SI but old cgs units and resist SI as much as the Americans and British.
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This probably sounds like the devil’s advocate but we need to consider possible interpretations of this report as anti-metric.
Firstly – “We beat Germany in the war. Why should we need to adopt their system?” This was the basis of a fierce argument I once became involved in, in a hardware shop.
Secondly – Franklin D Roosevelt was quoted as being a supporter of metrication. He was elected President of the USA a record four times, yet does not seem to have done anything to effect a changeover.
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When Germany invaded Belgium I 1914, the Belgian’s moved the copper-plates that the used for map-making from their facility in Zeebrugge to the United Kingdom and put them at the disposal of the Allied forces (the United Kingdom being one of the guarantors of Belgian neutrality. The Belgian maps had a metric grid, but the British artillery worked in yards. (See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_table). AS the front lines moved forwards and backwards, new maps were issued to the British commanders with yards grip overprinted on the Belgian metric grid. This of course caused some inefficiencies and was one of the reasons why Britain changed over to a metric grid when the country was surveyed in the 1930’s and a new set of OS maps were issued. If anyone goes to the Cabinet Rooms in London (Churchill’s underground HQ), look carefully at the large map that is hanging up in the central control room. It has a 10 km grid.
I do not know how much the use of yards rather than metres slowed the Briths forces down, but the use of yards certainly did not help the British cause.
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Daniel wrote. “If I said the distance between the moon and earth was 384 Mm and between the sun and earth was 149.5 Gm, even among supposed metric users, I would be asked to convert that to kilometres.”
Steady on. One step at a time. I will be happy when British people all use the basic metric units for all everyday purposes. When they know their weight in kilograms and report it that way. When they know their height in metres (or centimetres). I will be happy when our road signs finally show metric units and not the mish-mash we see today, sometimes with up to four different units (feet-inches-yards-metres) juxtaposed on the same sign or on a set of signs.
I don’t think there is resistance to scaling up or down using prefixes. It’s just that we haven’t got to the point yet where people have the basics embedded to the point where they can actually start doing that.
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@metricnow
I disagree with that sentiment totally. Learn it all or forget the issue.
I am bombarded on a daily basis with the stupid American billions and trillions and I am expected to know what that means, if it were the UK long version (in which I was educated) it may make sense to me, but not much.
Just why can we not use the correct multipliers used for all purposes instead of bankers billions? Why is it considered so difficult? Why are billions and trillions assumed to be easier than Mega, Giga, Peta? Most people seem to handle kilo but I doubt if even that is understood by many.
It makes no sense whatsoever. Having typed those multipliers Mega is spellchecker accepted but I get a typo error for the other two, just shows how stupid the non system is.
We have a very long way to go.
As a side note, what size is your computer storage capacity, gigabytes or terabytes?
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BrianAC:
I understand your point, but we learn things a step at a time. We don’t learn, say, a new language on day one. We learn a little at a time. I think once people genuinely understand and use the basic metric units, it will be time to bring in the multipliers. Scientists and engineers use them already because they need a much larger range of expression.
(FYI, my computer storage is in gigabytes, but I don’t know what that has to do with anything.)
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