Nations do not like each other. No plainer fact stares at us from the
pages of history since the beginning. Are we to sit down under this
forever? Why should we make no attempt to change this for the better in
the pages of history that are yet to be written? Other evils have been
made better. In this very war, the outcry against Germany has been
because she deliberately brought back into war the cruelties and
the horrors of more barbarous times, and with cold calculations of
premeditated science made these horrors worse. Our recoil from this deed
of hers and what it has brought upon the world is seen in our wish for a
League of Nations. The thought of any more battles, tenches, submarines,
air-raids, starvation, misery, is so unbearable to our bruised and
stricken minds, that we have put it into words whose import is, Let
us have no more of this! We have at least put it into words. That such
words, that such a League, can now grow into something more than words,
is the hope of many, the doubt of many, the belief of a few. It is the
belief of Mr. Wilson; of Mr. Taft; Lord Bryce; and of Lord Grey, a quiet
Englishman, whose statesmanship during those last ten murky days of
July, 1914, when he strove to avert the dreadful years that followed,
will shine bright and permanent. We must not be chilled by the doubters.
Especially is the scheme doubted in dear old Europe. Dear old Europe
is so old; we are so young; we cause her to smile. Yet it is not such a
contemptible thing to be young and innocent. Only, your innocence, while
it makes you an idealist, must not blind you to the facts. Your idea
must not rest upon sand. It must have a little rock to start with. The
nearest rock in sight is friendship between England and ourselves.
The will to friendship--or the will to hate? Which do you choose? Which
do you think is the best foundation for the League of Nations? Do you
imagine that so long as nations do not like each other, that mere words
of good intention, written on mere paper, are going to be enough? Write
down the words by all means, but see to it that behind your words there
shall exist actual good will. Discourage histories for children (and for
grown-ups too) which breed international dislike. Such exist among us
all. There is a recent one, written in England, that needs some changes.
Should an Englishman say to me:
“I have the will to friendship. Is there any particular thing which I
can do to help?” I should answer him:
“Just now, or in any days to come, should you be tempted to remind us
that we did not protest against the martyrdom of Belgium, that we were a
bit slow in coming into the war,--oh, don’t utter that reproach! Go back
to your own past; look, for instance, at your guarantee to Denmark, at
Lord John Russell’s words: ‘Her Majesty could not see with indifference
a military occupation of Holstein’--and then see what England shirked;
and read that scathing sentence spoken to her ambassador in Russia:
‘Then we may dismiss any idea that England will fight on a point of
honor.’ We had made you no such guarantee. We were three thousand miles
away--how far was Denmark?
“And another thing. On August 6, 1919, when Britain’s thanks to her land
and sea forces were moved in both houses of Parliament, the gentleman
who moved them in the House of Lords said something which, as it seems
to me, adds nothing to the tribute he had already paid so eloquently.
He had spoken of the greater incentive to courage which the French and
Belgians had, because their homes and soil were invaded, while England’s
soldiers had suffered no invasion of their island. They had not the
stimulus of the knowledge that the frontier of their country had been
violated, their homes broken up, their families enslaved, or worse. And
then he added: ‘I have sometimes wondered in my own mind, though I have
hardly dared confess the sentiment, whether the gallant troops of our
Allies would have fought with equal spirit and so long a time as they
did, had they been engaged in the Highlands of Scotland or on the
marches of the Welsh border.’ Why express that wonder? Is there not here
an instance of that needless overlooking of the feelings of others, by
which, in times past, you have chilled those others? Look out for that.”
And should an American say to me:
“I have the will to friendship. What can I personally do?” I should say:
“Play fair! Look over our history from that Treaty of Paris in 1783,
down through the Louisiana Purchase, the Monroe Doctrine, and Manila
Bay; look at the facts. You will see that no matter how acrimoniously
England has quarreled with us, these were always family scraps, in which
she held out for her own interests just as we did for ours. But whenever
the question lay between ourselves and Spain, or France, or Germany, or
any foreign power, England stood with us against them.
“And another thing. Not all Americans boast, but we have a reputation
for boasting. Our Secretary of the Navy gave our navy the whole credit
for transporting our soldiers to Europe when England did more than half
of it. At Annapolis there has been a poster, showing a big American
sailor with a doughboy on his back, and underneath the words, ‘We put
them across.’ A brigadier general has written a book entitled, How the
Marines Saved Paris. Beside the marines there were some engineers. And
how about M Company of the 23rd regiment of the 2nd Division? It lost
in one day at Chateau-Thierry all its men but seven. And did the general
forget the 3rd Division between Chateau-Thierry and Dormans? Don’t be
like that brigadier general, and don’t be like that American officer
returning on the Lapland who told the British at his table he was glad
to get home after cleaning up the mess which the British had made.
Resemble as little as possible our present Secretary of the Navy. Avoid
boasting. Our contribution to victory was quite enough without boasting.
The head-master of one of our great schools has put it thus to his
schoolboys who fought: Some people had to raise a hundred dollars. After
struggling for years they could only raise seventy-five. Then a man came
along and furnished the remaining necessary twenty-five dollars. That is
a good way to put it. What good would our twenty-five dollars have been,
and where should we have been, if the other fellows hadn’t raised the
seventy-five dollars first?”