the American manufacture and sale of munitions of war was one-sided and
therefore unneutral, and (2) that the United States had practically
acquiesced in what she considered the unlawful efforts of Great Britain
to cut off the food supply of Germany. The subject of the munitions
trade was brought to the attention of the United States by Germany in a
note of April 4, 1915. While not denying the legality of the trade in
munitions under ordinary circumstances the contentions of the German
Government were that the situation in the present war differed from
that of any previous war; that the recognition of the trade in the past
had sprung from the necessity of protecting existing industries, while
in the present war an entirely new industry had been created in the
United States; and it concluded with the following statement which was
the real point of the note: "This industry is actually delivering goods
to the enemies of Germany. The theoretical willingness to supply
Germany also, if shipments were possible, does not alter the case. If
it is the will of the American people that there should be a true
neutrality, the United States will find means of preventing this
one-sided supply of arms or at least of utilizing it to protect
legitimate trade with Germany, especially that in food stuffs." To
this note Secretary Bryan replied that "Any change in its own laws of
neutrality during the progress of the war which would affect unequally
the relations of the United States with the nations at war would be an
unjustifiable departure from the principle of strict neutrality."
Two months later the discussion was renewed by the Austro-Hungarian
Government. The Austrian note did not question the intention of the
United States to conform to the letter of the law, but complained that
we were not carrying out its spirit, and suggested that a threat to
withhold food stuffs and raw materials from the Allies would be
sufficient to protect legitimate commerce between the United States and
the Central Powers. To this note Secretary Lansing replied at length.
He held: (1) that the United States was under no obligation to change
or modify the rules of international usage on account of special
conditions. (2) He rejected what he construed to be the contention of
the Austrian Government that "the advantages gained to a belligerent by
its superiority on the sea should be equalized by the neutral powers by
the establishment of a system of non-intercourse with the victor." (3)
He called attention to the fact that Austria-Hungary and Germany had
during the years preceding the present European war produced "a great
surplus of arms and ammunition which they sold throughout the world and
especially to belligerents. Never during that period did either of
them suggest or apply the principle now advocated by the Imperial and
Royal Government." (4) "But, in addition to the question of principle,
there is a practical and substantial reason why the Government of the
United States has from the foundation of the Republic to the present
time advocated and practised unrestricted trade in arms and military
supplies. It has never been the policy of this country to maintain in
time of peace a large military establishment or stores of arms and
ammunition sufficient to repel invasion by a well-equipped and powerful
enemy. It has desired to remain at peace with all nations and to avoid
any appearance of menacing such peace by the threat of its armies and
navies. In consequence of this standing policy the United States
would, in the event of attack by a foreign power, be at the outset of
the war seriously, if not fatally, embarrassed by the lack of arms and
ammunition and by the means to produce them in sufficient quantities to
supply the requirements of national defense. The United States has
always depended upon the right and power to purchase arms and
ammunition from neutral nations in case of foreign attack. This right,
which it claims for itself, it cannot deny to others."
The German and Austrian authorities were fully aware that their
arguments had no basis in international law or practice. Indeed, their
notes were probably designed to influence public opinion and help the
German propagandists in this country who were making a desperate effort
to get Congress to place an embargo on the export of munitions. Having
failed in this attempt, an extensive conspiracy was formed to break up
the trade in munitions by a resort to criminal methods. Numerous
explosions occurred in munition plants destroying many lives and
millions of dollars' worth of property, and bombs were placed in a
number of ships engaged in carrying supplies to the Allies. The
Austrian ambassador and the German military and naval attachés at
Washington were involved in these activities and their recall was
promptly demanded by Secretary Lansing.
The violations of international law by Germany were so flagrant, her
methods of waging war so barbarous, the activities of her diplomats so
devoid of honor, and her solemn pledges were so ruthlessly broken that
the technical discussion of the rules of maritime law was completely
overshadowed by the higher moral issues involved in the contest. All
further efforts to maintain neutrality finally became intolerable even
to President Wilson, who had exercised patience until patience ceased
to be a virtue. Having failed in his efforts to persuade Congress to
authorize the arming of merchantmen, the President finally concluded,
in view of Germany's threat to treat armed guards as pirates, that
armed neutrality was impracticable. He accepted the only alternative
and on April 2, 1917, went before Congress to ask for a formal
declaration of war against Germany.
Had Germany observed the rules of international law, the United States
would probably have remained neutral notwithstanding the imminent
danger of the overthrow of France and the possible invasion of England.
The upsetting of the European balance would eventually have led to a
conflict between Germany and the United States. The violation of
American rights forced us to go to war, but having once entered the
war, we fought not merely for the vindication of American rights, but
for the establishment of human freedom and the recognition of human
rights throughout the world. In his war address President Wilson said:
"Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the
world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to
that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic Governments
backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not
by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in
such circumstances." Having once abandoned neutrality and isolation we
are not likely to remain neutral again in any war which involves the
balance of power in the world or the destinies of the major portion of
mankind. Neutrality and isolation were correlative. They were both
based on the view that we were a remote and distant people and had no
intimate concern with what was going on in the great world across the
seas.
The failure of neutrality and the abandonment of isolation marked a
radical, though inevitable, change in our attitude toward world
politics. President Wilson did not propose, however, to abandon the
great principles for which we as a nation had stood, but rather to
extend them and give them a world-wide application. In his address to
the Senate on January 22, 1917, he said:
"I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord
adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world;
that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation
or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its
own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened,
unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.
"I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances
which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net
of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with
influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a
concert of power."
In other words, the Monroe Doctrine, stripped of its imperialistic
tendencies, was to be internationalized, and the American policy of
isolation, in the sense of avoiding secret alliances, was to become a
fundamental principle of the new international order. If the United
States was to go into a league of nations, every member of the league
must stand on its own footing. We were not to be made a buffer between
alliances and ententes.
X
THE WAR AIMS OF THE UNITED STATES
The advent of the United States into the family of nations nearly a
century and a half ago was an event of worldwide significance. Our
revolutionary ancestors set up a government founded on a new principle,
happily phrased by Jefferson in the statement that governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed. This principle
threatened, although remotely, the existence of the aristocratic
governments of the Old World which were still based on the doctrine of
divine right. The entrance of the United States into the World War was
an event of equal significance because it gave an American president,
who was thoroughly grounded in the political philosophy of the Virginia
Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the writings of
the founders of the Republic, an opportunity to proclaim to the world
the things for which America has always stood. In this connection H.
W. V. Temperley in "A History of the Peace Conference of Paris" (vol.
i, page 173) says: "The utterances of President Wilson have a unique
significance, not only because they were taken as the legal basis of
the Peace negotiations, but because they form a definite and coherent
body of political doctrine. This doctrine, though developed and
expanded in view of the tremendous changes produced by the war, was not
formed or even altered by them. His ideas, like those of no other
great statesman of the war, are capable of being worked out as a
complete political philosophy. A peculiar interest, therefore,
attaches to his pre-war speeches, for they contain the germs of his
political faith and were not influenced by the terrifying portents of
to-day. The tenets in themselves were few and simple, but their
consequences, when developed by the war, were such as to produce the
most far-reaching results. It is not possible or necessary to discuss
how far these tenets were accepted by the American people as a whole,
for, as the utterances of their legal representative at a supreme
moment of world history, they will always retain their value."
The principal features of Wilson's political philosophy were revealed
in his policy toward Latin America before he had any idea of
intervening in the European situation. At the outset of his
administration he declared that the United States would "never again
seek one additional foot of territory by conquest." In December, 1915,
he declared: "From the first we have made common cause with all
partisans of liberty on this side of the sea and . . . have set America
aside as a whole for the uses of independent nations and political
freemen." A few weeks later he proposed that the nations of America
should unite "in guaranteeing to each other absolute political
independence and territorial integrity." This proposal was actually
embodied in a treaty, but this plan for an American league of nations
did not meet with the approval of the other states, who probably feared
that the United States would occupy too dominant a position in such a
league. President Wilson's refusal to recognize the despotic power of
Huerta, while expressing sympathy for the people of Mexico, was the
first application of the policy which later so successfully drove a
wedge in between the Kaiser and the German people. His refusal to
invade Mexico and his determination to give the people of that country
a chance to work out their own salvation gave evidence to the world of
the unselfishness and sincerity of his policies, and paved the way for
the moral leadership which he later exercised over the peoples of
Europe.
President Wilson's insistence on neutrality in "thought, word, and
deed," the expression "too proud to fight," and his statement in regard
to the war, May 27, 1916, that "with its causes and objects we are not
concerned," caused deep offense to many of his countrymen and were
received with ridicule by others at home and abroad. His reasons for
remaining neutral were best stated in the speech accepting his second
nomination for the presidency, September 2, 1916: "We have been neutral
not only because it was the fixed and traditional policy of the United
States to stand aloof from the politics of Europe and because we had
had no part either of action or of policy in the influences which
brought on the present war, but also because it was manifestly our duty
to prevent, if it were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires
of hate and desolation kindled by that terrible conflict and seek to
serve mankind by reserving our strength and our resources for the
anxious and difficult days of restoration and healing which must
follow, when peace will have to build its house anew."
Other speeches made during the year 1916 show, however, that he was
being gradually forced to the conclusion that "peace is not always
within the choice of the nation" and that we must be "ready to fight
for our rights when those rights are coincident with the rights of man
and humanity."
After the German peace proposals of December 12, 1916, President Wilson
called on all the belligerents to state publicly what they were
fighting for. This demand caused a searching of hearts everywhere, led
to a restatement of aims on the part of the Allies, and threw the
Central Governments on the defensive. In formulating their replies the
Allies were somewhat embarrassed by the secret treaties relating to
Russia and Italy, which were later made public by the Bolsheviki. In
March, 1915, England and France had made an agreement with Russia by
which she was to get Constantinople, the aim of her policy since the
days of Peter the Great. By the secret Treaty of London, signed April
26, 1915, England, France, and Russia had promised Italy that she
should receive the Trentino and Southern Tyrol, including in its
population more than 250,000 Germans. Italy was also promised Trieste
and the Istrian peninsula, the boundary running just west of Fiume,
over which city, it should be remembered, she acquired no claim under
this treaty. Italy was also to receive about half of Dalmatia,
including towns over half of whose population were Jugo-Slavs. To
President Wilson's note the Allies had to reply, therefore, in somewhat
general terms. Their territorial demands were: "The restitution of
provinces formerly torn from the Allies by force or against the wish of
their inhabitants; the liberation of the Italians, as also of the
Slavs, Roumanes, and Czecho-Slovaks from foreign domination, the
setting free of the populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the
Turks; and the turning out of Europe of the Ottoman Empire as decidedly
foreign to Western civilization." The German reply contained no
statement of territorial claims and gave no pledge even as to the
future status of Belgium.
In reporting the results of this interchange of views to the Senate,
January 22, 1917, President Wilson delivered the first of that series
of addresses on the essentials of a just and lasting peace which made
him the recognized spokesman of the liberal element in all countries
and gained for him a moral leadership that was without parallel in the
history of the world. "In every discussion of the peace that must end
this war," he declared, "it is taken for granted that that peace must
be followed by some definite concert of power which will make it
virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us
again. Every lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take
that for granted." In fact, there was no dissent from this statement.
Most of our leading men, including Taft, Roosevelt, and Lodge, were
committed to the idea of a league of nations for the maintenance of law
and international peace. The League to Enforce Peace, which had
branches in all the Allied countries, had done a great work in
popularizing this idea. The President came before the Senate, he said,
"as the council associated with me in the final determination of our
international obligations," to formulate the conditions upon which he
would feel justified in asking the American people to give "formal and
solemn adherence to a League for Peace." He disclaimed any right to a
voice in determining what the terms of peace should be, but he did
claim a right to "have a voice in determining whether they shall be
made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant." First
of all, the peace must be a "peace without victory," for "only a peace
between equals can last." And, he added, "there is a deeper thing
involved than even equality of right among organized nations. No peace
can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the
principle that governments derive all their just powers from the
consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand
peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were
property." He cited Poland as an example, declaring that statesmen
everywhere were agreed that she should be "united, independent, and
autonomous."
He declared that every great people "should be assured a direct outlet
to the sea," and that "no nation should be shut away from free access
to the open paths of the world's commerce." He added: "The freedom of
the seas is the _sine qua non_ of peace, equality, and coöperation."
This problem, he said, was closely connected with the limitation of
naval armaments. "The question of armaments, whether on land or sea,
is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with
the future fortunes of nations and of mankind."
The Russian revolution, which came in March, 1917, and resulted in the
overthrow of the Czar's government, cleared the political atmosphere
for the time being, and enabled President Wilson in his address to
Congress on April 2 to proclaim a war of democracy against autocracy.
The new Russian government repudiated all imperialistic aims and
adopted the formula: "Self-determination, no annexations, no
indemnities." Poland was given her freedom and the demand for
Constantinople was abandoned. The Allies were thus relieved from one
of their most embarrassing secret treaties.
Even after America entered the war, President Wilson continued to
advance the same ideas as to the ultimate conditions of peace. His
attitude remained essentially different from that of the Allies, who
were hampered by secret treaties wholly at variance with the
President's aims. In his war address he declared that we had "no
quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but
one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that
their government acted in entering this war." Prussian autocracy was
the object of his attack. "We are now about to accept gauge of battle
with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the
whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its
power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false
pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world
and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for
the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men
everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world
must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the
tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to
serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for
ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely
make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We
shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the
faith and the freedom of nations can make them."
About the time that the United States declared war, Austria and Germany
began another so-called "peace offensive." Overtures were made by
Austria to France in March, and in August the Pope made a direct appeal
to the Powers. This move was unmasked by President Wilson in a public
address at the Washington Monument, June 14, 1917. "The military
masters under whom Germany is bleeding," he declared, "see very clearly
to what point fate has brought them: if they fall back or are forced
back an inch, their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. It
is their power at home of which they are thinking now more than of
their power abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their
very feet. Deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one
chance to perpetuate their military power, or even their controlling
political influence. If they can secure peace now, with the immense
advantage still in their hands, they will have justified themselves
before the German people. They will have gained by force what they
promised to gain by it--an immense expansion of German power and an
immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial opportunities.
Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige their political
power. If they fail, their people will thrust them aside. A
government accountable to the people themselves will be set up in
Germany, as has been the case in England, the United States, and
France--in all great countries of modern times except Germany. If they
succeed they are safe, and Germany and the world are undone. If they
fail, Germany is saved and the world will be at peace. If they
succeed, America will fall within the menace, and we, and all the rest
of the world, must remain armed, as they will remain, and must make
ready for the next step in their aggression. If they fail, the world
may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union."
The task of replying to the Pope was left by the Allied governments to
Wilson, who was not hampered by secret treaties. In this remarkable
document he drove still further the wedge between the German people and
the Kaiser. "The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at
the hands of the Imperial German Government, but they desire no
reprisal upon the German people who have themselves suffered all things
in this war which they did not choose. They believe that peace should
rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of Governments--the
rights of peoples great or small, weak or powerful--their equal right
to freedom and security and self-government and to a participation upon
fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German
people of course included if they will accept equality and not seek
domination."
In conclusion he said: "We cannot take the word of the present rulers
of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless
explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and
purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the
world would be justified in accepting. Without such guarantees,
treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up
arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjustments,
reconstitutions of small nations, if made with the German Government,
no man, no nation could now depend on. We must await some new evidence
of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Powers. God grant
it may be given soon and in a way to restore the confidence of all
peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the possibility of
covenanted peace."