A few days before war was declared, an antimilitarist mass meeting was
held in New York. It was variously addressed by a number of well-known
gentlemen regarding whose purity of motive there could be no question,
but regarding whose judgment a great majority of us have an opinion that
cannot be printed without the use of asterisks. And it was attended by a
very large representation of peace-loving citizens, including a numerous
contingent of those peculiar patriots who, for the past two years, have
been so very distressed if any suggestion of hostilities with the
Central Powers was offered, but so agreeably reconciled if a break with
the Allies, or any one of them, seemed a contingency.
It may have been only a coincidence, but it struck some of us as a
significant fact that, from the time of the dismissal of Count Von
Bernstorff onward, the average pro-peace meeting was pretty sure to
resolve itself into something rather closely resembling a pro-German
demonstration before the evening was over. Persons who hissed the name
of our President behaved with respectful decorum when mention was made
of a certain Kaiser.
However, I am not now concerned with these weird Americans, some of whom
part their Americanism in the middle with a hyphen. Some of them were in
jail before this little book was printed. I am thinking now of those
national advocates of the policy of the turned cheek; those professional
pacificists; those wavers of the olive branch--who addressed this
particular meeting and similar meetings that preceded it--little
brothers to the worm and the sheep and the guinea pig, all of them--who
preached not defence, but submission; not a firm stand, but a complete
surrender; not action, but words, words, words.