Part 20 (1/2)

THE WILSON WILL

The United States enters the greatest war in history at the psychological moment with a capable and determined president, a united nation and almost unlimited resources in men, money and munitions.

There is a tremendous difference between the situation in the United States and that in any other European country. During the two years I was in Europe I visited every nation at war except Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey. I saw conditions in the neutral countries of Holland, Denmark, Switzerland and Spain. The one big thing which impressed me upon my arrival in New York was that the United States, in contrast to all these countries, has, as yet, not been touched by the war. Americans are not living under the strain and worry which hang like dreadful dull clouds over every European power. In Switzerland the economic worries and the sufferings of the neighbouring belligerents have made the Swiss people feel that they are in the centre of the war itself. In France, although Paris is gay, although people smile (they have almost forgotten how to smile in Germany), although streets are crowded, and stores busy, the atmosphere is earnest and serious. Spain is torn by internal troubles. There is a great army of unemployed. The submarine war has destroyed many Spanish s.h.i.+ps and interrupted Spanish trade with belligerents. Business houses are unable to obtain credit. German propaganda is sowing sedition and the King himself is uncertain about the future. But in the United States there is a gigantic display of energy and potential power which makes this country appear to possess sufficient force in itself to defeat Germany. Berlin is drained and dead in comparison. Paris, while busy, is war-busy and every one and everything seems to move and live because of the war. In New York and throughout the country there are young men by the hundreds of thousands. Germany and France have no young men outside the armies.

Here there are millions of automobiles and millions of people hurrying, happy and contented, to and from their work. In Germany there are no automobiles which are not in the service of the Government and rubber tires are so nearly exhausted that practically all automobiles have iron wheels.

Some Americans have lived for many years with the idea that only certain sections of the United States were related to Europe. Many people, especially those in the Middle West, have had the impression that only the big s.h.i.+pping interests and exporters had direct interests in affairs across the ocean. But when Germany began to take American lives on the high seas, when German submarines began to treat American s.h.i.+ps like all other belligerent vessels, it began to dawn upon people here that this country was very closely connected to Europe by blood ties as well as by business bonds. It has taken the United States two years to learn that Europe was not, after all, three thousand miles away when it came to the vital moral issues of live international policies. Before Congress declared war I found many Americans criticising President Wilson for not declaring war two years ago.

While I do not know what the situation was during my absence still the impression which Americans abroad had, even American officials, was that President Wilson would not have had the support of a united people which he has to-day had he entered the war before all question of doubt regarding the moral issues had disappeared.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AUTHOR'S CARD OF ADMISSION TO THE REICHSTAG ON APRIL 5TH, 1916.]

In the issue of April 14th of this year the _New Republic_, of New York, in an editorial on ”Who willed American partic.i.p.ation?” cast an interesting light upon the reasons for our intervention in the Great War.

”Pacifist agitators who have been so courageously opposing, against such heavy odds, American partic.i.p.ation in the war have been the victims of one natural but considerable mistake,” says _The New Republic_. ”They have insisted that the chief beneficiaries of American partic.i.p.ation would be the munition-makers, bankers and in general the capitalist cla.s.s, that the chief sufferers would be the petty business men and the wage-earners. They have consequently considered the former cla.s.ses to be conspiring in favour of war, and now that war has come, they condemn it as the work of a small but powerful group of profiteers. Senator Norris had some such meaning in his head when he a.s.serted that a declaration of war would be equivalent to stamping the dollar mark on the American flag.

”This explanation of the great decision is an absurd mistake, but the pacifists have had some excuses for making it. They have seen a great democratic nation gradually forced into war, in spite of the manifest indifference or reluctance of the majority of its population; and they have rightly attributed the successful pressure to the ability of a small but influential minority to impose its will on the rest of the country. But the numerically insignificant cla.s.s whose influence has been successfully exerted in favour of American partic.i.p.ation does not consist of the bankers and the capitalists. Neither will they be the chief beneficiaries of American partic.i.p.ation. The bankers and the capitalists have favoured war, but they have favoured it without realising the extent to which it would injure their own interests, and their support has been one of the most formidable political obstacles to American partic.i.p.ation. The effective and decisive work on behalf of war has been accomplished by an entirely different cla.s.s--a cla.s.s which must be comprehensively but loosely described as the 'intellectuals.'

”The American nation is entering this war under the influence of a moral verdict reached, after the utmost deliberation by the more thoughtful members of the community. They gradually came to a decision that the attack made by Germany on the international order was sufficiently flagrant and dangerous to justify this country in abandoning its cherished isolation and in using its resources to bring about German defeat. But these thoughtful people were always a small minority. They were able to impose their will upon a reluctant or indifferent majority partly because the increasingly offensive nature of German military and diplomatic policy made plausible opposition to American partic.i.p.ation very difficult, but still more because of the overwhelming preponderance of pro-Ally conviction in the intellectual life of the country. If the several important professional and social groups could have voted separately on the question of war and peace, the list of college professors would probably have yielded the largest majority in favour of war, except perhaps that contained in the Social Register. A fighting anti-German spirit was more general among physicians, lawyers and clergymen than it was among business men--except those with Wall Street and banking connections. Finally, it was not less general among writers on magazines and in the newspapers. They popularised what the college professors had been thinking. Owing to this consensus of influences opposition to pro-Ally orthodoxy became intellectually somewhat disreputable, and when a final decision had to be made this factor counted with unprecedented and overwhelming force. College professors headed by a President who had himself been a college professor contributed more effectively to the decision in favour of war than did the farmers, the business men or the politicians.

”When one considers the obstacles to American entrance into the war, the more remarkable and unprecedented does the final decision become.

Every other belligerent had something immediate and tangible to gain by partic.i.p.ating and to lose by not partic.i.p.ating. Either they were invaded or were threatened with invasion. Either they dreaded the loss of prestige or territory or coveted some kind or degree of national aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. Even Australia and Canada, who had little or nothing to gain from fighting, could not have refused to fight without severing their connection with the British Empire, and behaving in a manner which would have been considered treacherous by their fellow Britons.

But the American people were not forced into the war either by fears or hopes or previously recognised obligations. On the contrary, the ponderable and tangible realities of the immediate situation counselled neutrality. They were revolted by the hideous brutality of the war and its colossal waste. Partic.i.p.ation must be purchased with a similarly colossal diversion of American energy from constructive to destructive work, the imposition of a similarly heavy burden upon the future production of American labour. It implied the voluntary surrender of many of those advantages which had tempted our ancestors to cross the Atlantic and settle in the New World. As against these certain costs there were no equally tangible compensations. The legal rights of American citizens were, it is true, being violated, and the structure of international law with which American security was traditionally a.s.sociated was being s.h.i.+vered, but the nation had weathered a similar storm during the Napoleonic Wars and at that time partic.i.p.ation in the conflict had been wholly unprofitable. By spending a small portion of the money which will have to be spent in helping the Allies to beat Germany, upon preparations exclusively for defence, the American nation could have protected for the time being the inviolability of its own territory and its necessary communications with the Panama Ca.n.a.l. Many considerations of national egotism counselled such a policy. But although the Hearst newspapers argued most persuasively on behalf of this course it did not prevail. The American nation allowed itself to be captured by those upon whom the more remote and less tangible reasons for partic.i.p.ation acted with compelling authority. For the first time in history a wholly independent nation has entered a great and costly war under the influence of ideas rather than immediate interests and without any expectation of gains, except those which can be shared with all liberal and inoffensive nations.

”The United States might have blundered into the war at any time during the past two years, but to have entered, as it is now doing, at the right time and in the clear interest of a purely international programme required the exercise of an intellectualised and imaginative leaders.h.i.+p. And in supplying the country with this leaders.h.i.+p Mr.

Wilson was interpreting the ideas of thoughtful Americans who wished their country to be fighting on the side of international right, but not until the righteousness of the Allied cause was unequivocally established. It has taken some time to reach this a.s.surance. The war originated in conflicting national ambitions among European Powers for privileged economic and political positions in Africa and Asia, and if it had continued to be a war of this kind there never could have been a question of American intervention. Germany, however, had been dreaming of a more glorious goal than Bagdad and a mightier heritage than that of Turkey. She betrayed her dream by attacking France through Belgium and by threatening the foundations of European order. The crucifying of Belgium established a strong presumption against Germany, but the case was not complete. There still remained the dubious origin of the war. There still remained a doubt whether the defeat of German militarism might not mean a dangerous triumph of Russian autocracy.

Above all there remained a more serious doubt whether the United States in aiding the Allies to beat Germany might not be contributing merely to the establishment of a new and equally unstable and demoralising Balance of Power in Europe. It was well, consequently, to wait and see whether the development of the war would not do away with some of the ambiguities and misgivings, while at the same time to avoid doing anything to embarra.s.s the Allies. The waiting policy has served.

Germany was driven by the logic of her original aggression to threaten the security of all neutrals connected with the rest of the world by maritime communications. The Russian autocracy was overthrown, because it betrayed its furtive kins.h.i.+p with the German autocracy. Finally, President Wilson used the waiting period for the education of American public opinion. His campaign speeches prophesied the abandonment of American isolation in the interest of a League of Peace. His note of last December to the belligerents brought out the sinister secrecy of German peace terms and the comparative frankness of that of the Allies.

His address to the Senate clearly enunciated the only programme on behalf of which America could intervene in European affairs. Never was there a purer and more successful example of Fabian political strategy, for Fabianism consists not merely in waiting but in preparing during the meantime for the successful application of a plan to a confused and dangerous situation.

”What Mr. Wilson did was to apply patience and brains to a complicated and difficult but developing political situation. He was distinguished from his morally indignant pro-Allies fellow countrymen, who a few months ago were abusing him for seeking to make a specifically American contribution to the issues of the war, just as Lincoln was distinguished from the abolitionists, not so much by difference in purposes as by greater political wisdom and intelligence. It is because of his Fabianism, because he insisted upon waiting until he had established a clear connection between American intervention and an attempt to create a community of nations, that he can command and secure for American intervention the full allegiance of the American national conscience. His achievement is a great personal triumph, but it is more than that. It is an ill.u.s.tration and a prophecy of the part which intelligence and in general the 'intellectual' cla.s.s have an opportunity of playing in shaping American policy and in moulding American life. The intimate a.s.sociation between action and ideas, characteristic of American political practice at its best, has been vindicated once more. The a.s.sociation was started at the foundation of the Republic and was embodied in the work of the Fathers, but particularly in that of Hamilton. It was carried on during the period of the Civil War and was embodied chiefly in the patient and penetrating intelligence which Abraham Lincoln brought to his task. It has just been established in the region of foreign policy by Mr.

Wilson's discriminating effort to keep the United States out of the war until it could go in as the instrument of an exclusively international programme and with a fair prospect of getting its programme accepted.

In holding to this policy Mr. Wilson was interpreting with fidelity and imagination the ideas and the aspirations of the more thoughtful Americans. His success should give them increasing confidence in the contribution which they as men of intelligence are capable of making to the fulfilment of the better American national purposes.”

During 1915 and 1916 our diplomatic relations with Germany have been expressed in one series of notes after another, and the burden of affairs has been as much on the shoulders of Amba.s.sador Gerard as on those of any other one American, for he has been the official who has had to transmit, interpret and fight for our policies in Berlin. Mr.

Gerard had a difficult task because he, like President Wilson, was constantly heckled and ridiculed by those pro-German Americans who were more interested in discrediting the Administration than in maintaining peace. Of all the problems with which the Amba.s.sador had to contend, the German-American issue was the greatest, and those who believed that it was centred in the United States are mistaken, for the capital of German-America was _Berlin_.

”I have had a great deal of trouble in Germany from the American correspondents when they went there,” said Amba.s.sador Gerard in an address to the American Newspapers Publishers a.s.sociation in New York on April 26th.

”Most of them became super-Amba.s.sadors and proceeded to inform the German Government that they must not believe me--that they must not believe the President--they must not believe the American people--but believe these people, and to a great extent this war is due to the fact that these pro-German Americans, a certain number of them, misinformed the German Government as to the sentiments of this country.”

James W. Gerard's diplomatic career in Germany was based upon bluntness, frankness and a kind of ”news instinct” which caused him to regard his position as that of a reporter for the United States Government.

Berlin thought him the most unusual Amba.s.sador it had ever known. It never knew how to take him. He did not behave as other diplomats did.