It has been my rule, aim and effort in my newspaper career to print
nothing of a man which I would not say to his face; to print nothing of
a man in malice; to look well and think twice before consigning a
suspect to the ruin of printer’s ink; to respect the old and defend the
weak; and, lastly, at work and at play, daytime and nighttime, to be
good to the girls and square with the boys, for hath it not been
written of such is the kingdom of Heaven?
There will always be in a democracy two or more sets of rival leaders
to two or more differing groups of followers. Hitherto history has
classified these as conservatives and radicals. But as society has
become more and more complex the groups have had their subdivisions. As
a consequence speculative doctrinaries and adventurous politicians are
enabled to get in their work of confusing the issues and exploiting
themselves.
“‘What are these fireworks for?’ asks the rustic in the parable. ‘To
blind the eyes of the people,’ answers the cynic.”
I would not say aught in a spirit of hostility to the President of the
United States. Woodrow Wilson is a clever speaker and writer. Yet the
usual trend and phrase of his observations seem to be those of a
special pleader, rather than those of a statesman. Every man, each of
the nations, is for peace as an abstract proposition. That much goes
without saying. But Mr. Wilson proposes to bind the hands of a giant
and take lottery chances on the future. This, I think, the country will
contest.
He is obsessed by the idea of a League of Nations. If not his own
discovery he has yet made himself its leader. He talks flippantly about
“American ideals” that have won the war against Germany, as if there
were no English ideals and French ideals.
“In all that he does we can descry the school-master who arrived at the
front rather late in life. One needs only to go over the record and
mark how often he has reversed himself to detect a certain mental and
temperamental instability clearly indicating a lack of fixed or
resolute intellectual purpose. This is characteristic of an excess in
education; of the half baked mind overtrained. The overeducated mind
fancies himself a doctrinaire when he is in point of fact only a
disciple.”
Woodrow Wilson was born to the rather sophisticated culture of the too,
too solid South. Had he grown up in England a hundred years ago he
would have been a follower of the Della Cruscans. He has what is called
a facile pen, though it sometimes runs away with him. It seems to have
done so in the matter of the League of Nations. Inevitably such a
scheme would catch the fancy of one ever on the alert for the fanciful.
I cannot too often repeat that the world we inhabit is a world of sin,
disease and death. Men will fight whenever they want to fight, and no
artificial scheme or process is likely to restrain them. It is mainly
the costliness of war that makes most against it. But, as we have seen
the last four years, it will not quell the passions of men or dull
national and racial ambitions.
All that Mr. Wilson and his proposed League of Nations can do will be
to revamp, and maybe for a while to reimpress the minds of the rank and
file, until the bellowing followers of Bellona are ready to spring.
Eternal peace, universal peace, was not the purpose of the Deity in the
creation of the universe.
Nevertheless, it would seem to be the duty of men in great place, as of
us all, to proclaim the gospel of good will and cultivate the arts of
fraternity. I have no quarrel with the President on this score. What I
contest is the self-exploitation to which he is prone, so lacking in
dignity and open to animadversion.
V
Thus it was that instant upon the appearance of the proposed League of
Nations I made bold to challenge it, as but a pretty conceit having no
real value, a serious assault upon our national sovereignty.
Its argument seemed to me full of copybook maxims, easier recited than
applied. As what I wrote preceded the debates and events of the last
six months, I may not improperly make the following quotation from a
screed of mine appearing in The Courier-Journal of the 5th of March,
1919:
“The League of Nations is a fad. Politics, like society and letters,
has its fads. In society they call them fashion and in literature
originality. Politics gives the name of ‘issues’ to its fads. A taking
issue is as a stunning gown, or ‘a best seller.’ The President’s mind
wears a coat of many colors, and he can change it at will, his mood
being the objective point, not always too far ahead, or clear of
vision. Carl Schurz was wont to speak of Gratz Brown as ‘a man of
thoughts rather than of ideas.’ I wonder if that can be justly said of
the President? ‘Gentlemen will please not shoot at the pianiste,’
adjured the superscription over the music stand in the Dakota dive;
‘she is doing the best that she knows how.’
“Already it is being proclaimed that Woodrow Wilson can have a third
nomination for the presidency if he wants it, and nobody seems shocked
by it, which proves that the people grow degenerate and foreshadows
that one of these nights some fool with a spyglass will break into Mars
and let loose the myriads of warlike gyascutes who inhabit that freak
luminary, thence to slide down the willing moonbeam and swallow us
every one!
“In a sense the Monroe Doctrine was a fad. Oblivious to Canada, and
British Columbia and the Spanish provinces, it warned the despots of
Europe off the grass in America. We actually went to war with Mexico,
having enjoyed two wars with England, and again and again we threatened
to annex the Dominion. Everything betwixt hell and Halifax was Yankee
preëmpted.
“Truth to say, your Uncle Samuel was ever a jingo. But your Cousin
Woodrow, enlarging on the original plan, would stretch our spiritual
boundaries to the ends of the earth and make of us the moral custodian
of the universe. This much, no less, he got of the school of sweetness
and light in which he grew up.
“I am a jingo myself. But a wicked material jingo, who wants facts, not
theories. If I thought it possible and that it would pay, I would annex
the North Pole and colonize the Equator. It is, after the manner of the
lady in the play, that the President ‘doth protest too much,’ which
displeases me and where, in point of fact, I ‘get off the reservation.’
“That, being a politician and maybe a candidate, he is keenly alive to
votes goes without saying. On the surface this League of Nations having
the word ‘peace’ in big letters emblazoned both upon its forehead and
the seat of its trousers—or, should I say, woven into the hem of its
petticoat?—seems an appeal for votes. I do not believe it will bear
discussion. In a way, it tickles the ear without convincing the sense.
There is nothing sentimental about the actualities of Government, much
as public men seek to profit by arousing the passions of the people.
Government is a hard and fast and dry reality. At best statesmanship
can only half do the things it would. Its aims are most assured when
tending a little landward; its footing safest on its native heath. We
have plenty to do on our own continent without seeking to right things
on other continents. Too many of us—the President among the rest, I
fear—miscalculate the distance between contingency and desire.
“‘We figure to ourselves The thing we like: and then we build it up: As
chance will have it on the rock or sand— When thought grows tired of
wandering o’er the world, And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.’”
I am sorry to see the New York World fly off at a tangent about this
latest of the Wilsonian hobbies. Frank Irving Cobb, the editor of the
World, is, as I have often said, the strongest writer on the New York
press since Horace Greeley. But he can hardly be called a
sentimentalist, as Greeley was, and there is nothing but sentiment—gush
and gammon—in the proposed League of Nations.
It may be all right for England. There are certainly no flies on it for
France. But we don’t need it. Its effects can only be to tie our hands,
not keep the dogs away, and even at the worst, in stress of weather, we
are strong enough to keep the dogs away ourselves.
We should say to Europe: “Shinny on your own side of the water and we
will shinny on our side.” It may be that Napoleon’s opinion will come
true that ultimately Europe will be “all Cossack or all republican.”
Part of it has come true already. Meanwhile it looks as though the
United States, having exhausted the reasonable possibilities of
democracy, is beginning to turn crank. Look at woman suffrage by
Federal edict; look at prohibition by act of Congress and
constitutional amendment; tobacco next to walk on the plank; and
then!—Lord, how glad I feel that I am nearly a hundred years old and
shall not live to see it!